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.
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 latest Bungie update covers a number of topics, including achievements and skulls, but the real revelation is that unlike most Xbox 360 games, Halo 3's native resolution is 640p, as rumored:
...almost. Demand for the service the day of Halo 3's launch stressed the system to its limits, making it slow or inaccessible for many, according to Next-Generation.
Microsoft labelled Halo 3's launch day as the "most active Xbox Live gaming day in history" after more than a million people had been logged playing Halo 3 online. That may be the case, but there were many others who weren't able to get in on the action.
Kotaku notes that the Japanese release of Halo 3 works in US/NTSC Xboxes. Usually the reverse (US releases working in overseas consoles) is true, but not the other way 'round. The only catch is Japanese language audio with apparently some grammatical problems, according to comments.
PlanetXbox, among others, is tracking forum posts from Halo 3 players who say they're having some disc error messages as well as some freezes; there's also a known issue where transferring a hard drive to another console will prevent you from using the "resume" feature to play from where you left off (although unlocked levels/checkpoints are accessible).
...next week.
It will come as no surprise to regular readers of this site that I've lived overseas for eight years, and as such, I can't walk down to the corner store to pick up Halo 3, it has to be couriered to me.
GameGuru interviews Mohit Anand of Xbox India, who makes some pretty ludicrous sounding sales claims for Xbox 360:
GG: How is the Xbox 360 currently doing in India?
That's what BeyondUnreal forum poster Quaz51 asserts that these screenshots he's taken illustrate.
If true, might this be the source of all the cantankerousness over Halo 3's "not quite next-gen" graphics?
Kotaku says that Halo 3 sold out in at least one store in Japan. Who'd have thunk it?
Want to mess around with Forge maps without having to delete all the default items? Download these modified maps by Chevmeister, with all the default items carefully removed.
According to Microsoft, the Halo franchise's latest installment has shattered one-day entertainment sales records again; Halo 3 did $170 million USD in its first day of sales in the US.
...or rather woodchuck love, as a new blogger, the animal kingdom newscaster Woodchuck Chumley has shown up at the Huffington Post with his own blog. Perhaps he'll be answering the age-old question, how much wood would a woodchuck chuck. Or maybe he'll just talk animal kingdom politics:
Ah, aspect ratios and high definition televisions. Just as fans bitched and moaned last month about the fact that both Xbox 360 and PC versions of Bioshock locked displays to a single horizontal FOV setting, whether the user had a 4:3 or a 16:9 screen, now Joystiq is on about how splitscreen works in Halo 3, apparently using two 2.7:1 frames stacked on each other instead of two 1.77:1 frames.
What's the issue, exactly? Unused pixels: