This one may be the best ever game on the 360

User Rating: 10 | Halo 3 X360
Ok, got it at the midnight hour, got home aorund 1 AM (had to get a chocolate malt first, hmmm), started playing @ 1:15 and have gotten through 2 missions by 2:30, anyway:

The gameplay is very nice and very very smooth, even with a lot of fighting going on , and when I say a lot of fighting, it is an understatement. Like on Halo, and Halo2, when you got a checkpoint and the loading indicator showed that, you'd get a slight brief stutter, not this, it is smooth as silk and I don't notice it one iota. The graphics are to die for and I would compare the environments and realism to GRAW. One thing is kind of weak graphically (seems this way with most 360 games), the character models don't look great compared to how the graphics display elsewhere. The faces look average but the body movements look realistic compared to the previous Halos. Funny thing is, though not great looking, the faces look better in gameplay than in the cutscenes, go figure. Miranda Keyes hair moves around even when she talks or walks. If you get a chance, look at her face real hard during the cutscenes, and then when back in gameplay, look again, and you'll notice she looks better realistically during gameplay, or it may just be me :-).

The lighting effects are awesome showing incredible realism. The environments are way more detailed and the draw distance is sweet, even smoke rising from the end of the horizons look real, floating upwards.The wooded leafy areas are sweet and water drips from leaves on the trees and through broken pipes, making the drops hitting water pools look realistic. The grass sways in the wind and the rocks have very nice detail. The textures are incredible and the building structures show way more detail than Halo 2.

The physics are killer and some destructibles are cool, there are more physics in this game than GRAW or RSV and you can move quite a few things around. I am not sure if this is the gravity hammer, not listed in the booklet, but it has spikes and kills with one blow, a main brute uses it (he's tough to kill too). Hitting objects shatters them and causes many to explode into flying pieces. Bushes and small trees move and flip around realistically when hit or run over with a vehicle. You can move/jump onto any surface that the Master Chief can go to (he jumps higher in this game), and other areas are fairly wide open, though I admit that the game is a little bit linear in feel.

The weapons, well all I can say is, you'll drool. There are so many to choose from and quite a few new one ones too. There are quite a few new devices to use too, almost all Covenant though, and they work a treat (even the bubble shield looks pretty much like it did in the video that was on a MNF Halo3 ad last winter). I don't want to get into the other devices, you all will experience them.

Though the rating slide scale only works in whole/half numbers, I gave it a 10, but really I would rate it a 9.7.