If you are looking around the office and wondering where everyone is, might I suggest checking your local EB.

Halo 3, the triquel to the much hyped Microsoft super-series Halo went on the shelves last night at Midnight. The consensus is that if you start playing, just expect to lose about 30 hours of your life. Once people really start getting into the multiplayer I expect that number to be multiplied by a few orders of magnitude. Well, since I can’t get you a copy of Halo 3, the very least I could do is allow you to live the game through the magic of video.

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Lets take a look at a few user reactions to the game before you decide to invest a large portion of the rest of the work week into it. Lets start with a critque.

From Deepdarker on Amazon,

I must say that I am rather let down by the look of Halo 3. I have been playing both Call Of Duty 4 Demo and Bioshock for a while now, and expected the same crisp lines and detail level from this title. It’s just not there. This game looks like Quake to me, very cartoonish and rough. The animations of the non-player characters are very, very stiff. I should state that I have never played the previous Halo titles before, and purchased this game on the wave of pre-release chatter, so might not understand the established look and feel of the game environments.

All in all a bit of a let down, I am sad to say.

For the record, I have a Panasonic 52″ HDTV with superb detail, and other 360 games look great.

Don’t lost hope. Next on the docket is some praise also from Amazon, this time from a user named N. Durham,

To call Halo 3 eagerly anticipated is saying it quite lightly. Thanks to Bungie, the game has been more than worth the wait, and the end result is undoubtedly the best first person shooter to hit the Xbox 360 yet, and maybe ever. Picking up after the cliffhanger ending of Halo 2, Master Chief is in pursuit of the Covenant, who is hell bent and heading to Earth. You’ll be happy to know first and foremost that Halo 3 improves on everything that has been seen in the previous two installments of the series, from the game’s epic story to the overall gameplay mechanics.

The story provides enough closure and answers many of the questions raised in Halo 2, and nicely ties things up while leaving enough room open if there ever are any more installments in the series. As for the gameplay, which is the reason enough to pick the game up even of the story were a disappointment, is everything you could hope for and more so besides. The single player campaign is lengthy enough to satisfy jaded gamers angry at the incredibly short length of Halo 2, but what even makes it more enjoyable is the four-player co-op mode, which can even be taken over Xbox Live.

And yes, speaking of Xbox Live, the multiplayer options is where the real meat and potatoes of Halo 3 is to be had, but you already knew that. Besides the standard deathmatch modes, there are some new options, most notably Infection, which involves zombies trying to convert you. New map modes and options really let the player let loose with creativity as well, and result in an incredible amount of replay value that an FPS hasn’t seen in quite some time. There are new weapons, brilliant graphics, solid voice acting, and the game isn’t hard at all for new gamers to the series to pick up either. Yes, Halo 3 is finally here, and it’s quite simply the best FPS to hit the Xbox 360 yet. Whether or not you’ll prefer it over Gears of War is another story entirely, but needless to say, there is plenty here to keep you occupied for quite some time.

It might be a while before I get around trying this installment out, but from the initial impressions it is certainly worth picking up. Halo 3, in my opinion, has never been the greatest game in its genre but it certainly is the one to draw the most consistent mass appeal. Lets hope it turns out to be everything that people say it is.

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