Just not enough of it though. Almost a week after my last post, I have indeed completed a couple of games, but not as many as I like. There’s still this “not enough time in the day” thing that still messes up my plans. I suppose that being a bit shit at games probably doesn’t help either!

So pretty much a few hours after I posted, I actually completed Halo 3 on the Heroic setting. Seems I wasn’t too far away from the end of the game as I initially thought. Next step is to complete it on Legendary, but that’ll be an online thing with some buddies. Don’t know when I’ll get round to that as there’s hardly anybody on Xbox Live at the same time as me these days!

A couple of days later see’s Half-Life 2 completed, with Episode One following suite shortly after. I’m currently running through Episode Two at the moment. I thought that this game would start getting a bit tedious, and there where certains parts that did start to grate a bit, but I’m loving the twists and turns in this story. It’s a shame that I have absolutly no idea what happened at the end of the original Half-Life, because that wierd talking bloke that seems to pop up now and again is starting to geive me the creeps somewhat!

As well as HL2, I also decided to crack open Colin McRae Rally and have a few blasts on that. This is another game that has been sat around doing nothing pretty much since the days that I bought it! PGR4 will take yet another back seat as I try and get this completed too. Again, I still have a few other games to do, and I’ll get round to finishing them eventually.

Until of course, the arrival of Guitar Hero 3. According to my lovely wife, I won’t be getting my hands on it until Christmas.

We shall see…

With the run up to Christmas gathering pace (already!) and the list of “must have” games ever increasing, I think it’s time that I get my finger out of my arse and start completing as many games that I own as I can!

For the past few months, things have been so busy at home and at work that I just haven’t had the time to play, let alone complete any of my games! Taking the idea from a certain Bouncybhall, I’m going to sit down and get as many games done as I possibly can.

Firstly, there’s Halo 3. This is taking a little longer than I though, due to the fact that I’m trying to complete the game on Heroic. Everyone else I know has done the game on normal, but then gone online and completed the Legendary mode in co-op play. Unfortunatly, I wasn’t around for that small feat. When I do (eventually) complete the game (damn those hateful Flood levels), I’ll be happy in the knowledge that I didn’t just do it the easy way, as I have previously done in the past!

Next up is the excellent Orange Box. 5 games for the price of 1. Not bad at all if you ask me! The brilliant and humorous Portal has already been done, but I have yet to try and do the “extras” as yet. I haven’t even touched Team Fortress 2, seeing as I’ve never actually seen anybody else playing the damned thing! But the main star of The Orange Box; Half-Life 2. This has to be one of the best FPS’s I’ve ever laid my hands on.

In all honesty, I did have this on the Xbox when it was forst released, but again, I never got round to finish it. But with Episodes 1 and 2 thrown into the mix, I feel more compelled to knuckle down and get the bloody thing completed! But this game is HUGE! I have no idea how far I have left to go in the game (I’m on my way out of Nova Prospekt) and I’m dying to see what happens in the next two episodes. I think this is going to be one of those games that keeps me going for quite some time!

The next game that needs completing is PGR4. Well, in all honesty, I need to actually be in the mood to pick this up. I really cannot get into this game at all. It just doesn’t seem to be as good as the previous games, and graphically…yuk. I don’t know if it’s me, or if anyone else will agree with me. I just don’t feel like this game was a worthy purchase. But, I must get this bloody thing completed!

I have a load of other games going back from when the 360 first came out that also need to be finished, but the three above are the main priorities at the moment. I’ll keep you updated on how it goes!

I was, one pleasant afternoon, taking a walk through internet-land and I happened per-chance to be reading the comments left on Duncans post about Halo 3. My eyes flitted across to the gamercards of us three and lo ‘n behold what staggering sight do I see before me???

PAUL’S BEEN PLAYING HALO 3!!!!

Well, sacreblur (or something like that)! Will he finish the fight or will the fight finish him! (And he’s supposed to be moving house today)

The launch of Micro$ofts biggest gaming franchise sequel is almost upon us, but I can’t help feeling completely disinterested in it.

Granted, many 360 owners will pick up a copy and enjoy it.  The online side will no doubt be hammered to death for months, if not years to come (if Halo 2 is anything to go by).  I’ll probably end up twiddling my thumbs on Live with the other four people who didn’t buy it, but I really couldn’t care.

