So should I shut down my thread and put my further impressions here?

Okay, so my thread becomes the spoiler thread. I'll rename it so they make some sense.

I just bought my Limited Edition at lunch. I opened it up right there, and it was scratched, so they sent me to customer service. As soon as I got to the counter the girl promptly got a stack of seven unopened ones and started rattling them to check for disc slippage. Out of those seven, 2 were good.

Woo hoo, Halo 3 for the win.

The cutscene dialogue and story is almost indescribably bad, and the combat makes other games look like a Punch and Judy show.

It's still too early to tell if the Brute AI is as good or better than the elites'. That will take many, many playthroughs to determine.

So far the soundtrack has been very much just a rehash of the Halo 1 and 2 score, but reorchestrated. I don't know how to feel about that since it really is great music. Then there's the discrepancy in the themes, though. Why the f*ck would you take a piece of music you have very strongly associated with Banshees several times over two games, and make it tank battle music? Por que?

It's as if the Bungie team could be evenly split down the middle. Team A worked on the core of the game, the nuts and the bolts. Game engine, level design, AI, weapon balance, vehicles, etc. All the stuff that you use and do and is really important. Team B was all frills. Music, story, cutscenes, etc. All the stuff that doesn't really have any bearing on the fun factor. Team A deserves to be hoisted upon the shoulders of gamers everywhere, while golden confetti rains down from real life Phantoms. Team B paid a steet urchin in beef jerky to phone it in. At least they got their priorities straight.

CONFORM!!!

For my money the Brutes are a little too weak. They were terrors to run into in Halo 2. They seem much easier to kill in 3. But yeah, otherwise I agree with Danjo. The gameplay is rock frickin' solid. 4 player Coop (minus my douche baggery mentioned in the other thread) was the most fun I've had playing multiplayer in a long long time. Playing as an elite is awesome. Being in a pack with other elites is awesome. And I love the graphics. I don't care what others say. There was so much beautiful stuff to look at. I plan on playing this SP and Coop so that in SP I can take in the scenery more.

It really depends upon how many people you're playing with. In the previous games you had to bump it up to Legendary before elites posed a huge threat to two Spartans. That we're hitting it on Heroic with four is definitely feeling like overkill.

I'm sure that's what the Skulls are for. I look forward to going at it with four people when the entire team goes back a checkpoint if even one of you dies as that will foster a much more tactical approach to the game.

As it is one wild card can drunkenly charge the front lines over and over again with no negative consequences.

By the time I get a 360 and want to play co-op everyone here will have played it 3 times over.

I wouldn't be too worried, I just got a 360 last month, and there are enough people still playing Gears of War that I can barely play the Hardcore campaign with all the irresistible invites to play multiplayer. I probably won't be getting this one for a month or so.

I've got it.

Unless you've played somewhere around 25 games since then, you do have the video. Unlike the beta, you don't have to do anything to save videos. As you play, videos are just saved automatically to a limited "cache" space (I'm sure it is a certain size limit, but the interface says it will be "roughly the last 25 games"). If you want to keep them from being overwritten, all you have to do is go into your theater lobby, view your "recent film" list, and hit X on the ones you want to keep permanently.

Interestingly enough, the game also does a similar thing for game and map variants. No longer do you have to wonder what that crazy game type you played last night was -- you can go into the map and game type selectors in the custom game lobby, look at the "recent" lists, and hit X to save the map or game type to your hard drive permanently.

So basically, the philosophy is that if you have played it recently, you can save or view any aspect of the game at your leisure.

Whoa, I have to go find that moment, then. Thanks Zero, Danjo.

Quoted for overwhelming truth!

I got to introduce my younger son to it last night, and the look on his face when he started swinging for the bleachers was worth money.

And the nice thing about the videos is they're not actually video - they're the game data that gets re-rendered when you watch it. They're whole LOT smaller than an equivalent video file. So don't be too shy about saving them; you have a lot more room than you think.

Ok so I only put it in for a minute. Im saving the experience for later tonight when I join a friend. But I was looking around, checking out Forge and the various features and I was confused by the fact that there doesn't seem to be any options menu.

I couldn't find where to check audio/video/control options anywhere. Or where to go to adjust my multiplayer look, if that is still possible. Are these things just not there or did I miss something really obvious?

Must have been that 'tab' I missed.