Well the Halo 3 beta has finally been released to all those Crackdown owners who waited so patiently. Though the wait was longer than it should have been, only a day, but an agonizing one to any Halo fan. Now I can say that my Crackdown purchase was actually worth it.

Halo 3 multiplayer beta is awesome. I have been waiting for something I could actually use my Xbox 360 hours on end. Don’t get me wrong there are alot of other good games out there for the Xbox 360, but none can hold my attention like Halo can.

First off the Halo 3 beta is all sense of the word a beta. There are the typical glitches that anyone should expect in a beta. The first glitch I experienced was when I pressed the menu item to start the game; I got a message saying that the beta had expired. Now if I wasn’t able to back out and try again this review would have been about me flaming the beta. But no sweat I got in on my second try and all was sweet thereafter.

I started with Rumble Pit, and I was greeted with the normal match making sequence that took its time and matched me with my fellow gamers. The game started and then I was awestruck. Now it wasn’t the visuals that held my praise, it was the fact that I was playing Halo 3. I love the Halo series and have even read all the books.
It comes second only to the Star Wars series in my eyes.

Now since I have not played Halo 2 in a few months I was a little rusty at first, but after an hour’s play, I got my level up to a 4 and I was happy with the way I was playing. One thing I was not overtly impressed with was the visuals. They were good, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t think the game so far looked anywhere in the vicinity of Gears of War. I don’t know maybe I’m just fazed from all my Wii playing that I expected something more, something better than Gears of War. Bungie still has the summer to smooth things over, so anything could happen. By the way if you haven’t heard yet the release date is September 25th.

The only other gripes I have so far are that I could not get into another map but Highground. I even tried to play Team Slayer and Team Skirmish but every time it found other players for me in matchmaking, it would reset the matchmaking and start all over again. All I could play was Rumble Pit. I will try again later and see if it lets me in two the other two. All in all, this will be a great addition to an already great franchise. Download if you have Crackdown, and if you don’t, well just wallow in self pity till September 25th.