Halo 3 UK launch fails to fire
Where have all the gamers gone?
Despite the sort of marketing hype usually extended only to film releases and console-style early opening hours, the Halo 3 UK launch was notable for the absence of gamers and large piles of unsold copies.
Halo 3: the game everyone's been waiting for?
The game officially went on sale in the UK at the stroke of midnight. However, many central London stores, including Virgin Megastore and Game in Oxford Street, were forced to hold fire until 8am this morning following a ban from Westminster Council on a midnight launch, possibly over fears of frozen gamers or fights over copies.
Register Hardware was there first thing this morning to pick up its own copy of the game at the scheduled time, but we found only two or three excited gamers hanging around outside.
Virgin Megastore, Oxford Street: five minutes to launch, but where are the hordes Westminster feared?
Of the few anxious gamers in Oxford Street this morning, Pat Cayer, 27, a salesman from London, said: "I thought there would be more people than this here. I've been waiting for a long time to get a copy and reserved one earlier, but had I known I wouldn't have had to fight my way to the till then I probably would have just popped down after work."
Game, Oxford Street: open, shelves bursting with copies, store almost empty of punters
Last night, Microsoft popped open the champagne with a host of celebrity hangers-on at a launch party in London's Imax cinema. Stars, including Jonathon Ross, officially announced the game's UK arrival and some online reports have already speculated that it could rake in movie-level takings.
HMV, Oxford Street: no pre-opening queue
Venus Phafen, 25, a student from London, said: "It's definitely the game to end all games on the Xbox and will blow the Christmas gamers away. But I would have expected more people than this."
Some retailers did report queues of gamers waiting anxiously outside their stores in the lead up to midnight. Game claimed that a "handful" of people were arriving at a Harrow store six hours before the UK launch, Halo 3 publisher Microsoft's MSN UK website reported.
What's your opinion of Halo 3? Does it live up to the hype? Did you bother to stay up late or get up early to be one of the first to buy a copy? Register Hardware wants to know your thoughts...
COMMENTS
HALO 3 far better than expected.
So I did not wait in long lines for my copy, yet I did reserve it. I have owned an XBOX and last year decided to get the 360. I never purchased the previous Halo's. I saw them and really did not find the graphics that stellar. The primary reason I decided to make my most recent purchase was: Technology. I have seen older mediocre XBOX titles get transformed to vivid works of art.
Now i know there have been other titles that you can not tell the difference. But faith has helped me once again.
From the start of the game I knew I was in for a treat. Even the loading screen is a masterpiece. I read the comment about it being similar to "Unreal Tournament". I think that you can say all FPS' are similar. What I find stands out is the storyline . Ya it's cart blanch. And no matter how you play as long as you get through you'll move forward. But I find that the details in the ships, vehicles, The Prophet, even the Master Chief have definitely made me happy with my purchase.
And yes............... I have been up for six days playing Halo 3. ;-)
Halo 3 - Better than expected.
I bought Halo 3 expecting to be disappointed as I did not like the first two. It has a slightly boring single player game (with an incredibly vague plot - made even more difficult because I didn't play Halo 2). The cooperative is passable (it gets better as you get further through the game) but multiplayer deathmatch is excellent and has more than enough game modes to keep it interesting.
As a side note I have Gears of War, and whilst the graphics may be slightly better in GOW I would say that Halo 3 is far more enjoyable in the deathmatch style games. I just feel the levels are better thought out and balanced. I have only played this with friends locally on one xbox so it might be different online.
Haloing
Sorry, I was one of the "suckers"/"fans" that pre-ordered the Legendary Edition, and waited for the post to deliver it. I just can't see the point in queueing when GAME etc will quite happily deliver it, (I know I'm lazy!).
Also, since I refuse to be forced (by "Games for Windows") to buy a new PC to run Vista (barf, puke, retch,....) I've got the version for the Xbox360, (and apologies if some out there figure I'm a hopeless Redmond fanboi as a result). Got to say that I'm pretty pleased with the extras, although the packaging round the helmet was pretty disintergrated, and there's one or two pieces of it rattling around in the helmet - I'll get those out when I can be bothered. The extra ("directors edition"?) disks were also pretty good, nice to see they put in Halo and Halo2 cinematics, rather than assume that everyone had played the previous editions. Oh, and I liked the "how to setup a network" piece, plus the behind-the-scenes on the music and sound effects, (yes, I'm that much of a nerd!)
I've played Halo on the PC, but never (until now) on the console and I managed to miss out Halo2 completely. Again, it may get me lynched but - hype aside - I think it's actually a pretty good game. Okay, Bioshock may (or may not, I don't own that) have better graphics and there's others that I know probably have a better storyline.
I'd count myself as a Halo novice, but I found the latest one actually pretty enjoyable to get into. Okay I've only had about 90 minutes solid play, but it seems to have a relatively shallow learning curve. And I'm not really bothered if the experienced players can complete the single player in 5-8 hours - from the articles on the Bungie website the focus is on *multiplayer*. It'll be interesting - once I get tired of playing Medal Of Honor: Airborne - to see how quickly I can go through H3, and then see whether I can get some reasonable online play, (when I played the beta I think I was in the group marked "Cannon Fodder" and it'd be nice to have a game that lasted longer than 3-4 minutes).
I'd recommend that it was in any self-respecting XBox360 gamers collection, (along with Gears Of War of course), but I don't think it'd be one to get if you could only get one Xbox game.
Meanwhile, I think I feel the need for an extended Call Of Duty session.... ;-)
Hype does not a good game make
The Halo series has always been an average shooter title. It can never hope to live up to PC classics such as Quake or even Doom and has done nothing exciting to move the genre forward.
I for one have tried so hard to get into Halo & Halo 2 but find them to be a mere distraction when I have nothing else to do. A bit like watching the umpteenth rubbish Steven Seagal movie on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
Bioshock and Gears of War were far more entertaining and provided something new to the shooter genre.
I hope Halo 3 will prove me wrong but like the first two in the series I fear I will find myself bored after a days play and fire up Forza or GOW to find something more stimulating.............but then again it's been raining constantly so I might find myself stuck with the Steven Seagal of games...........argghhhh.
Please Halo 3 prove me wrong.
Gaming-On-Demand
To be honest - the whole idea of standing outside a shop for hours before a midnight launch seems pretty ridiculous to me.
Take a game like Team Fortress 2 - absolutely fantastic game - available to download and play through Steam even before it has been released officially. I paid $49 for the Orange Box even though the only game I was interested in was Team Fortress 2. And I did it from the comfort of my own home.
Waiting in the wet and the cold is yesterday's news when it comes to proper gamers - those who are clued up wait in front of their monitors looking at their broadband connection download a 5 gig game in 2 hours whilst making themselves some pasta and putting their feet up.
Thanks,
Ramzi Yakob
