• Incidentally, the last game I waited in line at midnight for was... Halo 2.


• This place is not nearly as packed as it was in 2004. Literally took me two or three hours to get in then.


• This would be a great time for a zombie infestation. Bunch of Halo fans crammed into a mall.


• The Arby's next to GameStop should have stayed open tonight. Imagine how much business they'd be getting.


• Too bad my phone can't send photos to Twitter or else I would totally tweet the copy of Halo: Reach I am holding in my hands.


• THERE it is. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go play it. http://twitpic.com/2o9by1


• Wait. The guys on Reach already knew who the Covenant are? I thought they were gonna be like, "SHIT WHO THE FUCK ARE THESE GUYS?!"


• Why the hell are there ostriches everywhere? Seriously, there are ostriches everywhere.


• Holy crap. One of the new weapons highlights enemies for artillery strike.


• ...Okay, so it's basically just the Hammer of Dawn.


• The Elites must have devolved in time for the original trilogy because they can fucking haul ass in this game.


• Ugh. Remember the days when you could kill a Hunter with a single well-placed pistol round?


• I'm glad they didn't make the main character a silent protagonist like that lameass from ODST.


• Am I crazy, or does this old lady have Cortana's voice?


• More tired than I wish I was. Gonna take a break. So far, this is everything I want in a Halo game.


• Oh, except for good driving AI. That still sucks.


• I'm still waiting for the Flood to make an unexpected and entirely unwanted appearance.

I never got a game at midnight, but stayed up until 1am to wait for Left 4 Dead 2 to be unlocked on its release day. Of course Valve had to fudge that like usual and it wound up being unlocked at 2:30ish. So I played for a bit, slept for an hour and a half or so before I had to go to work. Good times, but not sure if I would want to do that again!

Also is the new Halo still basically the same as the previous games? Just want to know whether the campaign is worth playing to someone who is tired of the franchise (and never cared for its multiplayer).

Halo 2's release was really memorable for me. I'd been really highly anticipating it at the time, and since I was still in high school, I had to sneak out of my house to go to the midnight release. It was kind of a mess, really -- hundreds of people were there (maybe even a thousand), and we were all forced to wait outside of the mall while small groups of people were allowed in at a time. So it literally took me a couple of hours to get my copy, all while people came out of the entrance screaming and waving their own copies in the air.

Last night demonstrated that they'd gotten much more efficient, as I was near the end of the line and I still managed to have my copy only only ten or fifteen minutes. So it was better, but it also felt like less of an "event," I guess.