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It’s only a matter of hours now. If you own an Xbox 360 it’s a pretty safe bet you’ll soon be “finishing the fight” when Halo 3 is released tonight at midnight. Naturally, I—the big geek that I am—have a pre-ordered copy waiting for me and have cleared my schedule for the next 24 hours. I’ve even enlisted some help from a couple of like-minded geeks to do battle, eat snacks and really get our frag on, thoroughly and completely.

It’s interesting to see how much attention Halo 3 is getting outside of the gaming community. While the Halo 2 release was a huge deal among gamers, it wasn’t nearly the media phenomenon Halo 3 is shaping up to be. (When Time Magazine is reporting on Master Chief, you know this thing has gone mainstream.) A lot of this has to do with the massive promotional campaign Microsoft is funding with its evergreen money orchard, but we shouldn’t overlook the fact that over the course of several years Halo has matured into a breakthrough brand based on its own merits. Neither Halo nor Halo 2 were “perfect” games, but they were (are) a ton of fun with immense replay value. Just something to keep in mind before dismissing Halo as “just an FPS”, because without those things going for it, no money orchard in the world could maintain its appeal.

-JBE

joe at dpad dot ca