Kotaku’s Brian Crecente posted his review on Halo 3 today leaving it basically summed up as “Halo 2 with better graphics and a better artificial intelligence. Mostly.”

While praising the way the AI handles enemy encounters. Crecente says that it also works against you.

In a word the enemy AI is amazing. The same can’t be said of the AI of your cohorts, in particular the human grunts who often charge into battle with you during specific sections of the game. There were several sections in the game where I was repeatedly killed by my own men, either be grenade or more frequently by a vehicle. And it wasn’t just me. I actually asked around. The AI of the good guys is as bad as the AI of the bad guys is good… if that makes sense. I don’t even know how that’s possible, but I believe nearly everyone in the group with me felt about the same way.

No matter what level the AI was on, Crecente said the fun level for much of the game was very high. He didn’t go into much detail, but he definitely indicates this is the type of campaign where you will want to play through it again after your first go.

The game seems pretty fast-paced according to his description and leads you through the plot fairly quickly with the cut scenes. The gameplay is being pegged at around 20 hours for Legendary or as little as 12 for the Heroic level, and at the end of those 12 hours, Crecente didn’t like the way it ended up.

These cut scenes take control of Master Chief, of you that is, and play out before your eyes as if you’ve gone from being the hero to a spectator. That didn’t bother me until the very last seconds of the game, when a challenging, perhaps the most challenging level of the entire game ends by ripping control from you and forcing you to watch the last bit of dialog, of plot, of information come to you as if you had nothing more to do with the experience than a person sitting in movie theater.

And it felt wrong.

Crecente didn’t give a number to his review although he did issue it in full unlike Joystiq rather than stalling. If asked to give it a numerical score, he left it at 87.5 and stated that it DID NOT live up to the hype surrounding the game. To Bungie’s credit, he said nothing could have lived up to all the hype created, but I still think stating it doesn’t live up the hype is a little bit of a slight to the game.

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Although Joystiq is not posting its official review until the matchmaking servers are active and 12-year-old have invaded the Team Slayer matches, they posted a thoughtful review today and calling it a (pre)-review.

The review seems to lean to the side that Halo 3 is NOT all the marketing has cracked it up to be. It’s no graphical showcase and still has problems like some dumb AI–after Bungie told us how awesome it would be–and some biased gameplay towards the slow goers who like to slowly assault the enemies from long range or the rush-by tactic where you avoid all contact with a swarm of Brutes. Those players that like to rush up and attack or engage a squad in close combat may find themselves in some frustrating checkpoints.

There are still old kinks in this MJOLNIR armor. An inconsistent — just downright random — checkpoint system will sometimes trap you, cornered in one case by a dozen Brutes and a turret gunner, and other times be nonexistent. (We did find that the system tends to reward players who slowly fight through areas, rather than dash through). But you can dash through! We avoided, almost entirely, a difficult level inside a Flood ship, by simply running past the waves of zombie-like creatures. Mostly, difficult passages can be avoided, unless you’re crippled by friendlies.

The review leaves you with the message: it’s not perfect, but it is definitely worth playing. The main “perfection” of the game that Joystiq points to as the main focus of Bungie’s masterpiece is the awe moments like taking down a Scarab and the interaction with the NPCs like watching a Brute pee completely ignorant of the incoming attack or two Marines argue through a locked door.

It still sounds like the game is going to be a masterpiece to play–just not that perfect graphical showcase and mastering of the series. That’s good. The fact that the game is not perfect means we won’t be completely satisfied. We can keep playing FPS games and looking for the next Halo–the next greater shooter to find itself at the peak of new technology. That will give you something to live for, Halo addict. Put down the controller and take a breath between Cheetos. It’s not over.

Will Halo 3 live up to the hype? No. There isn’t perfection here. There isn’t an absolute, please-all quality. But this is Bungie’s masterpiece. And there’s still so much more to be said and experienced. If you play games, play Halo 3.

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The latest commercial shows two soldiers talking about weapons, but don’t ask them to pick up the Spiker. They just want to share a hug about Master Chief’s “big sacrifice” that saved the world. If he was a real person, I think I might be really annoyed with him by now.

