The Escapist, of course, can't just say whether it likes a game or not, it has to intellectualize the process:

Voodoo Extreme says Halo 3 looks like Perfect Dark Zero. Ouch!

Wired points out that Halo 3's minute flaws-- if such they are-- do not detract from its essential values.

Halo hype has been with us for so long that the backlash is already upon us, even before the new game's launch. If you're a gamer, you've heard the carping: What's the big deal about Halo? The graphics are middling, it's just another first-person shooter, the story arc is huge and trilogy-tastic, but hey -- lots of games have all that these days.

Heather Newman, the gaming blogger at the Detroit Free Press, played through Halo 3 on easy. The result? Why, the game is too short!

Hardcore Halo fan Quint at Ain't It Cool News tells his story of his Halo love affair and how he got to play Halo 3. It's not so much a review, but he does have this to say:

The graphics are great, too. The landscapes are massive and incredibly detailed. It’s not as stylistic as something like Bioshock, but if it had been it wouldn’t have felt like Halo. Here you get a look at future African landscape, war-torn and under invasion and then a little later on you get more traditional alien levels.

Australia's PALGN rates Halo 3 highly and calls it marginally better than Halo 2, with some of the oft-repeated gripes about ally AI and graphics:

ActionTrip liked almost everything about Halo 3. Except the ally AI.

Geek.com opines that if you liked Halo and Halo 2, you'll like Halo 3. However, they also like the Flood, which casts aspersion on their judgment:

The enemy A.I. is unrelenting, particularly The Flood. Somehow the developers were able to take one of the most terrifying arch-evil forces and make them even more numerous, gross-looking, and straight up frightening. If there’s ever a jump out of your seat moment, it is during a pitch black encounter with The Flood.

GameGuru didn't much care for Halo 3, mixing grudging praise with technical complaints:

Halo 3 is now news for nerds and stuff that matters:

Does it meet expectations? In a word: yes. It's not the best game ever made, and it may not even be the best game this year. Will it make the fans happy, and deservedly sell thousands of Xbox 360s? Very much yes.

Slashdot gives Halo 3 four out of five points. Also, I think they like Yes. Who doesn't like Yes?

Here's a nice non-review of Halo 3:

You can go elsewhere to read how good the game is (though, to finally answer some of the commenters on my recent "Halo"/"Halo 2

TomChick doesn't like Halo 3.

PC Magazine takes issue with a few flaws in Halo 3; the Arbiter's seeming invulnerability and the enemy AI's inability to see you coming (what difficulty did they play at?) bothered them. Nothing positive, in particular, seemed to stand out for them:

Game Informer liked almost, almost everything about Halo 3:

With a satisfying campaign closure to the series' epic story arc, unprecedented multiplayer options, an innovative video recording feature, and heretofore unseen console mod tools, Halo 3 lives up to every bit of its ever-expanding reputation. However, a few small disappointments chip away at the game's shot at perfection.