Nadia and I beat Halo 3 last night. It is the first game in the series that we completed, never getting more than halfway through the other two games. The story was told in such a way that if you were not familiar with the story in the other two, you would be hopelessly lost in this final chapter. All you really need to know is that humanity is in danger, and you have to shoot a lot of aliens to save it.

DANGURO5 snipes JBug (click to enlarge)

The “Halo 3 Essentials” disc that came packed with the Legendary Edition was really helpful in filling in the blanks. I think I have a decent grasp of the story from beginning to end, but I won’t go into detail here to avoid giving any spoilers. I will say this: the ending given when you complete the Normal difficulty leaves much to be desired, with an obvious and gaping plot hole. I have heard that finishing it on Heroic or Legendary will tell more of the story, so Nad and I will give it another shot soon.

DANGURO5 snipes JBug (click to enlarge)

We’ve enjoyed the multiplayer mode so far. As is true with any LIVE game, it is only as fun as the people you play with. There are so many jackasses on LIVE that it is easy to run into someone that will totally ruin the experience for you. Some will spawn camp, others will exploit game glitches, and still others will scream out racial slurs (these are the worst). Lucikly, we avoided the scum of the internet and played with several good people last night:

• Captain Betty
• catwalk7775
• DANGURO5
• JBug
• littlesoldier02
• original killah
• Ryvul
• ServiceGames

If you come across one of these gamers on LIVE, then you will be in good company.

Edit: We beat it again on Heroic. I’m more satisfied with the ending shown at that level of difficulty. Now we are looking for a third (and perhaps a fourth) to go through the last part of the game on Legendary to see that version of the ending. Any takers?

Will and I attended the midnight release of Halo 3 at our local GameStop. We were 18th and 19th in line. There were a mix of gamers and onlookers in the line and at some point during our time on the line, we felt our intelligence draining from some of the conversations we were hearing.
Our plan was to play our DS for the duration of our time in line. I failed that mission because I decided to bring my dead DS Lite as opposed to my half charged DS fatty. We also brought snacks and game fuel to ensure that we were wired for the evening. The evening started with a Halo 2 tournament. I was the only girl that entered (although one of the female employees filled in for one of the matches - and she owned all of the guys she was playing with). I was dead last with 1 kill due to my assault rifle/butt-stock to the head combo. I was really there as a stat boost although the winner’s kill count was less than 15. Will played next and came in second (the fem employee played in their game, so her 1st place win didn’t count).

After the tournament, we gathered back outside in numerical order for the most part. *Thought breaking rant: Some little a-hole flipped his number 51 and claimed he was 15. It was all kinds of stupid because the actual number 15 was 3 people in front of me. Needless to say, he didn’t get in front of us, but he did get in front of about 20 other people that had been there longer than him. To make matters worse, I overheard him bragging about cutting the line to one of his friends after his purchase…but back to the story.* Numbers 16 and 17 were a couple of young guys that were super cool to talk to. Jeff and Joe told me about their weekend in Ocean City, their jobs, their links to the military, their favorite football teams, oh and video games. I shared our game fuel and snacks with them since they had not eaten in several hours. Will was on the phone with Marvin who was waiting in line at his GameStop. Marv said that he was number 115 and that there were 1100 reservations made at his store!!! Good thing he got there early! Sean (who bought a new DLP television and a 360 just for this game…*sidebar: sold his PS3-haha Sony!!!*) waited here in DC for his copy.

Although I didn’t get to say goodbye to Jeff and Joe, we obtained our legendary box set and headed home. After unboxing the game and the helmet, we checked to see how many of our friends were playing at that time. Not too many at first, but as the night went on, it was the only game being played. We finally made a room with Jbug and SCKain (see cards below) and started the storyline mission. We played until 0330 when my eyes started to burn out. Good thing I took leave!

Was it nerdy? Totally! Would I do it again? In a heartbeat!

Another Xbox came back in place of Nad’s three weeks after she sent it. It was manufactured on 07/31/07. Its newness didn’t do anything to prevent it from being a pile of crap.

Freeze after freeze after freeze at random times. Sometimes when it first started. Sometimes when selecting the language, sometimes when signing in. The DVD drive makes a nasty little sound when it opens, and it does so in a jerky fashion.

Nad called them back, and they are sending another coffin. I checked their support site - its knowledge base doesn’t even have the word “freeze” in it! Actually, as far as I can tell, their search routine is broken because common phrases like “restart console” and common words like “Xbox” don’t return any results.

Needless to say, we are less than pleased with this turn of events.