So i've had this game for only 3 days now, but despite that i have clocked up almost 15 hours of game time. There's so much fun packed into this game. I started out forza life with a ford fiesta, which is RUBBISH, but soon i was inundated with reward cars and prize money.  
 
After the first few events though, i have not been particularly interested in the career mode. Instead, i have been enjoying the excellent new multiplayer. It is FABULOUS fun to instantly be chucked into an A class race with all manner of different cars and setups, and while there are a few "first corner chaos" morons they were kicked out pretty fast. The matchmaking is great (although i want to race lower class cars plz), I have spent most of my time in A-class, but when i dabbled in R1, the speed and competition there were simply too much to handle. However despite sucking i soon got to grips with the fact that the diesel LMPs are overpowered monsters, and downgraded to a smaller, lighter, less powerful one and did much better. 
 
Weirdly however, most of my driving time has not been in multiplayer, but on the test track, searching for the perfect cars to pwn A class with. At first i was just racing a stock F40, which is an extremely good all round car, but soon i got tired of it, and wanted to win in something i could call my own. And after much trial and error, this is it: 
 
 

 
This is a ferrari F355 challenge, which has been modified to A-600, with 420 horsepower and the ability to simply melt the corners. It has won every single online race where there hasn't been a first corner "incident". It simply obliterates the competition. However, it is not alone... 
 


 

 
 This is my second car, also A class, and it is a vauxhall monaro. Only it had a racing corvette engine with 720BHP plonked in it, and had a race weight reduction. The final result is a semi missile car designed almost entirely with the Le mans track in mind, and maybe road america/road atlanta. It is quite challenging when you race with no assists to keep it level in the corners, but boy it's fun to just rocket past someone in a crummy R8 with downforce spoilers, and i have actually been called a "fucking noob" for racing something so fast, but surely having the ideal car for the job makes me non-noob? In the photo it is doing about 220mph. 
 
What's best about this game though, is how compared with forza 2, the cars feel so ALIVE. I was driving a fiat 500 abarth with 170 horsepower and at no point whatsoever did i find it slow. I stepped into an R1 LMP, and my brain simply couldn't keep up with all the precision and speed needed. I was test driving my F355, and the handling tweaks i played about with shaped it in so many ways until i felt i had got it just right.  
 
It's brilliant, it makes you want to explore more and more cars and possibilities. Drifting is so much fun on the benchmark track in a ferrari 599 (courtesy of RH). So is browsing the storefront, i could spend days downlaoding endless awesome designs (which i am incapable of making), i could spend even more time tuning cars to perfection for each class, and even more trying to master the R1 class. Hell i haven't even stepped into an R2 car yet, let alone try to get competitive in it. There's so much to do at any time, it's becoming a struggle every evening to tear myself off the controller and fling myself into bed with forza induced dreams. And i haven't even managed to get my MS wheel into my room yet (it's bolted on to a DIY chair/stand arrangement... it's a long story).  This is simply one of the greatest games of all time, it's absolutely masterful. 
 

496 thousand pointss, 1005 dead covenants, set three, round three, wave five in 2 hours. Security zone. Normal difficulty
 
  
DISCONNECTED FROM XBOX LIVE 
 
 
:'( 
 
Could i just point out once more than firefight is epic win? On set 3, round 3, wave 4 i had to complete the entire wave by myself (pie was dead), with no stamina and almost zero heatlh (black eye skull) with a half empty brute plasma rifle and an automag. I ended up being chased across the whole map, accompanied by grenade spam. The final tally was 13 brutes and 8 grunts dead, all without getting shot once and with a half empty brute plasma rifle and an automag. I actually completely ran out of ammo, and had to sneak all the way to the top of the map for some more clips. It was the most nerve racking yet awesome thing i have ever done in a video game to date. 
 
 
Tragically though, a split second after i heard "HERO!" and pie respawned, i got killed from a stray spike from a spike grenade :'( 
 
oh and check out the bnet stats pages of ODST, they're awesome :) 
 
 
I hate to say it but you "overpriced expansion" crowd are really missing out.

I was going to do a picture story, but then i realized the game was over an hour long. But anyway, it consisted of 700 dead covenants (which is more than i had from 5 playthroughs of the entirety of halo 3), a killionaire and 260,000 points (the record is over 4.5 million apparently... i dread to think how long you have to play for to get there), but ended with pie dying in miscellaneous epxlosions and me carrying on bravely until i got smashed by a hammer, but surivived only to be flung off the map into the chasm... at what i believe was set 3 round 2. Which is peanuts (apparently) but hey i got the achievement
 
Oh and the map was alpha site, but i guess what i'm trying to say is 
 
 

 
Firefight 
 
 
It's awesome 
 
 
That will be all....

