It's a bit okay-ish really, isn't it? It’s good fun if you’re playing with someone else, but most things are. For a single-player game it’s decidedly average. Nothing is really new, and the innovations that the series had have been equalled or bettered by other games released since.

Maybe I feel like this for me because I’m not a frag-addicted multiplayer gamehead that would put electrodes on my arms if I thought it would speed up my twitch response, but most of the time I just want to sit down and enjoy a good game by myself. Most of the time I play games to get away from the idiocy of humanity, not so I have to encounter idiots from around the world in my living room.

I've only played a bit of multiplayer on the work copy but I wasn't terribly impressed and I enjoy the occasional FPS. It seems like more of the same but prettier, definitely not worthy of the score it got in Edge (was it 9 or 9.5 or something crazy) and I don't think people would have queued up at midnight for it had they not overhyped it so massively.

Maybe I'm just biased because I don't like to play FPS games with a joypad, it's just unnatural.

I know a few guys who did that and even they acknowledged that it was just more of the same but apparently 'the same' is a good formula that they enjoyed.

Halo was a good game, Halo 2 was... a bit dull, but apparently the multiplayer deathmatches were great. I had a go at those, came around the mid-ranks on the matches, realised that the only way to win was to learn loads of exploits, and decided I couldn't be bothered because it wasn't that much fun.

I do like the FPS genre, and Halo 3 is a good example of it, but it's not a leap forward over anything we could play three years ago. Edge gave it 10/10 and I just can't see why... But I'm not bothered about online play.

This is a problem that I'm seeing a lot for my game habits - I can pay full price for a game, but if I don't want to play online then I'm only getting half (or less of the experience). With some games that's what you expect, but with Halo there has always been a strong core component of the single player experience too.

Still, at least the story was okay, even if every line of the script did sound like it had been taken verbatim from Aliens. I quite liked that aspect of it, and there were good bits, but mostly this wasn't anything that I didn't see a year ago when I played through the first two. Then again, I couldn't remember half of what was supposed to be going on from the second game, mainly because the plot was so awful in concept and execution that I gave up the will to live halfway through. This one was a lot better than that in the story, at least, but probably not up to the rather nicely done story of the first game.

But hey, Micro$oft still got some of my money, so what do they care? If I want to get the 'full experience' then I suppose I could always give them some more money to play it online. Hm. Somehow that doesn't strike me as a bargain. It's a real bugger that the PS3 doesn't have decent games on it yet, because at least going online there is free.

If this is the best of the new generation of consoles, two years after the launch, then it's going to be a very humdrum generation.

I loved this review of Halo 3:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/v...ctuation-Halo-3
That's pretty much spot on.

One more thing - subtle dialogue performances are completely wasted on the 360. If it's loud and shouty then it's a standard cheesy game performance, but as soon as anyone drops their voice or, heaven forbid, begins to act, then half the words are drowned out by the sound of the machine's fans. I had the volume up to a reasonable level and I missed many lines during cut scenes because the hum of the fans overwhelmed the actor. Grah! It's got to the point now where I'm waiting for PS3 releases of games because I dislike the 360 so much.

Blimey... I'm very ranty today, aren't I?