Heh heh! First let me say that I must be the kind of customer that Amazon just hates! Back in August I put in a preorder for Halo 2 Limited Edition just to make sure I would be able to get a copy when it came out. Halo 2 was released in the U.S. yesterday with hundreds if not thousands of gamers lining up at midnight across the country to be one of the first to get a legitimate copy of the game.
I checked my order on Amazon and noticed that not only had it not shipped, it actually had an arrival date of November 8. So I guess they had meant to get it to me by release time, but something had gone wrong. Well, the nearby Virgin Megastore had Halo 2 including the Limited Edition, so being fundamentally impatient, I cancelled my Amazon order and high tailed it over to the Virgin store in the closing minutes of my lunch break. I got the last copy of the limited edition! 🙂 Not only that, it cost me $4 less than the Amazon price with shipping! So I could even brag to my wife of my frugality! 😉 If Amazon did have shipping issues, I wonder if they saw a lot of cancellations yesterday?
As for the game itself, I’ve only had time to put in a hour’s worth of play and have died about a half dozen times, but I must say that I like it! There’s a lot of debate online about mouse keyboard versus console controller for first person shooters (fps). Most PC gamers believe that mouse and keyboard are best, and I tend to agree. But for Halo at least, getting used to using the controller is pretty easy. So don’t let controller bigotry keep you from playing this game! Oh so why have I died so much? Well, I suck! At least for now, and I haven’t read the manual either. I used to be a crusader with regard to manuals, but these days I like to just jump in and see how much I can pick up just playing. People generally won’t read manuals anyway, which is something I keep in mind when designing and writing software for my own projects and work.
Anyway, if you like fps games, this is a good one to get. The graphics and sound are very good and the control scheme is easy to get into, even for old school fps gamers. Hey, it even has a decent story developing. So that’s my one hour review! I’ll add to this later, I hope! The real fun won’t begin until I try it on Xbox Live! Here are some links to other reviews.