Halo 3 European Launch

As I'm writing this we are less than 2 hours away from the European launch of Halo 3. The main launch in the UK will be at the Bfi IMAX in Waterloo, London.

I just happen to travel to Waterloo every morning but catch a connecting train from there again and never go outside the station.. but my wife does. The IMAX is right outside Waterloo station and my wife told me about big Halo 3 posters that were up at the IMAX. Ofcourse I had to go look and took my camera along. Well she said it was big but I didn't expect it to be THAT big. It's a couple of stories high and goes all the way around the building. Unfortunately the whole building is glass and since my camera doesn't have a polaroid filter or anything the reflection is very bad. It still gives you an idea of just how big it is though.

Click the small pic to view a larger version.

Master Chief dies at end of Halo 3?

Could it be that we are going to see the end of the Master Chief in Halo 3? Judging by the last 2 commercials that were released it certainly seems a possibility.

In "Museum" Major Pawel Czernek refers to "when Master Chief armed his grenade.." which doesn't make much sense at the time until you watch "Believe in a Hero" where we see the apparent lifeless body of the Master Chief being held in the air by a Covenant standing on a hill surrounded by hords of other Covenant. We then see a close-up shot of a grenade in his hand and later he lifts his head to show he is still alive.

Is the grenade in his hand the one referred to in the previous commercial? Since he is completely surrounded by numerous Covenant and seems to be in bad shape what is one grenade going to do..? Surely not enough to get him out of that situation ....

....or will he sacrifice himself?

Call of Duty 4 BETA

I got my Call of Duty 4 BETA code about 2 nights ago and ofcourse I downloaded it immediately. The first night I played it quite a bit and managed to get to the rank of Sargeant I (Level 10 I think.) Played it again a bit last night but I have to admit that I didn't have the same enthusiasm for it last night as the previous night... when it was "new". For me it got a bit boring very quickly but I don't think it's the game necessarily.

I guess the reason I have never really gotten into multiplayer games in general is because basically it's just the same thing over and over and over and over. I guess it gets emphasized more by the fact that there are just 3 maps in the BETA. I guess I like my games to have stories to them so that you dont just feel that it's more of the same over and over. I can handle coop. In fact I love coop. Coop follows a story though. Multiplayer (as in COD 4) is just (in basic terms) running around shooting as many people as you can till the round ends.. and then repeating it again on the next map. For me personally that gets a bit boring.

Apart from that the game looks pretty good, it plays quite well and the leveling up system seems to work quite well. Although I probably won't be spending as much time online with this game as I thought I would I am however really looking forward to the single player campaign. This is the part of the game I have always enjoyed about the COD series and I think it's going to be awesome in COD 4.