Halo 3 in the house!
I think I stood in line a total of about one hour at our local GameStop store. GameStop’s line started at 9pm. I arrived shortly after, went in to get my final receipt and stood in line for a little while. Since I was by myself, and there were mostly Halo lovin’ losers in line, I sat in my car for a while, but then decided to head home till midnight. No point staring off into space. I’m guaranteed a copy so why waste time standing in line?
I returned about 20min before midnight and the line was considerably longer than it was when I left. Only this time I was behind the most annoying bunch of young college kids talking about being drunk every night (one tag-along was drunk), and a good amount of folk were smoking like chimneys (even outside, being in close proximity to a smoker sucks!). They were giggling, laughing, and really saying nothing. How annoying. Just shut up, face forward and wait like the rest of us.
Aside from that there were a good chuck of people picking up the ridiculously priced Legendary Pack ($130). Oh it has the game, a Master Chief helmet, 4 bonus disks, etc… but $130? I’ll stick with the Collector’s edition (which by the way, both disks were loose in the case with some very fine scratches as reported – the hub does not lock the disk in place very well).
Once I got home with my copy, I logged on and saw that all of my friends (that were on-line) were playing Halo 3. I started up, played around with the settings a bit, and jumped into the campaign. The graphics are great in Halo 3. This isn’t Gears. Is it next gen? Oh yeah. I think it looks great. If you want more Gears… wait for Gears 2 - I’m sick of the comparisons.
I will say that it feels different after playing the stop-n-pop games like Gears, Vegas or GRAW. You get used to ducking behind cover, sticking there and peering out to pop of your foes. Halo is, for the most part, wide open, here I am run and gun. Sure you can stand behind a rock, duck around a corner to catch your breath but you’re really exposed.
I gleaned that from about 20min of gameplay (I had to stop – I’m too old to stay up that late).
All I can say is that I look forward to years of enjoyment (as long as my Xbox doesn’t die) from playing Halo 3.
September 26th, 2007 at 10:59 am
I picked up my copy of Halo 3 yesterday at my local Best Buy. They didn’t do a midnight opening, so I was there at about 11:15a on launch day. There were only 3 or 4 people ahead of me, so the line went quickly.
My game disc was loose in the Collector’s Edition case, also with some fine scratches. The game seems to play fine, though.
I’ve played 3 or 4 hours on campaign as a single player, and 2 or 3 more in campaign co-op mode. Co-op helps significantly with difficult sections, but I’m also going to complete the campaign solo just so I can experience everything. You’re right about this game being wide open, and while it would be nice to be able to shoot from cover, Halo is all about the “run and gun.”
I did find that taking cover when your shield is down is necessary to survive, and that there usually are rocks or corners of buildings or walls that let you do that.