Netshade at Brainrazor has put up his account of the Halo Launch Party in Chicago earlier this month. And just to warn everybody, there's a fair amount of profanity and humor at the expense of Bungiefen, so everybody don your asbestos. As for Halo, he liked it:
Visually, it's pretty kickass. Not OHMIGOD YOU NEED TO SEE HALO, not like it was when you first saw the MacWorld trailer or shit like that. There are tons of nice touches, and the fact that the framerate stays pretty good even with four players playing at the same time is a testament to the bulletproof QA testing they no doubt put it through.