405 Achievement Points Later

I am not special. I have no connections. But my copy of Halo 3 which was supposed to arrive today arrived three whole days before public release and I had some extra time to play through it this weekend. I felt a strong and unnatural drive to finish the single player campaign (mostly because the multi servers aren't up yet) as soon as possible and I will give you the quick-and-dirty. You, naturally, have already decided to purchase this game and I salute you. A solid choice.

Without further ado, it was amazing.

I'll get my only significant complaint out of the way early: it was short. I couldn't possibly have played for more than 10 hours. And I died about a million and a half times in chapter 9 which means that it must be more like 8 or 9 hours for a really good player on normal. Strangely, my frustration with dying so close to the end of the game wasn't too strong and my controller-throw-count was a mind-blowing zero. Now that Halo Day(tm) is in t-minus hours instead of days, the multiplayer servers are probably warming up and there'll be plenty more hours of playtime. Apparently the skulls aren't in the game the first time you play each mission so don't bother, you'll have to go back anyway. If you're looking for even more hours, campaign score mode (co-op, but with running score for each player!) sounds awesome but I haven't even looked in to turning it on yet.

Killing your first scarab is pretty freaking amazing in Halo 3. In fact, most of the things you've done before in halo are pretty freaking amazing when you do them again in 3. You will marvel at how everything looks again and again and then you will remark about how the prophet, 1080p and all, still looks like a wrinkled piece of plastic fruit. Now, the awesomeness list:

• Spiker (awesome)
• Mongoose + dude with rocket launcher (better-than-warthog awesome)
  
• Customizable Armor on multiplayer (4w3S0m3!!!1)
• Bubble shield (protection awesome)
• Spike-grenade tagging (gibs-and-bits awesome)
• New environments (shadowy-sunlight awesome)
• No multiplayer before the release date (LAAAAAME)
  
• Letting the arbiter do your killing for you (priceless)

It is possible that we will be playing in the office this afternoon. Please keep an eye out.