It is here.

It is awesome.

The single player campaign is already more engaging than the campaign of Halo 2, and I'm only about an hour in.

I'll update more as I get more time on it.

IGN has posted a 4 part video of a Halo 3 Campaign level in action.

For your viewing pleasure:

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Part 4:

Over the weekend, I took the last two Xbox 360 titles I owned into my local gamestop with the intention of trading them in for credit. I didn't have something in mind that I wanted to buy, I just felt like looking around. Unfortunately, nothing really struck me, so I just put the credit towards my Halo 3 pre-order.

A little background on me and Halo: I loved Halo:CE. I was also very very good at it. I'm normally the first to tell someone when I'm simply not good at something. I have no problem asking for help, using guides, or whatever. Believe this next statement, or don't, but the fact is, I have never met anyone better than I was at Halo. I played often, and against a wide variety of people. Again, take that statement as you will, but I was very good.

When Halo 2 was announced, I was excited, to say the least. I arranged months in advance to have its launch day off of work, and I attended the midnight release event. I brought the premium edition (the metal case), and rushed home to play.

I hated it. The single-player campaign was riddled with flaws, and has been discussed at length elsewhere. The multi-player, which should have been a masterpiece, was passable at best. The addition of dual-wield and the energy sword were simply poor design decisions. I could go on and on, but this post will be long as it is. Suffice it to say, I was severely disappointed by Halo 2.

So now, I await Halo 3. I let myself get a little more excited when I read interviews containing quotes like this one:

IGN: What is Halo 3's single most impressive new feature, in your opinion?

Jaime Griesemer: The infantry weapon, melee and grenades all working together. It's sort of what makes Halo 'Halo'.

You want to know what I am really excited for, though? The deal of the century - the Orange Box. Of the five(!) titles included in the Orange Box, Team Fortress 2 is the game I am most excited to play.

I'm just going to assume that you either know what Team Fortress 2 is, or don't care. For the purposes of this discussion, either one is acceptable. If you don't know what it is and would like to find out, uhh, hello, I just gave you a link.

This is my predicament with the Orange Box: It is being released on both PC and Xbox 360. Now, the Xbox 360 has achievements, and frankly, I'm a bit of a gamerscore nut. I'm not as married to the mouse + keyboard control scheme as some of my gamer brethren, so neither system has an automatic advantage for me. It would seem, based on my love of gamerpoints, that my decision would be easy, and I could purchase the game(s) for the 360.

So what's the big deal? Longevity. Counterstrike, as an example, is still played on the PC. Some of the great Xbox 360 multiplayer titles in the last year have fallen by the wayside after just a few months. Take Splinter Cell: Double Agent, for example. More innovative multiplayer on the 360 is simply not available. When the game launched, it was easy to get into multiplayer games, and you could play for hours without playing against the same opponent twice, if that was your desire. Fast forward to 6 months after its release, and you were lucky to find even enough people online for one game.

So yeah, that's my worry. I don't want to spend $50 on Orange Box for the 360 and have it turn out to be a multi-player paperweight come February. I will most likely end up just buying it for the PC to make sure that doesn't happen...but this whole thing made me wonder if anyone else had ever experienced something like this, where a great game lacked multi-player support on a system, and a title that wasn't as good continued to flourish?

((edit: So I've been told that the long awaited map and skin pack has been released for Splinter Cell: Double Agent, and that as a result, more people are playing online. That's great - but I fear its a case of too little too late. Especially with the behemoth that is Halo 3 looming on the horizone.)

We love Avatar: The Last Airbender in our home. It is family friendly, and full of action, adventure, comedy, and genuinely touching dramatic events. If you aren't familiar with the show, I highly recommend you check out the first two seasons (referred to as books), which are available on DVD already.

Without further ado, here's the trailer: