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Of course fans expect that a Halo game will look good. Maybe it won't be the absolutely most edge-bleedingly, envelope-pushingly, buzzword-compliantly beautiful game on the market at release, but it will look good.

According to Kotaku, then, Halo Wars is a Halo game, and it looks good:

Halo Wars has some impressive visual pop to it, more colorful than when we last saw it. The game's visual effects, in motion, look spectacular. It may not have the immediate visual sex appeal of something like Halo 3, with it's micro-sized units and overhead perspective, but it looks good.

Of course, how an RTS game controls on a console is really the central issue, and Kotaku says that's another area where Halo Wars excels:

Halo plus real-time strategy plus gamepad controls may sound like a recipe for a franchise misfire, but Ensemble Studios has polished Halo Wars to the point of an immediately playable console title. While some may argue that, like first person shooters, RTS games should only be played on a mouse and keyboard, Ensemble has done an admirable job of nailing the controls. We got a chance to go hands-on with the game at E3 and came away surprisingly pleased.

That does sound pretty good. Those of the faithful who won't be able to stomach games in the Haloverse outside of Bungie's watchful eyes might have problems with some of Ensemble's choices (indeed, some are already, including myself) but the bottom line should be whether a game is fun and interesting to play, and it sounds like so far Halo Wars has a good chance of rising to that challenge.

WorthPlaying has a quick preview of Wideload's upcoming Hail to the Chimp party game, and despite a couple flubs ("GNN" instead of "GRR" for instance) they did like the game. Story includes a half-dozen screenshots as well.

Penny Arcade doesn't hate Halo anymore (well, at first they loved it, then they hated it, then they sort of... well, at any case, now Tycho says:

I'm not sure people understand that the time to bag on Halo was years ago, when everyone liked it, as opposed to now, when they've finally delivered a cool draught of its deep promise. I have to say that I'm done hating things just because idiots like them, a state you might call post post post hip. Unless you bought a more expensive version of the game whose abrasive collector's case scratched your disc, in which case your rage is just and proper.

To find out what they think now (sort of) see their latest comic.

TrackZero at Evil Avatar got to see a closed-door demonstration of two campaign levels from Halo 3. His verdict? It's a keeper if you like Halo, at least a rental if you don't.

It takes all the best of the series and kicks it up a notch. I never encountered any issues during gameplay at all to speak of. The single player campaign missions that I saw merely came off as a tease, as I wanted to grab the controller and play the whole time. The multiplayer is a large improvement over Halo 2 (which I wasn't a fan of) and hits a great balance that's sure to please people.

Read the full post for more details about Halo 3, as well as impressions of several other games.

You may have read somewhere else already that press reviews of Halo 3 (much like Halo 2 before it) are handled in a somewhat different way than other games. Bungie doesn't mail out review copies to journalists in advance; if they did, it's possible the game's ending would have been spoiled by now. GamePro has an article up that details this alternative procedure.

Just as was done previously in Australia and Europe, next week in North America Bungie will be setting up 24-hour gaming sessions on both coasts; one representative from each invited organization will have access to the entire game, but no one will be allowed to publish a word until September 23.

Thanks Louis Wu for the heads-up on this story at HBO.

1Up's latest piece on Halo 3 covers the "Bungie Recommends" feature that will take game variants and Forge map variants from individual player shares and suggest them to the community at large. That'll be how custom community-made gametypes, like Halo 2's honor-rules zombie, or dawn of the dead variants, will spread in Halo 3. They've also continued their Halo 2 retrospective up through the Arbiter levels. You can see all 1Up's Halo 3 coverage on their Halo 3 mini-site.

TotalVideoGames has put up a short preview of Halo 3 based on the showing of Tsavo Highway at Leipzig this year. Like a lot of similar previews, they're calling the graphics "improved" since the Beta, probably not realizing that campaign was more detailed than multiplayer all along-- and has been since Halo 1.

Okay, so not everybody is in love with Halo 3. Over at the Hushed Casket, Midnight calls it "fun" and details the changes. Rapture calls it a bigger, prettier Halo 2, and it's most decidedly not a compliment. Of course you can't please everybody, and some things (like Halo) become so popular that the only way for anybody to make themselves cooler is to not like it. The guys at the Hushed Casket aren't like that, though, so if they've got a beef with the game, there's probably something to it. That doesn't mean I agree, but it means there are probably things worth thinking about.

Some people say that Halo 3 isn't pretty enough.

