The latest episode of Major Nelson's podcast/blogcast is on the Halo 3 launch. The Major is nice enough to remain spoiler-free, but he says that Halo 3 is a fun game and a fun story-- in case you needed any more reasons to get it. As usual, the blog entry for the audio show contains links to sites he mentions.
As I see them I add more reviews of Halo 3 to the site.
Thanks for the heads-up on these four reviews to Louis Wu at HBO.
As always, you can see a page of just reviews on our Halo 3 Reviews page.
About.com's only real complaint about Halo 3 is that 12-year-olds play it. They gave it five out of five stars in their Halo 3 review.
Calling it the best Halo game yet, Australia's Herald Sun gave Halo 3 a rating of 4.5 out of 5 points.
Let's hope the reviewers at TechTree weren't inebriated when they gave Halo 3 a score of 4.5 out of 5.
Stuntmutt attended the Halo 3 launch party in Waterloo and walked away with a free copy of Halo 3, which he immediately went home and played, uncharacteristically eschewing an open bar.
GeezerGamer has a nice article explaining in detail some of the uses of the file share feature in Halo 3 and how to make them work for you.
Stuff.co.nz calls Halo 3 a masterful conclusion but does, of course, have to add some obligatory, if odd, caveats:
Halo 3 isn't perfect. It's obvious more of the scenarios this time have been designed for their potential for online play rather than to advance the story.
Reviewer Tom Cardy gave the game five stars out of five.
Just a reminder-- now that Halo 3 is out, if you've played it, you'll want to edit your spoiler settings so you aren't missing out on posts that include spoilers.
Login, go to My Account, click Roles, then choose one (and only one) item that reflects your preferred default spoiler display for the front page.
Also, if you've played Halo 3, why not submit a user review?
Geek.com finishes off their review of Halo 3; it's got separate sections on campaign, forge, and multiplayer.
Halo 3's strength is in its multiplayer, they say:
Major Nelson had to take a break from putting up the Live Activity weekly totals for awhile due to Xbox Live maintenance, but the latest list shows Halo 3 in the top Xbox 360 game slot, above Gears of War. Halo 2 retains its spot as the top original Xbox game, ahead of Battlefield 2: Modern Combat, although there is no longer any note about combined lists.
The totals are of "global unique users connected to Xbox Live".
The Anennberg School for Communication at USC's Online Journalism Review interviews Claude "Louis Wu" Errera at HBO about what it's like to run an online community for a game like Halo, and why mainstream media outlets have been slow to pick up on trends in that area in the article Lord of the Ringworld.
GameSpy stops playing Halo 3 just long enough to wax lyrical about the game. There are viewpoints from several staffers, but here's one that stands out. Associate Console Editor Sterling McGarvey was bitten by the bug that disables the Resume feature when moving a hard drive from one console to another:
Gamestyle gives Halo 3 a perfect score, but that doesn't mean it's a perfect game:
The craftsmanship here is astounding, but unfortunately the game is not perfect, as there are a couple of shortfalls. The first is the game's storyline, which throws players in at the deep-end and requires prior knowledge in order to fully appreciate it. This isn't a problem for fans, but anyone else who wants to enjoy the game will be wondering what is going on.