My roommate bought an XBOX360, and I think there's a law somewhere that you have to buy Halo 3 with an XBOX360. Either it's a real law, or the tons of ravenous fans have convinced me so. Either way, we ended up with an XBOX360 and a copy of Halo 3. As an admitted disliker of first person shooters, I naturally chose Halo 3 as my first try.

As Halo 3 is the first shooter that I've actually played all the way to the end, I can't really comment on Yahtzee's comment that Halo 3 is "Run of the Mill", as I have consistently avoided "the mill." However, I can say that I thoroughly enjoyed the single player campaign set on easy. As somebody who's brain pops a fuse when I have to operate more than one input device at a time (say two joysticks), I found the difficulty ramp to give me time to figure all this stupid stuff out while actually progressing through the missions. I know some purists will scream at me for daring to review the game after only defeating easy mode but the simple fact is I wanted to complete the game, so easy for me.

Even on Easy mode, however, I can assure you that the Flood stands up to their name; many times I was completely surrounded by horrible things and had to shoot my way out ("for a change", as Master Chief would say). I never felt stuck, even at my incredible lack of playing ability for shooters, and even got to the point where I could swap out guns, change clips, walk, aim, and dual wield fire at the same time, which is quite a feat for me.

I, like Yahtzee, was annoyed by most of the bloom in the game, I know it's a neat effect but it doesn't have to be EVERYWHERE. The bloom for outdoors scenes were nice, but it was EVERYWHERE. However, the graphics were clean and crisp, the loading waits weren't too bad, the story was fun (even though I felt out of the loop starting at 3), and I can see myself coming back perhaps at Normal to see if I could work forward.

The voice acting was top notch. I loved the random comments from the Marines around you; taking the drivers seat may elicit a response of "Be careful with it, I just paid it off." A gunner jumps on the back shouting "I'll take the turret, I'm trained on it don't worry," as a gruff voice belonging to the guy running to the side seat shouts "I've got shotgun!" This is the kind of banter I would expect, and it immerses me into the game. Sadly, however, the Flood also has voice acting, and it's a bit distracting when the flood aliens run from you screaming "The demon is coming!" While the big guys at least cussed you out, the little ones were always screaming and begging for mercy. Saddest moment was when I had to gun down a little alien running around screaming "Let me live please!"... but whom I had to kill to move on. Other than those little guys, the voice acting, and the cut scenes aren't annoying, and actually add to the game.

There were a few annoyances: the vehicles are strung with rubber bands for suspension, so expect for every bump in the ground to send you flying and careening about as if the vehicle was constructed of Upsidasium and only the thought of Master Chief shooting them out of the sky with a dirty look kept them on the ground. The game seems to hate waypoints, which may be understandable for harder missions, but set on easy, I need a marker to help me forward. There were many times where I was just stuck in a room, trying to find the right door to escape. The game seemed to decide when it would place a waypoint marker (half the times about 15 seconds after I had finally blundered onto the right path), sometimes a waypoint marker would just stay stuck in the center of my visor for no good reason... they ended up being less helpful that you would imagine. And the final level, with you having to drive a vehicle over a landscape of random holes, exploding tiles, and jumps to nowhere was annoying. I only died about 4 times throughout the game getting to this level, and then I died 10 more times in this one level alone. Suddenly having tiles disappear beneith you, having blind jumps into chasms of death, not to mention the waypoint had a lag of setting up that more than once lead to my death as I attempted to reach a waypoint only to have it suddenly shift, either dumping me into a chasm of death that the old marker pointed to, or causing me to have to stop and look around for the marker (most likely leading to my death by explosion). And the Elite soldiers that help you only seem to help on dark levels and love hand to hand combat... which means expect to kill quite a few if you don't have tons of FPS experience.

Good news is there are plenty of checkpoints and there is no lives system, so you don't have to worry about doing something stupid.

All in all, I can see myself playing this game again. It's also interested me in the Halo series itself, and maybe even FPS in general. The graphics were good, the story was good, the Marines are good for a chuckle or two as they act like Marines (at least TV Marines), and the game was fun all the way through. Nothing eye opening or pathblazing, but fun anyway. I'd recommend it if you can get it at a decent price and want to try out shooters on the XBOX360.