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I have yet to pick up my copy of Halo 3, but since it came out last night at midnight, has anyone picked it up? Opinions?

I picked it up last night and played until 2:30am.

It's fantastic. It plays just like Halo 2, except with so much more polish. The levels are absolutely beautiful and I'm only on the third level. I can't wait to see how the story plays out so I can get into the multiplayer.

The only things I'm having to get used to is reloading with the RB button rather than X, like I'm used to. I also haven't really figured out the deployable weapons yet (as in, I've only used them once.) But it is pretty bitchin to rip a turret off its mount and carry it with you.

Only gripe is that the weapons are not loud enough. To me it seems like the gunshots should be louder, but I guess I'll get used to it.

*Grumbles*

With Halo 3 and the coming Mass Effect, I'm thinking it would be a great idea to upgrade to a HD TV now. Damn it, if only the current one helped by having an accident, or something.

Well, it DOES look really really pretty in HD. Did I mention it's pretty? Cause damn.

That should be enough of an excuse for you.

Colonel Olrik wrote:Damn it, if only the current one helped by having an accident, or something.

Have it accidently fall on an axe will work for pretty much anything

Colonel Olrik wrote:*Grumbles*

With Halo 3 and the coming Mass Effect, I'm thinking it would be a great idea to upgrade to a HD TV now. Damn it, if only the current one helped by having an accident, or something.

Instead of wishing for a breakdown, you could take it to a local charity and donate it to the poor.

Darth Wong wrote:

Colonel Olrik wrote:*Grumbles*

With Halo 3 and the coming Mass Effect, I'm thinking it would be a great idea to upgrade to a HD TV now. Damn it, if only the current one helped by having an accident, or something.

Instead of wishing for a breakdown, you could take it to a local charity and donate it to the poor.

I dont think most household insurance covers Acts of Charity.

By the way mike, do you have a console in your house?

Got it at midnight, and I just beat it.

Incredibly beautiful. Worries about the game's prettiness factors are completely unfounded, because this game fucking shines.

In terms of gameplay, its insanely well-polished. I had a few fears early in the game that I would be dealing with Jackal Snipers 2: The Son of Jackal Sniper, but those Jackals seemed to disappear later in the game, where it became more about fighting Brutes and Flood. Jackals are still present, but they have this odd visor thingy now that gives them a blue glow that lets you spot them early on. Vehicle combat is chaotic but intense and quite fun.

Even on Normal difficulty this game is tough, especially in the last few levels, where there's what feels like millions of Flood coming at you and you're resorting to melee attacks.

Storyline-wise, its a quite solid narrative with a few good twists. The final battle was something I honestly did not expect, but it was immensely satisfying. The ending in particular was very powerful, and I had to sit back after the credits rolled, because I felt all tingly inside at the image at the very end, and Master Chief's words.






MASSIVE SPOILERS AHOY!






An interesting thing that surprised me was Guilty Spark's tacit admission at the end that humans were Forerunner, or at least their descendants. This is partially because Bungie was leading up to it so obviously that I thought it had to be a fake-out. Interestingly, the terminals you can access throughout the game indicate that the ones who constructed the Halos were not actually human, as they reference the humans on Earth as another distinct group. That may mean that "modern" humans are descendants of interbreeding between Forerunners and ancient humans, or that humans are "spiritual" successors. But that is, of course, only speculation.

Gravemind struck me as being a whole lot more emotional and aggressive in Halo 3, when compared with his incarnation in Halo 2, where he seemed more manipulative, sly, and cruel. In Halo 3 he's vindictive and becomes incredibly furious toward the end of the game.

I found it curious that Spark explained that the Flood at the Ark could be destroyed by a "tactical pulse" of Halo's weapon, while Cortana states that Halo does not kill the Flood. This means that either someone is misinformed, or Halo's weapons can be altered to kill either the Flood or their food.

Wonderful. More Flood. Yippee.

Darth Wong wrote:Wonderful. More Flood. Yippee.

You'll love the biowank.

SPOILERS

"Hello there, Mr. Spartan! I'm a small, waist-high insectlike Flood form. Watch me quintiple my body size in a couple of seconds, absorb direct hits with rockets, smack you across the room, and then morph into another insect variant that scuttles up the walls and shoots you with hundreds of razor-sharp spines.

"Meanwhile, my Infection Form buddies are are reviving every single corpse you just killed, while converting all those Covenant and Marine corpses into new Combat Forms in a matter of seconds! Enjoy!"

And just to make them even creepier, the Flood now have individual dialogue. Seeing this huge slavering corpse parasite running toward you and shrugging off everything you throw at it becomes ten times scarier when he's shouting at you in this frightening, deep voice with non sequiters about death and sin.

Picked up my Legendary Box set this morning at 7am from Walmart. Played it in Co-Op for a few hours with my bro before going to work. Its a damn awsome game just like I was expecting. Cant wait to finnish it when I get home. I'll probably be playing on Live till all hours tonight

Some kid at my school got it last night and brought it to school so we all played it at lunch. Now I didn't get to play exactly, but the multiplayer looked good from what I saw.