After playing Gears I can see where some people are not impressed. However, I think it's worth noting that there is nowhere in Gears any location that is as large as even a medium-sized Halo map. There are lots of terribly detailed textures you get to look at at fairly close range in Gears; mostly on your own characters, your enemies, and the nearby environment. The path you can travel is predetermined and there is no way to break off from it. Forget trick jumping, in Gears you can't even jump. I don't mind that, actually. In fact, I really wish Halo 3 had implemented some kind of limitation on consecutive jumps to eliminate bunny-hopping, which is an incredibly annoying tactic. The day a game studio decides to make their campaign enemy bunny hop because it's an effective and legitimate strategy, I'll drop my complaint.

To expect the same level of texture detail and lighting effects in an outdoor area like Valhalla where you can go virtually anywhere in the level at any time is simply unrealistic. Epic, in a sense, by restricting you to small rooms and preventing you from looking at thing up close that are far away, has spoiled 360 gamers for any other approach. Halo 3 is incredibly detailed. If you haven't already, download the Red vs Blue Beta PSA. It's got some Halo 2 footage of Blood Gulch right next to Halo 3 beta footage of Valhalla. If that doesn't prove that there's been a quantum leap in the look of Halo 3 from Halo 2, I honestly don't know what would.

Another thing to keep in mind is that while Gears' single player campaign is suitably lovely in its appearance and scope (even if most of it is just unplayable scenery) the multiplayer areas are also toned down. They're smaller than even the small areas of the campaign. There's nothing approaching the size of a map like Valhalla in it; that's the tradeoff that Bungie is making.

More articles about the Halo 3 Beta around the web:

GamingExcellence likes what they see but think Bungie has taken a "safe approach" to changes in Halo 3.

Hushed Casket has impressions of Halo 3 by Midnight and rapture; they're not nearly as impressed as many others are, and their comments deserve some examination which I'll get to shortly.

More ramblings on the Internet over the past few days about the Halo 3 beta.

• Cinema Blend Games got a chance to try team gameplay and liked what they saw.
• Urban Reflex talks about the problems people had with their beta codes, as well as what some people gleaned (or thought they gleaned) by poring over the content in the Beta.
• Game Feed likes Halo 3's new features.
• GameSpy likes the new weapon spawn system, which isn't surprising because Halo 2's system received quite a bit of criticism over the game's lifetime.
• Major Nelson notes that the Halo 3 Beta will show up in next week's activity summary; it was released too late in last week to make any real impact.

Sorahn's directory of Public Beta medals has been updated; it seems Bungie caved on Cheneymania, renaming it Open Season; also several missing medals, including Hail to the King, have been added.

I've read in several previews that the range of the radar around a Spartan in multiplayer has been reduced. I don't have any good way of quantifying that, but it certainly seems to be true to me.

In particular, on Valhalla there are two rock outcroppings on either side of the stream where players often like to perch with ranged weapons like a turret, sniper, or laser. Often there's a lot of activity far away that they are paying attention to, and more than a few times I've run right up to such a player from behind and assassinated them if there's no one covering their back. It's also happened to me quite a few times as well.

I have a feeling that the radar may have lost most of its usefulness in many situations if this is the case. It can tell you if an enemy is nearby but on a different level, but doesn't indicate whether it is higher or lower, so this is of little use. Out in the open, you'll see a player long before he or she ever shows up on radar, so it's only good for detecting someone outside of your line of sight. If the range is so short, however, that it's routinely possible to run (not sneak) up to players and melee them before they have a chance to register an enemy on the radar, it makes me wonder if it shouldn't be either removed entirely, given a greater range, or provide additional information, such as the elevation of a target.

Articles referring to the Halo 3 Multiplayer Public Beta, held in May and June of 2007.

GamePro interviews Bungie's Lars Bakken about the Halo 3 Beta.

PALGN has an article up giving their impressions of the Halo 3 Beta, by Alistair Macleod.

Kudos to Stuntmutt via HBO for pointing out that Gabe and Tycho now like Halo. Are you a dirty little jeep? Yeah... I thought so.

Other news:

• Halo 2 for Vista sucks, says CVG. Even the music. And the gameplay. And the enemies. And the pacing. This is just a case of someone reviewing Halo 2 as if it were a new game, not a port, and finding it easier to sound cool by trashing something than by putting it in context. To criticize Halo 2 for not having puzzles is really to miss the point. Halo 1 didn't either. It wasn't supposed to. Also via HBO.
• UGO also has a Halo 3 Beta Impressions article by Adam Rosenberg.
• Kotaku has a more Halo 3 Beta articles, this one from the press event in Sydney, Australia by Luke Plunkett and this one by Brian Crecente.
• Major Nelson offers tips for those preparing to enter the Public Beta on the 16th.