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A few possible clues to the plot of Halo 3 have now been leaked…

The Japanese shirt being given out at a press event at TGS in Japan shows Cortana with the text “Save Cortana.” The shirt is probably indicating that some part of the plot will revolve around Master Chief having to retrieve Cortana from the clutches of the Gravemind or free her from it’s grip somehow.

The marketing blitz begins to come to an end and various launch parties and unveiling events were announced. You can pretty much count on being able to catch a countdown on some channel of your television or catching some cool Web watches online. A few launch details were broken down by Joystiq this week.

The reason we can’t have nice things is Pirates. Friday saw the leak of a 6.14 GB file in torrent form around the world, so hackers have probably beaten the game right now and are hoping to catch you in a comment stream somewhere online so that they can ruin the ending. Don’t be fooled. Yes, the ending already leaked, but you don’t want to stumble upon the ending in HD and 5.1 on YouTube somewhere a day before you pick your copy of Halo 3.

The Halo 3 Legendary packaging took Engadget to its knees (check the reflection) when they unboxed it this Friday. I can admit that it is pretty cool to have the Legendary edition with the DVDs, but I can’t say I could keep my cool if I had to find a place to put the mini shrunken Master Chief head on a regular basis so that my non-gamer friends wouldn’t think it was an integral part of my living room. I’ll just stick with the Limited Edition myself.

That should catch you up to the current stream of reviews that will be going live today on all gaming sites. The embargo has been lifted on the journalists who were invited to play at Bungie, so now their words can excite you before you go into work/class on Monday full of Halo joy. I myself will check a few out just to take my mind off my horribly under-performing fantasy football team.

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Bungie released a video doc last week about the Forge system that not only explains it better but also shows a little Guilty Spark in action dropping tanks on fools.

The video is called “Cinema Paradiso” and doesn’t reveal any new info besides clarifying the Forge system once again since it has seemed confusing in some of the right-ups thus far. I didn’t realize until I checked out the post on Destructoid, but at 6:58 in the video, it seems you may be able to knock rockets with the Brute Hammer. Maybe that is how the testers created that baseball minigame, but I guess I never connected the two. Pretty sweet.

The videos about 7 and a half minutes long and worth watching. I am sure the true Halo nuts already have seen it or started watching it as soon as they saw the title of this post.

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If you don’t have the online gaming experience of Xbox Live, Best Buy will be sponsoring Xbox Live for three days after the Halo 3 launch. That is just crazy. While I love the free-ness, I hope they are opening up another fleet or servers for all the matchmaking that they are going to have to be doing because I can’t see a possible scenario where Halo 3 doesn’t flood Xbox Live for those three days. I wouldn’t want to be Best Buy if their is slowness or problems. As a paying customer, I would hate to have three days I could have had free suck for online play because of all the gamers with Halo 3. Good luck, Best Buy.

On the other hand, I thank you Best Buy for the n00bs that you will bring onto our Xbox Live servers so that we can reach all those multiplayer achievement points right away. Tea bags are bound to be everywhere for those three days.

More than just myself is getting tired of this Halo 3 marketing machine. I think it really did go all T1000 on us and start taking over the world. I think it just became self-aware. I mean, come on, Bungie, I already ordered my copy. What more do you want from me? Flynn De Marco of Kotaku is tired of it as well. That’s at least two people.

They even took over Future Weapons. That’s crazy talk. I guess now they are shooting for catching those crazy militia types who have been holed up in their barns over the last few months only emerging to watch Future Weapons and then scurrying back to rewire all their pipe bombs. If they weren’t getting Halo, now they will if for no other reason than to start making mock ups of Master Chief’s armor to sell on Ebay.

Oh, and more jealousy.

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The ending of Halo 3 has leaked. If you search for it on YouTube, you will find it.

Keep in mind that you may not want to see it. It doesn’t reveal a whole lot, but the die hards may not want to see how it all comes out. Just search for “halo 3 ending” or it may still be available here.

I watched it. I’ll admit it, but I don’t think it was really worth watching. You can’t tell what people are saying since it is crappy cell phone quality, and most of what seems to have happened I think I knew or suspected already.

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