I have the hallowed disc in my hands. Three years of waiting culminated in a quite pleasant evening.
I had been told by the very same gamer-hating salesdude at the EB Games that I should show up sometime during the day yesterday to pick up my “place in line” number. I did just that… and wound up with a number 2. I showed up last night — after a harrowing evening of baby angst following my daughter’s newfound “joy” at shrieking inconsolably when we put her to bed, but that’s another story — at about 11:35PM to a scene of relatively calm disorder. If I were to guess, I’d say that there were rouhgly 200 people standing in line outside the store. As I made my way up a rather haunted looking girl asked me if I already had my number. I replied that I did and she said I should start working my way down the line and find out where I fit.
“Just numerical order?” I asked, flabbergasted. Where was the “place-in-line raffle” the sales droid mentioned?
“Yes,” she rather brusquely responded.
Fair enough. I walked up to the guy standing right at the door and asked if he was number 1.
“Yup.”
“Excellent, back up there, boy,” I told the little frat turd that was immediately behind him. “I’m number 2.”
By the way a little note… college pukes: if you’re going to be out in public and generally surrounded by other humans in what we lovingly refer to as a “crowd,” wash. Just a bit. Anything to cut through the stench that wafts around you like a wan blanket.
Precisely at 12:00AM, I have my collector’s edition in my hand and I’m walking through the palpable hate steaming off the crowds that were clustered around the door, most without even so much as a place-in-line number. Out to the car without incident and off to home.
I succumbed. I’ll be the first to admit, I played longer than I really intended. I couldn’t help it! It was just too good.
I started off with a bit of the campaign, just to get the hang of the feel and weapon switching with the new dual-wielding implementation. I can’t say I totally have it yet, but towards the end I wasn’t fumbling around quite as much. The campaign was fun. Right now I do have a slight bit of concern about the AI. Gamespot mentioned it (and got lambasted for it… of course), but I experienced it. On Heroic, I stuck maybe 5 sticky-grenades on Elites in my first, oh, 30 minutes of play. Now maybe I’m misremembering Halo or thinking of the AI at the Legendary difficulty level, but I remember it being pretty impossible to stick a grenade on an Elite that was looking at you. The merest mention of a grenade heading their way would provoke an immediate leap in some direction… you had to work for the stick.
There’s a part early on where you come up from under the floor and two Elites (at Heroic level, at least) are stationed there. They kill one of your comrades and then start shooting at you as you try to keep up out of the floor opening. Both of them stood fairly stationary and watched as I stuck one then the other with grenades. Poof, no more Elites. Eh? Also they seem perfectly content to hold their ground and fire at you from open ground. If they do take cover, they rarely come back out. There’s a “landing bay” level earlier on where you face several Elites. Often I’d have to stomp around the big crate they were cowering behind. Elites in Halo — at least on Legendary which is what I remember most — seemed more cunning so far.
That’s my only problem at this point.
Multiplayer is, quite simply, excellent. I finally got to play Dan (who has already made note that we will have a long and glorious friendly feud in this game, but who already outranks me in Xbox Live. Way to go, Dan!) and had a few others join in for fun as well. Everything in there is just enjoyable. The interface is the way all Xbox Live interfaces should be from now on, the voice comm is as well — though a friend mentioned that it would be nice to be able to have the option of talking to the other team aside from just proximity voice. The maps seem like they’ll be a load of fun, the game options and rules are simply to die for.
Throw in the incredible stat tracking and I think that I’m in love.
Buy. This. Game.
2 Responses to “Oh yes, it is mine”
e a couple of nights to find and fix it, I’m sure. Time I’d rather spend doing something else, truth be told. Ain’t progress great?
The whole page is there now, so forget the second part of my last comment. But the sidebar overlap is still happening.