I can fondly remember standing in the freezing cold outside Gamestation a couple of years ago waiting for the doors to open so I could buy Halo 3. Man, was I excited! So excited in fact, that even though it was about 1am by the time I got back to my house, I put it in t'Box and played merrily until the wee hours of a morning...on a school night!

Campaigns came and went, Hardcore gave way to Legendary and so on and so forth until there came a day when Halo 3 became a title I could dip in and out of with carefree abandon. This was a good thing...for a little while anyway. You see, when you've completed the story on the hardest difficulty, it's hard to will oneself to go through the whole game once again for those precious skulls. If you're like me, then you wouldn't have the inclination nor patience for those well-earned Gamerpoints. This leaves you with Halo 3's intially enjoyable and quite addictive, multiplayer online modes.

There was a time when in the months that followed the realease of Halo 3 that the online experience was pretty much half of the enjoyment, as it is very well done. The party modes are excellent, with quick load times and plenty of game scenarios to work through while level design and playability is amongst the best in its class. A good multiplayer section of the FPS genre has become a requirement if the title is to have any level of merit or replayability. I have no qualms with that aspect of Halo 3 at all. However, unfortunately my problem is with something that Bungie have tried to accomodate for, but to no avail.

The part that sours Halo 3, almost spoiling an excellent online experience is...the competition.

Yes, those 14 year old kids in America who have been up almost every night perfecting their kill rate percentage by fragging one and all, unfortunately those kids frustrate the hell out of me. I'm finding more and more that your opponents are just too good, I've barely got used to controls again and I'm faced down, staring at myself spinning slowly while I wait for the game to reload itself. It puts me off, and I know there's nothing anyone can do about it.

'Why don't you just play it more to improve your skills?' I hear you ask. Well, I don't class myself as a 'casual' gamer by any sense of the word anymore. I used to, but no longer. I just don't really have the need to pursue this cause of improvement as I just keep getting shot in the face or blown up by some unknown assailant lurking in the shadows. I don't have the time nor the inclination to improve, so, unfortunately it's going to get played less and less as more titles that don't bring out such a 'I must be the best in the world, even if I miss a week of sleep' attitude are released.

I know that Bungie have tried to compensate for this by creating a ranked grading system to pit those of similar experience against one another, but as you can see by this mini-rant, it's far from perfect as many die-hard Halo-ites slip through the net just looking for that next kill. Spare a thought, though for the next person you see aimlessly wandering into your sniper scope, as that player might be one death away from turning off the game for good.