Your best bet on Monday night would probably be Wal-Mart. If you'd rather wait until Tuesday hit up a Target or Best Buy that isn't doing a midnight release. There should be plenty of copies somewhere.

You sir are indeed a bastard. ha, have fun playing man.

Just got mine from Pontiac as well, what number was yours? I apparently was number 271.

I was number 369.

I'm about 4 levels into it so far. Graphics are a let down. The enviornments look pretty nice but up close everything is pretty bland. Better than the beta but not among top tier 360 games.

The enemy A.I seems really good. They'll take cover, run away if your shooting them, hide until you come out. I really wish the aliens were mute though.

The flamethrower is awesome and has probably the best fire graphics i've seen in a game.

The multiplayer is really fun but that was expected.

I've only used one of the new vehicles, the Brute Chopper, and its pretty sweet. Sorta like the ghost but cooler looking.

I don't know what it is with the graphics though. Some look really good, while others look very weak for a next gen game.

Well, I broke down and pre-ordered a copy at my local Gamestop. Will probably pick it up at their midnight launch.

Talked to a blue shirt at Best buy and he said they have more than enough Legendary editions in stock for everyone who did the pre-sell.

Don't confuse bad graphics for game style. The game is not meant to look "realistic" like COD4 or GOW. Halo has a more animated/cartoon style.

As much as I want the cutscenes from the first two games in HD, I cannot justify paying $130 for a video game. I especially cannot justify the message it sends to Microsoft, namely that it's okay to charge $130 for a video game.

Flay and Ryo, speak up!

First day impressions (no spoilers):

I invested most of my time in the single player today. I dabbled in the Forge for a moment and played a few rounds of Team Slayer.

The rumors about the single player campaign being short are very true. I'm playing on Heroic and I'm halfway through the second to last level in about eight hours of overall playtime. My guess is that it will take around 10 to 12 for most people on Heroic.

IMO, the main reason behind the difference is that Heroic has become far too easy. I can remember investing at least 25 to 30 hours in Halo 1 on Heroic. There have only been two sections in Halo 3's campaign that have given me a little frustration.

I'm not going to go in detail about the story so far, but I will say it's a vast improvement from Halo 2. The narrative has a grander, epic nature and the plot moves fairly quickly. Each level has substantially moved the storyline forward.

My favorite weapon is the Gravity Hammer. There is nothing like jumping directly between 3 brutes and watching them skyrocket away from me from the force of my hammer slam. The needler is finally a powerful weapon. You can easily kill an armored Brute with half a clip of needles.

The weapon that replaced the formally weak-ass needler is the Brute Spiker. It's easily one of the most annoyingly useless weapons. I can empty both clips (in dual-handed mode) and those Brutes barely have a scratch on them.

I love the support weapons, such as the flamethrower. Ripping off a machine gun from its turret is viscerally satisfying. The Spike grenades are a cool idea, but seem pretty weak. The fire grenades come in handy on the later levels when the Flood are roaming around.

I disagree with Ryo on the visuals. I'm moderately impressed with the Halo world in high definition. The framerate is silky smooth and the effects are solid. It's not the level of detail in Gears of War, but eons above Halo 2.

Wow, I just read about the applications of Forge for online play. I absolutely cannot wait to play around that. I spent countless hours with Forge back when I played Marathon.

Not 'Dick in a box' good...but amusing none the less...from Joystiq today

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Forge is the map editor, right? Because I'm absolutely psyched for that.

Who all will be playing shortly after midnight? Want to get in on a good custom game.

Yeah, reading up on it, it looks like there are multiplayer modes that let you edit the map while you're in the middle of a match. Sounds really innovative.

So anyone else read that the CE edtitions come with a shallow hub and all the discs are getting horribly scratched? Of course, that's the edition I preordered online. Looks like I'm screwed. Apparently there's been no problems with the other two versions. Thanks Mircosoft!

Well, I finished the single player campaign last night. The ending felt really rushed to me. I'm not getting into specifics. I'll just say the final level could have been spread across another 5 or 6 levels. The final boss fight was disapointing as well.

So Heroic took me about 10 hours of playtime on the dot. I'd advise most folks to just start on Legendary for a real challenge and to extend the your first run-through. I haven't found any skulls yet, but I'm going to start a co-op game to go look for them. Similar to the cog tags in Gears, I suppose, just much harder to locate.

My guess is that the LE comes in a tin similar to Prey, which also had a little hub and people complained about their discs getting scratched. The regular and Legendary versions use standard green Xbox 360 cases, hence no scratching.

I don't know, I had no problem with my Prey in its metal case, I just kept the CD a few mm up off of the metal.

Many people reported problems with the LE of Prey. They'd open the box and the disc had been pushed to the bottom, where it scraped against the metal and caused scratches. Once you opened it you could situate it so that it didn't touch the metal, but if it got scratched during shipping there was nothing you could do about it.

What they should have done is put a little foam ring that went around the main stub, so this way when the CD was placed on top, it couldn't touch the bottom.

Here's the article about the scratches (with pictures):

http://www.dailytech.com/Early+Halo+...rticle9010.htm

Well, teamxbox.com gave it a 9.7 and called it the best 360 game to date.

review

IGN and Gamespot both came down with 9.5s, The reviews are really great.

IGN's review was amazing, just read it.