Last year I wrote about how overrated I thought Halo 3 was after completing the campaign. However, I recently upgraded my Xbox Live Silver account to a Gold one and decided to try out the on-line component of many of my 360 games, including Halo 3. Wow! What a difference. I now understand what all the fuss was about. This is a quantum leap over anything Halo 2 had to offer on the original Xbox and the seamless integration with Bungie's website makes this the most compelling online shooter I have ever experienced, even pipping my all-time favourite, Quake 2, on the PC. If you're addicted to stats, points or achievements then this will do nothing to cure you're addiction. In fact, it will only feed it even further. I didn't think I would be interested in levelling up a character from a first person shooter but I am determined to make my Spartan a Sergeant even if it kills me! It's not just bragging rights that keeps me going back to Halo's multiplayer, the game is genuinely fun to play with a group of people on-line, even if I'm the one doing most of the dying! I don't know if I've just been lucky but it seems the vast majority of people I've met in games are interested in having fun and not racking up an insane amount of kills in the space of 10 minutes.

The ability to watch movies, take screen-shots and generally get into the nitty gritty of this game means I can easily forgive the convoluted and lacklustre plot of the main story. It's just as well since the forthcoming release of Halo 3: ODST means that Halo-fever will be with us all over again this year and this time I'll be glad to be one of the infected!

By way of an apology to Bungie and co., here's a video! Enjoy!