eat. sleep. game.

We all have been waiting with caught breath, hoping and praying that the hype wasn’t Freudian, compensating for bad development. The embargo lifted at noon Pacific time, and the good news flowed down the interweb streams, free and happy. From Metacritic:

100 from GamePro: It’s solid gameplay, immense replayability, online functionality and incredible production values will ensure its place in video game history, and it is, without a doubt, a satisfying and fulfilling close to the beloved trilogy[?].

100 from GameSpy: The Forge is a gargantuan achievement that puts game design in the hands of players, daring you to be creative and invent a Halo 3 multiplayer experience all your own. Of course, the multiplayer is every bit as astonishing as it has been in past iterations and even eclipses its predecessors in many respects.

100 EuroGamer: The best game yet in one of the best FPS franchises of the era. Better than either of its predecessors, Halo 3 still can’t quite escape the category of flawed masterpiece – but this time around, the flaws are so minor that even the most churlish of reviewers would be hard pressed to mark the game down.

100 from Games Radar:The single player is bigger and brawnier than anything that’s been attempted on a console before. The multiplayer, which already shadowed the competition, has improved to the point of ridiculousness. The new features – Forge, Saved Films, Coop – are frighteningly addictive. And if you don’t like any of that, you’re always welcome to edit it until you do.

100 from 1UP: It’s hard to imagine a feature of this game that someone won’t love… Sure, no one aspect of the game is life-changing on its own, but perhaps the package as a whole is. After all, Halo 3 has enough content to keep you stuck to your controller for weeks, if not months or even years.

There you have it. People played it and the people who played it liked it. But don’t take their words for it. Rent it if you have doubts. Wait until your buddy plays it. This might be the greatest hyped game in the history of the world. But, hey, its still just a game.

Jayslacks.

The over-seas wonder, Next-Gen, has been given the amazing privalige of seeing Halo 3′s single-player campaign up close and oh-so personal. They are tooting their own horn, saying they are the first people besides Bungie to see this much campaign goodness. Better than that, the article is a spoiler-ridden six pages long. Man, is this a dream?

Naturalizing something only smoke and mirrors managed to achieve in its forebears has subtly changed Halo 3’s battlefield. “In Halo 1 and 2 you’d have to spawn a load of guys at the front, and once the player has killed those guys, you’d spawn some guys behind a rock and so the entire battle would sort of play out the same way,” says Jaime Greisemer, Halo 3’s sandbox design lead, the man behind the new weapons and equipment, damage systems and AI behaviors. “But now we spawn a whole battlefield full of guys and have fun. If you want to engage these guys right up front, you can. If you want to stand up on a ridge, they’ll start shooting back.”

Man, tastes like biscuits. I know Halo 3 is coming out in two weeks, but do we really need this much info? I say we should all cover our eyes and ears, hide in a corner, and hope we don’t get any more surprises.

[via Next-Gen]

Jayslacks