Man, these levels are something else on Heroic.

Especially when you activate a checkpoint with a dozen enemies around the corner and both your weapons are out of ammo.

DPDarkPrimus wrote:Especially when you activate a checkpoint with a dozen enemies around the corner and both your weapons are out of ammo.

You mad fool!

Does it have drop-in co-op, like Gears? You could get someone to sign up for as long as it takes you to get more guns.

Has anyone else noticed the Red vs. Blue guys are in the game? On the way to the hangar if you go to an obsure part of the level you hear Simmons and Grif arguing about the password to a door.

I've also got to say the sound effects seem kind of weak. I can barely hear the damn assault rifle. Oh, and the targeting reticle seems to be placed rather strangely. It's too low.

I still haven't gotten my copy - I preordered the special edition (the non-Legendary one) from Amazon, but it hasn't gotten here yet - but I went over to my friend's house (who did get the Legendary edition) and played it on his HDTV (Sony, for a nice twist of irony) and damn, is it beautiful.

We messed around in Forge mode for a while, and then skipped over to regular multiplayer. I'm happy now. The Carbine serves the purpose of being a starting weapon I can actually kill someone with without being overpowered, and all the game modes we played were intensely fun, despite my griping about pretty much anything that wasn't Slayer in Halo 2.

The new weapons interface is lovely, once you get used to it. It's a really nice trick to find two dual-wieldable weapons sitting next to each other and to run over and pick them up simultaneously.

I wish I could say I'm ready to finish the fight, but however I still have Halo 2 singleplayer to get through first - we loaded up the first mission (I have a hand in the use of that particular loading screen, by the way) - and it provided little to orient the player as to what was really going on, and there was practically no training as there was in the previous games. It was just get up and go, though that's no big issue to most of the people who have gotten it.

I have heard lots of reports/complaints from people that bought the SE. That their disc was loose in the box and got scratched and wouldn't play.

How big is the helmet in the Legendary Edition? That box looks big enough to have a life size one in it.

Stark wrote:

DPDarkPrimus wrote:Especially when you activate a checkpoint with a dozen enemies around the corner and both your weapons are out of ammo.

You mad fool!

Does it have drop-in co-op, like Gears? You could get someone to sign up for as long as it takes you to get more guns.

Oh no, I ended up killing six grunts and a couple Brutes by using grenades and melee and managed to gather some better weapons with the dropped plasma pistols.

Halo 3 plays like it's the game to get a hi-def TV for. I need to build my credit anyway. In a word so far it's "awesome."

I just finished the game on Legendary...IF YOU BEAT THE GAME AT THE HIGHEST DIFFICULT, THERE IS A SHORT SERIES OF VIDEOS AFTER THE CREDITS!



I will say no more...I can't...

The game was nothing short of an absolute BLAST!

Scottish Ninja wrote: (I have a hand in the use of that particular loading screen, by the way)

What did you mean?

According to the VA credits most of the male crew of Serenity provide voices in here.

Well, my brother got the game (the mid-range "Collector's"), and I'm now giving it a crack.

DPDarkPrimus wrote:Man, these levels are something else on Heroic.

Yeah, I'd say there's too big a jump in difficulty between "normal" (which is still fairly easy) and "heroic". But they weren't kidding in the description for "easy" when they said it "practically plays itself"

some random observations from the SP campaign thus far:

1)The gravity hammer is the awesomist melee weapon evar!

2)The environments are all gorgeous and expansive, and I may find myself replaying some of them again just for that eye candy. The shadow effects are awesome, as are the physics, especially the way the vegetation responds to say, vehicles running into them.

3)In many ways, the atmosphere and feel of this game seems a bit more like Halo 1 than Halo 2, and not just because of the return of the Assault Rifle and the return of some Halo 1 ingame music. I'm told the end has a "race against the clock" much like Halo 1, but I haven't gotten that far yet. Hell, they've even got that terrified human cowering in a corner after the Flood show up and assimilate his comrades (at least this time he doesn't shoot at you)

4)I may have missed something, but I don't think it's been explained why the Hunters and Grunts are back in the Covenant fold after apparently joining the Elite rebellion in Halo 2.

5)The Flood now seem like a terrifying enemy again, compared to their "meh" appearance in Halo 2, where they were almost unchanged from Halo 1: they simply did not have the same impact as they did in the first game, especially given the skillfully suspenseful manner in which they were introduced the first time. Granted it took a few wanktastic abilities and forms (such as the Infection Form's ability to InstaMutate their victims), but seems to have given them the right psychological effect. The fact that Flood combat forms can now talk is especially spooky, as are the interiors of Flood-infested spacecraft.

6)Speaking of voice acting, I loved how they got Terrence Stamp to voice Truth: You could really hear him channelling General Zod a few times there.

Is there any large battle like those Call of duty kind?