Let me draw a comparison for you.

My guess is that mot of you reading this are old enough to remember when the original Jurassic Park hit the cinema.  Great film, one that I really enjoyed when I saw it a few years later.  Trouble was, at the time, the hype machine surrounding the film completely killed any enthusiasm I had to go pay to see it at the flicks.

The same has happened this time with Halo 3.  For a game to be treated like the next messiah, it’s either got too many fanboys (and/or fangirls, let’s not be sexist in this PC era) extoling it’s virtues across the internet, or the publisher is paying millions in PR.  Or both.

To repeat myself fo rthose of you at the back who haven’t paid attention before, Halo is a great game.  When I got my Xbox 1, it kept me enthralled from start to finish.  Halo 2 is also good, although the single player lost my interest about 3/4 thorugh, and online became a behemoth of n00b shouting, moronic egos.  Subsequently Halo 2 online has been killed for me by experience.

Hence I find myself again questioning the point of Halo 3 in my collection.  No answer so far has given me need to spend £40 on it.  If I do end up buying it, well I don’t actually know what would convince me right now.  I get paid to speak to morons at work, so why would I pay to play online with morons at home in my leisure time?

Oh, and if someone uses the story in Halo 3 as a reason to buy it, one of three things is going to happen at the end:

1. Chief dies, world is saved…..for now
2. Chief lives, world is saved…..for now
3. All main characters live, world is saved…..for now

Everything else is just mere detail to get to the climax, and I doubt it will be a sexual experience.

Perusing the interweb, I happened across news of a new Special Edition Xbox 360 console built around Halo 3.

‘Good idea’ you’re thinking, and it is, if a little bit of an obvious marketing ploy to make people buy the console.  The daft bit comes when you understand what is, and more importantly, what is not, included in the pack.

It’s a given that it’s got a custom Halo themed paint job on the console and controller, that lovely shade of Master Chief Green.  You also get the headset, usual cables, 20gb HDD and a Halo 3 theme and gamerpics pre-loaded on the HDD.  Not idea on price yet, but sounds like a nice package for any Halo fan, or console collector.

What about those ommissions then?

Firstly, it’s not the Elite, so no 120gb HDD or HDMI cable.  Odd, but not too much of a problem as the Premuim console is really good anyway (despite the red light syndrome).

What get’s me those is the most glaringly obvious missing component of all.  Worked it out yet?

Yup, no copy of Halo 3 to actually play on your special edition Halo 3 Xbox 360!

Now that strikes me as a bordering on ridiculous, like buying a new car, then finding out you need to buy the keys to start it separately.

Microsoft, that was a bit of a daft move!

So it’s been a while since we did one, but we’ve got a perfect excuse this time. Although to be fair, we never normally need excuses to get on Live! The fact that it’s Live Night No.3 should give you a good idea what we’re planning on doing as well.

The plan is simple. As the beta for Halo 3 runs out on June 10th, we thought we’d give it one last crack before Bungie remove the reason why many people bought Crackdown in the first place.

Here’s the main facts you need to know:

• Date - Saturday, June 9th, 2007
• Time - 8pm GMT
• Game Mode - Big Team Battle Training

As always, if you don’t already have one of us on your friends list, just send a request along to myself (gamertag is ‘boidster’) with a brief message saying you want in on Saturday. That way, I’ll be able to pick you out from the random people I sometimes get wanting to add me because I happened to say hello to them in a game.

Once we’re set up and ready to go, I’ll then make sure invites are chucked out to you all as the room will be set to invite only. Then sit back and enjoy fragging us all to hell and back. Maybe with the exception of Paul, as he’s actually pretty decent!

See y’all there!

Bungie’s support website for Halo 3 has a forum. This forum has a section allowing players to post bugs. Nice touch you may think but it’s not terribly nice when you realise it’s 118 pages long at the moment! I doubt very much if someone is going to go through all 118 pages fishing out the true bugs from the replicas.

And what chance of these being fixed before the beta ends? None.

Here’s the link to the forum if you want to add your own bugs. Uploading screen anyone?

>> Bungie Halo 3 Bug Report Forum Topic