Halo 3, Where has the time Gone??

Gee, I wonder what I could have been doing the past few weeks instead of writing something for my blog?? Wow, that's a tough one.

Like anyone else who has a 360 and an extra $70 lying around, I have been playing Halo 3. God's own gift to the video-gaming world. I am admittedly a recent convert into the cult that is Halo. Yep, it's a cult and yep, I do love it so.

It most definitely isn't for the campaign missions. While I enjoyed playing the campaign (solo and multi), I wouldn't agree with some who are creaming it's praises. I was a tad disappointed. I was absolutely disheartened that the brilliant and emotionally stirring "Believe" add campaign had absolutely nothing to do with the ACTUAL campaign. For this I have the following thing to say to Bungie:

WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU SMOKING YOU CRACK SUCKING CHOWDERHEADS?!!

The "Believe" adds were amazing, particularly the first one which portrayed a war-veteran re-telling his minor roll in the final battle on earth against the Covenant. I am a fairly hardened person and normally don't allow myself to get that wrapped up in shit but my family has a rich warfighter history in this counrty. The Veteran angle really hit me where I am the softest. I damn near fucking cried. Not balled mind you but my eyes got watery.

The next one I saw was the battle montage leading up to Chief activating the plazma grenade (and you know where he was planning to stick that thing too). I couldn't wait to play it. I was an Uber-Dork and took my 11-year-old daughter with me to the midnight release at GameStop. Not exactly across the street in my neck of the woods.

The scratches on my disc (fuck you MicroSoft) thankfully didn't keep my game from playing and I got hip deep in it as soon as I got home. The gameplay was really fun and I had a blast. However, when I had made it all the way through the game and played the final level I was PISSED!

A frickin' DRIVING GAME? What the hell Bungie, did you run out of ideas near the end?? THAT was stupid. Here was the "Believe" adds, sitting there WAITING to be made a level. Hell, an honorable mention in some dialogue somewhere would have been nice. But, no, we get to drive a Warthog through some dumbass, add-hock, horse-shit obstacle course.

The most wonderful looking game to date ends with fuckin' Mario-Kart. Nice.

Okay, so I was disapointed in the campaign but the multi-player has made up for it. Somewhat. It still has one of the best matchmaking and party systems on the planet Erf. I have made some good friends using Halo's party system and will probably make plenty more. Forge is awesome, the custom games are outstanding (the ability to change gravity, THAT'S crazy talk), the new social and ranked gametypes are nice (Shotty-Snipers anyone?). Overall, a good time.

What I hate, what I miss most however are the glitches from Halo 2. I'm not talking about the button combos. I can live without those. No, I'm talking about the super-bounces and getting out of map and exploring. THAT made Halo 2 live for a long time after I got bored with campaign and had kind of lost interest in MM. I could (and did) spend hours just goofing off with friends and coming up with new and more hilarious ways of goofing off.

I would love it if bungie threw out a map-pack with some unlocked levels in them. Maps with the walls taken out. Maps that would let me jump over that little wall and go check out the palm-trees.

The saving grace has got to be the new Theater feature. That is a scream. I highly recommend checking out my screenshots over at Bungie.net and at least downloading the film-clip titled: oh POOP and DeathFromaBumper. Both clips of the same death, the first death during a really great Team Slayer match. It just doesn't get old.

Done for now, see ya on Halo 3.

ETA: Well, maybe not. After several weeks of playtime my disc cracked. CRACKED!!! And I didn't do it. Nobody in my house touches my gamediscs, PERIOD! Halo 3 lasted 5 seconds in the CE case and then has basically lived in my 360. The cleanings were done using a fully supported cleaning tray and the disc inspected evey time. I noticed however that I kept getting some contact marring in the same quarter of the disc. Small scuff marks, easily cleaned but indicative of an unbalanced disc. One day I got a disc read failure that wouldn't go away. then, it started acting like the disc wasn't a 360 compatible disc. When I removed it I noticed a long crack starting from the inside rim out into the written portion of the disc. Holy-Happy-Galliping-Gobs-O-Horeshit!! Microsoft quality in abundance.

Read the above blog concerning friends to see the rest.