Picked up my regular edition during lunch at Best Buy. They had dozens and dozens of regular and limited editions right at the front, along with stacks of legendary boxes as well as the halo edition 360's. I'll be on tonight after my 20 month old is put to bed.

So what is the estimated time to play through on solo? I always like to know what I am getting into, especially since I am traveling for a few weeks. I don't want to start it and get halfway through to have to leave it for a few weeks.

Unfortunately, I've never been in a clan that didn't eventually do that.

I'm hearing somewhere in the 9-10 hour range on Heroic for a semi-decent players.

whats the max people for multiplayer?

I pretty much feel the same way about Coagulation. I know alot of people like it, but I hated that map after playing on it 10,000 times.

Amen to that. I'm fucking sick of Zanzibar. I guess it's decent that it is in Halo 3, but hopefully way down on the matchmaking playlist.

I'm on the fence about Coagulation. With how big it is and diverse as it can be with vehicles, matches can still be fun and interesting. Zanzibar is just the same shit over and over.

Blame it on those bastards Mental & Strangehate! (oldschool!)

Picked it up this morning with no wait or issues. Called EB games last night where I had it pre-ordered and there were about 80 people in line so I just picked it up at 8am this morning. EB games told me about the limited disc edition scratches and mine sounded pretty secure. They told me to open it in the store to make sure there were no scratches and there wasnt. They told my buddy the same thing and he opened 4 tins before getting a non scratched one.

Only played the first level and a half but I am enjoying it. Does anyone know what the skulls and metagames are?

Really oldschool. That was when Strangehate's gamertag wasn't affiliated with home theater design & equipment.

And don't forget that prick Spiderbite either!

I saw that Costco was selling the regular edition for $49.99. Mine should arrive in the mail today but it'll have to sit until Friday night at the earliest. Ugh.

could someone explain to me the fascination with this game? ok the first one was cool and all, but this one doesnt bring anything new to the video game genre, all the hoopla and G4 Tech TV having a 4 and half hour show before the midnight release, talk about overkill

Halo 3 cures cancer and if you don't like it, you can suck it!

Hmm, I'll have to check that out. At that price, I might bite.

My copy kept freezing up in my old ass 360, so I called Walmart & they said bring it in and you can exchange it for a new 360...they only had the Halo 3 360's in stock, and they asked if I was OK with that, lol...I said HELL YEAH!!

picked up the limited for me and my co-worker at Gamestop during my lunch break. Both cases had the game discs flopping around. There were a few scratches on the disc. I returned my copy and they just replaced it with the regualar edition disc in my limited case.

As I was leaving, I overheard the employess talking about how much money there gonna lose over all this. Then they suggested putting the scratched discs in other cases to turn a profit! I'm sure microsoft will reinburse the stores or something.

So have you played it, or are you just bitching about the marketing overload?

I have a launch 360 that I haven't had any problems with. Until Halo 3. The game locks up and is unplayable.

Man, is it ever.

I'll be around tonight for more hilarity. Multiplayer Forge is just silly, laugh-out-loud ridiculous fun. Good stuff.

Isn't it bad enough that my 360 is broke? Now, just to torture me even more, Microsoft makes me deal with this shitty 'Max' automated system?

Check your discs!

Turns out most collectors editions have defective packaging resulting in scratched game discs. Mine included. ( it worked fine until I tried certain maps in matchmaking). I returned mine. I wasn't the only one. Gamestop had stacks of returned games. They couldn't find a copy at that wasn't sratched. So they tried giving me a standard edition, which is what corporate told them to do. If I'm paying over $70 for a fucking game, they better damn well make sure the disc works.

Gamestop employees claim MS has plans for a recal of sorts enabling gamers to mail in their scratched discs for fresh copies (yeah right, mail in a game I have been waiting this long for).

So for the one game that can help them recover from the billion dollar hardware snafu, they may have to do a massive recall.

^ the issue with loose/scratched discs was covered a few pages back. But it wasn't until today that everyone found out how wide-spread the problem is. The worse part of it is that if the hubs weren't so sharp, even if the discs were loose, they wouldn't scratch up the discs so bad. But you put together hubs that don't hold the discs AND give them sharp edges, and you get this snafu. It'd be great to know what decisions lead to this and who exactly is responsible and if they got shit-canned. I mean, it's not like disc-hub technology is a new thing that there has to be this cluster-fuck.

Don't forget to breathe and MS is already offering the service you referenced (ie; Xbox Disc Replacement Program).

I'm a moron. Instead of saying my 360 is giving red lights, I told them it's freezing. No extended warranty for that, so they won't fix it for free. $99 to repair my 2005 360. And that would take several weeks I'm sure.

I may just go buy another one.