Sam posted about his experiences playing Halo at a kiosk in a local mall over at HBO. Besides saying that the Xbox controller wasn't anywhere near as bad as suggested, he was impressed with Halo in most respects, especially the graphics:

Halo is like the Matrix. You cannot be told what Halo is. You have to experience it. Seriously. The cutscenes, the movies we've seen.... [They] pale beside the real thing. Debating getting an Xbox? Go check out Halo in action. It really does put the movies to shame.

Sam also noted that he didn't see any framerate drops during his play, and level loads were all less than three seconds.