McWilliams’ World

I managed to beat Halo 3 on Heroic today. Quite the nail-biter of an escape. I’ll admit, I still don’t understand the story but I’m sure I’ll get it on other run through. What sucked about finishing it on Heroic was the even though I got an achievement for finishing, it was only for Normal mode because apparently it unlocks first if you never beat the game on Normal - even if you beat it on Heroic. GRRR!!!

I also beat Guitar Hero 3 on Hard. I initially started on Expert (getting to the 2nd last tier) but after hitting a wall I restarted on Hard. I had a rough time with the Slipnot and Slayer songs. Just brutal. Once getting to the final “boss battle”, the devil - The Devil Went Down to Georgia, I smoked it on the first try. During the credits you get to play Dragonforce’s crazy song Through the Fire and Flames. I’m glad they put it there; no chance of failing.

I also managed to play a bit of GH3 on-line and won two rounds. Even getting the elusive “Meet your maker” achievement when you beat one of the game’s developers. Fun stuff!

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.