I'll preface this with 'I haven't played it'. However, I know of a guy who has already beaten the game. I'm not sure if it was coop, but he's done with it. Kind of pathetic if you ask me, but I'm not a fan of Halo 3 in the least. Just wanted to chime in with 'it's freaking short'. Cheers!

The thread says spoilerific, so I vote let's have it!

Note: I never played the first two Halos so last night was my first experience w/ the system

maybe its just me, but I felt lost the entire time playing last night. I had no clue where to go if there were not red enemy markers on the radar. In fact the terrain was confusing in alot of places. I ended up getting teleported several times and that just further confused me since I was now in an area that I couldn't find in the first place and have no clue how I got there.

Also the controls felt sluggish for a FPS, is there away to make the sticks more sensitive?

There are always people who are going to do that. Remember that guy who powered his way to level 70 a day after the Burning Crusade was released? Same thing. And I guess if that gets you your $60 worth, then who am I to judge? As long as your boat's floatin', I guess.

I don't feel competent to judge the depth of the story. I've read all the books and been mainlining this universe since the first book came out right before the first game came out. So I already had all that context. If you haven't done that, I don't know what you're going to get. I mean, I watched that opening scene and knew who that guy who was so concerned about the Chief was, and why he and the Arbiter were there. I already was immersed, and found plenty to work with there.

The new enemy AI is great fun. You don't feel like you're playing against The Keystone Cops commanded by Cornwallis. The new Grunts in particular -- they're not just for laughs anymore.

I'll second Vrikk on the graphics. Just compare Sgt. Johnson's face when he's talking between this game and the last. Level design has taken it up a notch, too. Take that first area down by the river. With all it's nooks and crannies and ups and downs is such a departure from the usual flat plain with trees/rocks or some nameless concrete hallway.

I'm only about an hour and a half in but that was at my pace, not some overclocked twitch-master. I W.A.G. it'll take me 20+ hours to finish the single-player, in dribs and drabs over the next week. But then I've got Forge, Zombie Skate every week, playing co-op with my kids, schooling the neighbhorhood twits, and plenty of other reasons to load it up.

And that said, you're probably only going to see me online at Zombie Skate for a while (unless my younger son logs in as me again - if you see me during work hours, it's him). I jacked up my hands bigtime at PAX and I got shellacked at the launch tournament. I mean like to a level more embarassing than the beta. I've got to do some after-market ergonomics work on my controller, and hopefully these new braces help.

It's under your controller settings. It's called "turn rate" or something like that. The default is 3, but I would try a 5.

Interesting. Well, it will be interesting to see in the coming weeks how that pans out. If there are other features such as scoring during Coop, etc. that could make the Campaign more replayable. I guess since I don't play Gears I was under the mistaken impression from what little I've picked up out of the air that people were often joining each other for Coop.

The graphics are indeed amazing. I have no qualms about that. Looking at the Ark was beautiful. I guess my opinion of the story comes from this. Huge variet of interesting aliens + giant ringworld WMDs + Alien Religious infighting + Human vs. Alien fight to the death, etc. should be a recipe for an epic story. It feels like there is SO much more they could flesh out.

Who exactly are the "Forerunners"?
How did they place the Ark on Earth?
Does that tie them into Earth historically somehow?
What is Human civilization like?
How are they reacting to the war?
What is the interaction like between humans and their new Elite comrades?

There is so much there that they could touch on. It feels like it could be epic. It feels like it *should* be epic. And yet it falls short

And don't get me wrong, that's the only dept. it falls short in, IMHO. I just wish the story were more than it is.

I haven't seen the Ark yet, so I don't know empirically, but in terms of general zero-g habitat design it works. You can spin a plate shape and it works the same way as the cylinder. The "floor" is what you and I would think of as the outboard walls of the hallways. Think frisbee. And if it's big enough and they cut it up so there aren't a bunch of straight visual lines, you won't have perceptable curve to the floors as you walk along them. That shape is considerably more stable under accelleration than a rifle-spinning cylinder.

Spin it fast enough that you have 9.8 meters/second accelleration within a reasonable tolerance on the outer rim and inward a bit, and have all the hardware and other junk that doesn't care it's at lower/no gravity in the center. Thrust goes through the center of spin at a 90 degree angle (like balancing a frisbee on a broomstick). The "big beam gun" also shoots from the center so as to not have to compensate for the spin.

And if you have gravity control anyways to work with it to make sure you aren't puking from Coriolis in the middle, you remove all the downsides.

Man, the plot's really unfriendly to newbies to the franchise. Had to dig through the Wikipedia articles just to get an idea of what I had just seen.

We figured out Ron Perlman just by listening to Lord Hood. It doesn't hurt that they actually made Hood look a bit like Perlman does in real life.

Best moment so far (as best as I can remember):
Marine 1: Open the door!
Marine 2: What's the password?
Marine 1: What password? We need ammo!
Marine 2: There was a meeting 15 minutes ago, they gave out the password then.
Marine 1: We weren't at the meeting! We were out here fighting!
Marine 2: If you don't know the password I won't open the door.
Marine 1: Look, we need to reload -- the Chief's out here!
Marine 2: *pause* . . . Does he know the password?

How does one claim a skull? I found one... I manage to get it to the end of the level, which was pain, and then... nothing, no option, no prompt... did I miss something? Do I find a local UNSC Kinko's and ship it out or something.

...and we really should make 1 thread for Halo, I have no idea where to post.

Post spoilers here, nonspoilers in the nonspoiler thread, and ignore the pre-release thread.

Pickup a skull on I believe Normal difficulty or higher and you've got it. Then you can just drop it. If it's one of the nine that make the game more difficult you get an achievement for picking it up, as does anyone else in your party.

No, that isn't all.

Just finished it, and I am extremely pleased. Wrapping it all up the way they did, cyclically and with the actual firing of a Halo finally was so satisfying. Especially since it pretty much ended for me the same way Halo 1 ended the very first time: Me firing wildly on a warthog driven by Chiggie as we narrowly escape certain doom. The very end of the last level couldn't have been any better.

I loved the other nods to the first Halo, with the big sections of Silent Cartographer and Two Betrayels reinvisioned.

The extreme Flood makeover was unexpected and very welcome. They took away the traits that made them such a bore in Halo 2 and really gave them a lot more intelligence. The addition of a ranged flood and the other forms gave their areas the variety that previous Flood areas lacked. I was a bit miffed that there wasn't a bit more area with both Flood and Covenant together. Also it was weird to have little to no areas where the humans, flood, and Covenant all fought each other since that was where Halo 1 really shined.

I did find the little boss battle right before that odd, but not very disruptive so I'll let it slide.

I totally called the function of the Ark. Chiggie can back me up on that one.

Haha, nice Inigo

The beginning of the 2nd act was like from a soap opera. =/ It was bad enough that i went and played TF2 instead.

Yes. I was worried I couldn't jump this particular log in the beginning "jungle" mission, but instead I went flying over it.