Even though I don't have a 360, I recently got to play this game... I must say that it does indeed live up to the hype. Best new game of 2007? So far, yes. I'd even go so far as to say that it is one of the best new games since the original Halo. Best First Person Shooter ever? Not quite. While the graphics are stunning, the multiplayer is fun and entertaining, and the Legendary mode is truly legendary, there are a few things that keep this otherwise-excellent game from reaching its true potential.

I'll start with the campaign mode. I played through this on Normal, unlocking all of the skulls, and then through a few levels of Legendary with a friend. Normal mode was entertaining, yet not too challenging. If I had more time with the game, I would certainly have played through Heroic and more of the Legendary difficulty, but, alas, my time was limited.

The campaign mode was very fun, and I'm sure that trying to beat Cortana on Legendary might have bordered on impossible, but the game was far too short. While I know that I can never expect a FPS to have the same length and depth of an adventure game, it felt like the ending to a series this popular should have had a little more too it. I don't want to spoil anything, but I will say that the final boss battle leaves a LOT to be desired. Bungie, this is the ending of the trilogy that you have been promoting to death, but you still couldn't manage to make the ending truly epic?

After beating the campaign, what do you do? Multiplayer, of course. Now, here comes my biggest gripe with the game... WHY ISN'T THERE A SERVER BROWSER? Almost every other FPS game on the planet lets you PICK which servers and maps you play on; even Halo 1 for the PC has a server browser! What's wrong with letting the player decide for themselves how many people they want to play with, and what map they want to play on, and then join a server in the middle of a game? That way, half of your team leaving wouldn't mean a cheap victory for the other team... other players could join in to take their spots.

Anyway, once you actually get into a game, it is pretty fun. While there seems to be an overly large amount of n00bs, many of whom probably haven't even played the campaign yet, online battles can be fun and entertaining. I didn't get to play multiplayer for that long, so I will let you look other places for deeper and more insightful commentary about this side of the game.

And now for the controls... I don't think that any console controller, except perhaps the Wiimote, will ever come close to a mouse and keyboard for FPS games, but I would have to say that this game controlled pretty well. I don't really have much to say about the graphics either... they were indeed very nice, but I'm sure that some of the new Direct-X 10 games coming out will blow this away (I'm looking at you, Crysis).

Now, don't get worried about all of the complaints that I have here about the game... they are far outweighed by its good points. You can go anywhere else and hear wondrous reviews about the game; I was trying to find every fault I could with it. However, I still plan on picking up a copy of this when it comes out for the PC, which hopefully won't be TOO long...