Finished: Halo 3

Well, I guess I can't say that I thought it would take longer that two days to beat it, but I am quite disappointed with myself. Here I am, with a game that we've been waiting years to come out, and I go and beat it in two days.

But, oh, what a good two days they've been.

Staying up well past midnight, going to work the next day with just a few hours sleep, eating bits of junk food, wearing sweatpants and t-shirts...this is gaming nirvana. Totally relaxed. Completely involved. No distractions. This is possible with any game. But very seldom does it happen with no complaints. Besides my wife.

I've given up writing Finished articles with in-game details because most of the high points of games can be found at just about any avenue you come across out here.

What might be more important to me is the feeling of finishing a game and how I felt about it. And in Halo 3's case, I feel pretty good. It wasn't a long, drawn out game. The areas weren't repetitive like the first Halo, but highly detailed and imaginative. The dialog is top notch, some of the best. The online co-op is very well accepted (Thank you Bungie!). The overall polish of the game is just so solid.

I'm going to enjoy the next few months playing the story campaign again and going online to play/destroy strangers from around the world. There is even a little world view map with all the players lit up like city lights from space. Right now there are 276,000 people playing. But with Halo 3 smashing sales records, I'm sure it will increase as the year goes on.

Wow, looking at Bungie.net, it's really interesting to see the statistics that Bungie is known for tracking in their games online. Besides just the world map, Bungie tracks absolutely everything. Every kill. Who killed who. Who killed who where and with what weapon. They store every game you've played as a diagrammed map.

Here is my service record. If you click around enough, you can find a game I played and all the stats they track. Like this page, if you roll the mouse over the blue weapon icons, it shows you which weapons were used and how often. Even pictures in photo mode that the other players saved from that game. Absolutely freakin' brilliant!