When I left the post for the day I had mentioned that I was going to start the download at the next commercial break of Lost, which occurred around 10:30p. I hopped on the 360 and got the download moving (boy was it nice to see the "Download Halo 3 Beta" selection NOT grayed-out). After Lost was done I checked in on the download and amazingly saw that it was almost finished! This stunned me since I knew that there had to be thousands of people downloading this same file simultaneously. My boys Mike and Rich (contributor to this site) are my Halo partners-in-crime so we had already made it a date to spend the night with the beta so shortly after checking on the download I headed over to Mike's house.

After a couple of failed attempts to recover our gamer tags we decided to just head into it and take turns with the pad. The new menu UI and matchmaking set up took a little bit getting used to since we've literally played thousands of matches of Halo 2 and could navigate them blindfolded. Once we got in a game, which takes about the same time or a little longer to set up as compared to H2, we were faced with a whole new HUD and a new control scheme. Our first Team Slayer match took place on Snowbound, with it's shielded door bases and circular layout. After Mike died he tossed the pad to Rich and this started how we ended up playing the rest of the night: whoever died passed the pad off to someone else who wasn't playing. The action was pretty fast on this map so the pad got tossed around a lot. The shielded bases come in handy when trying to retreat from gunfire to let your shields regenerate. We were also very glad to have a slightly higher powered Assault Rifle back in the arsenal. Think of what they did to the pistol from Halo to Halo 2 and apply that thought in reverse to the Assault Rifle. We got a taste of some of the new "X Button" items and some of the other new weapons (along with hitting RB to pick them up!).

Snowbound, while still very good, wound up being my least favorite of the three available maps. Valhalla is a nice open board that struck me as a cross between Zanzibar and Sidewinder. This map is the only one of the three to include the "Man Cannon", which basically acts exactly like the boost at the base of Colossus. It's a good map for sniping and for midrange combat. To me this whole experience is all about Highground, which is one of the best maps I've ever played in any game. The action is fast and though the map is intricate it's never confusing. It's set up on a hill and most of the action will take place near the top where the base is located. There's an enormous variety of weapons and a few Mongoose vehicles to tool around in (which are the most fun vehicle to drive that Halo has seen so far).

Overall the gameplay feels REALLY good, better than Halo 2 I dare say, putting it closer to the feel of Halo 1 (which I played infinitely more than I played Halo 2). I'll be spending a bunch of time with it and I'll keep posting impressions of the game as the days move along.

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