Rampancy

How much money did Halo make on its first day? $100 million, according to Microsoft and EB Games, says GameSpot. Not bad.

Editor's Note: Comparisons keep being made to the opening day takes of Hollywood films, and there's no sign that such comparisons will stop anytime soon. However, they're probably not very meaningful. Movie tickets are cheaper, the potential audience for films is larger because there are no hardware requirements, the chance for multiple viewings is much greater than for multiple copy purchases, and films rarely offer pre-purchasing for tickets months in advance, meaning that the purchases for Halo 2 are stilted towards the first day in a way that looks similar, but is motivated by different circumstances, than for films. But still... not bad at all.

Mat "Shunji" Noguchi responds in his blog to some of Halo and Halo 2's critics by pointing out how Halo 2's game experience is optimized for average, not "hardcore" players.

Evil Avatar writes that Killzone for the PlayStation 2, widely billed as a Halo-killer but launched to scathing reviews, isn't as bad as it's hype, but that Halo 2 lives up to its:

I played Halo 2 for several hours straight. The game is just awesome, it will be hard for anything to beat it as Game of the Year.

The item isn't much more than a few paragraphs, but if you're worried that Halo 2 cannot live up to the hype, it seems some players believe it has.

Louis Wu at HBO has already done a really good job of collecting up many of the links to articles and reviews that came out after I went to bed yesterday; so rather than repeating or cutting and pasting, I'm just going to link to his roundup. As he mentions, some of those reviews contain spoilers, so consider yourself warned. Most of the articles are variations on coverage of launch events, preorder pickup lines, and sales estimates.