Well, I got it after work today from my local "mom&pop" shop. They're a fairly small store, and they even had the Legendary set. I was about to get the collector's edition, but there was definitely a loose disc rolling around in there, so I opted for the regular version.

Anywho - I jumped right into the single-player, and am about half-way through the first stage on "Hero" difficulty. Not bad, but nothing mind-shattering like Bioshock was. It's pretty much more of the same Halo, only in HD, which is not a bad thing...

But I spent the last couple hours in multi-player. Since it's early, there's only about 7,000 available players, there wasn't much I could do besides a straight-forward death-match. It was fun, with all the different players I was playing against basically playing well and acting far more mature than I've experienced from Live - but that's probably because very few kids and teens have it yet. The bummer is that every match I tried kept putting us into the snow level, and even asking the other players, they said that's the only level the servers would throw them into. Maybe the servers aren't up to full capacity yet. Who knows...

I really wanted to play the zombie mode - that has potential for great fun, but it would just throw me into a level by myself.

Anyways, first impressions from very limited play-time: single-player earns an "okay" and multi-player earns a "good job". Whatever that means is totally arbitrary.

Oh, if anyone cares, my gamertag is

I'm not that good, so be gentle.
And I probably won't be able to play again until later in the week.

Been playing the game for the past six hours, and can say with certainty, that his game is better than the second.

"Druish princesses are often attracted to money and power and I have both and you know it... "

My UPS shipping details list the Legendary Edition weighing in at 17 lbs.

Played a few more matches and got to play just one more map. What's the deal?

Yeah, but 15 lbs of that is ego.

Playing now. Send friend invites to chibul329.

I'll be picking it up in an hour, pending any lines. Feel free to add me to your lists too, everyone. Gamertag is in my sig.

It's definitely a lot bigger than I was anticipating based on all the reports. The box it comes in is bigger than the 360 console box. It's fairly lightweight also. It's pretty impressive. Plus you get the third disc with the cinematics, so it's not like that $30 is just for the helmet.

I figured I'd watch the cinematics before heading to bed, but looks like it's way too long for that. 2.5 hours. I had no idea the cut scenes added up to that much. I can't really tell a difference in quality.

I ended up with the regular version from Wal Mart tonight. The helmet looked cool but they did not get it in. Oh well.

Picked up my Collectors Edition from best buy tonight.

At 11:00 they came out to the 40 or so in line and began handing out t-shirts and hats. They also had 25 inflatable chairs for the first 25 in line...of course I was number 26!

But it worked out because #26 and 27 got a nice big holographic poster instead (which is much cooler than the inflatable chairs).

The best part was...at 11:30 they lined up the preorders and non preorders seperatly...about 40 or so preordered and about 15 non preordered. When we (the non preorders) were let inside, I walked past a LOOONG line at customer service (the preorders) and grabbed my copy from the shelf and was out in less than five minutes! Not too shabby!

For the first time in my life, Wal-Mart has, thankfully, done the impossible... Made me believe.

That, or just really happy that there was no line (i.e. not a single soul in the electronics department).

Probably the latter...

Add another customer to the list who got a scratched game disc in the limited box.

When I got back to Wal-Mart after finding said instance out at home, I went back, found out that all the limited boxes were sold out, so I bought the standard edition, swapped the discs in my car, and got a refund on the standard edition.

I'm an asshole, but Microsoft should've packaged the discs better since this is happening with almost all the limited edition copies out there.

DVDTalk Clan, Anyone?

Might as well. It's going to happen anyway, methinks.

I picked up the limited edition, no disc problems whatsoever.

About 7 people had disc issues with the limited editions at the Wal-Mart i went to. All had to exchange em for regular ones.

Played thru the first 5 levels on Heroic. It's a lot better then the second one and graphics look damn good.

Okay, rocket racing is the best multiplayer mode ever. Also, using Forge during multiplayer is sheer insanity.

Picked up my limited edition this morning and forgot to check if a disc was rattling. When i got to work there was one rattling around. When i opened it up it was the second disc and it has some very minor scratching. Not enough to affect it playing in the DVD player though.

I may end up exchanging it - but as of right now I'm not too worried.

The removable hub in my Legendary Bonus disc case was busted so it tore up the cover of the art book. The disc was still attached to it though, so no scratches.

That would be v3.0 in case you were wondering

I might impulse buy the Halo console if I see one but a review on Amazon has me wondering what this means: "My only complaint is the lack of an audio dongle, which the Elite comes with. If you must use optical for your audio, you will be out of luck unless you buy Microsoft's own HDMI cable that comes with it, and that's going to add about $45 to your console purchase."

For right now I would be hooing up thru component and using an optical cable. So is he saying that the Halo 3 console does not come with an optical port?

I might impulse buy the Halo console if I see one but a review on Amazon has me wondering what this means: "My only complaint is the lack of an audio dongle, which the Elite comes with. If you must use optical for your audio, you will be out of luck unless you buy Microsoft's own HDMI cable that comes with it, and that's going to add about $45 to your console purchase."

For right now I would be hooking up thru component and using an optical cable. So is he saying that the Halo 3 console does not come with an optical port?

A friend of mine just called, and said his regular edition copy, would not go past the menu. No storyline or multi player would load. Finally he got a disc read error.