WHERE IS MY ODST STOP GOING ON STRIKE!!  
  
;_;

So anyway today like most days i was playing halo. Only today is the 7th, which means only one thing.... 7 on 7th!! For those of you who are nubs, this is a playlist that pops up every 7th of the month and contains the best that ATLAS, the bungie.net map submission group has to offer. Anyway while i was playing through it, i decided i would give my take on each map i played over at the Optimatch forum. So here it is, a giant wall of text. ENJOY
 
  So far i've played ...

Topple:  I quite liked it. had a good mix or BR/carbine action in the center and CQC action round the sides.

IZ9 Coutryard:  Awesome design, i think it's about time there was a map with a more  intricate  layout so to speak. I played it on Br starts which i usually hate but i actually found it to be very good on this map. Maybe because surprise attacks from above are awesome. I did find though that it was quite easy to camp the spawns from the dunes with a sniper. Reduced clip size maybe?

Ber Ber Creek: A remake of Beaver creek you say? While it SEEMED surprisingly accurate for a forge remake, it just didn't have the same  feel. I can't quite pinpoint what's wrong with it though, maybe it just felt too large and uncontained. Somehow all the awesome stuff seemed to have diminished in importance and made way for endless BR from all directions.

Sand Towers:  CAMPING!!! Camping with snipers, camping with lasers, camping with hammers, campgin with maulers. It was all terribly bogged down in the end. I think the weapon layout simply doesn't suit a map that is open like that and with such watertight control areas.  

get rid of the laser, 0 spare sniper clips, add rockets or maybe even a sentinal beam to the middle and decrease vehicle spawn times. Then i reckon it would play better. Oh and BTW i played CTF on this map. Won 2-0, got a ton of laser kills.

Undulation:  Seemed pretty garbage to me. Why would you put a laser in a map with one hog and one ghost each with a drivable area the size of a shoe? And then it's just your common TS Br fest up top.


Conduction:  This map is insane. And in a good way. You can tell this is a map where you really can MASTER the layout. This map is paradise for the sharp-minded as you kill your way through the map hunting down power weapons with a never ending vital stream of infromation from your teammates in one ear and the sound of sniper bullets in the other. The layout consists of many levels, something which i believe has always been woefully lacking in halo 3 and as a result you can never fully trust your radar, making call outs vital.  

CQC weapons like the energy sword are quite powerful, but because there are so many ways in, out and around  camping  with them is impossible, and the only way to truly use them properly is to be ocnstantly on the move and with the upper hand. Suddenly sneaking returns as a gameplay element.

Another thing i would like to praise is the placement of dual wields WHERE YOU WOULD WANT THEM TO BE, and not in the middle of nowhere. Dual SMGs ftw. And because of the sheer diversity of useful weapons available, complex layout, and many, many different scenarios this map isawesome. Definitely the best i've played so far. Congratulations to whoever made it. Hell it's better than pretty much ANY default map in Team Slayer. Plz add to matchmaking.

Pilaster:  Not good i'm afraid.... not good at all.

Rat trap:  Why is it so hard for mapmakers to understand that splazer + dunes + open spawns = not good? And it also seems to spawn very quickly as well making those choppers and hogs rather pointless. Other than that though i thought it was very fun. Pulling a flag on that map is actually quite exciting and it seemed to me that to score a flag you needed brains over BR, which is a good thing.


Paranoia:  where to start..... First of all i would just like to say that i like the concept. I like it a lot, but the map just feels wrong. I think my main gripe is that hlf the time you have no idea where you actually are or where the fighting is taking place. I think you should put up some sort of indication as to which level the mancannons lead to. There's just too many to keep track of. The other thing i would do, is give each floor distinctive gemoetry, instead of them being identical. But worst of all... Where the hell are the SMGS? Plasma rifles? PP? Spiker anyone? If you're going to make a map centered around close quarters combat, put in something  more  than a couple of maulers with one clip.

Cryptic Fate V5:  This map is full of surprises. Admittedly, as i spawned i didn't think much of it. It just looked kind of unoriginal and mroe of the same. But then i looked upwards at the vast, sprawling upper platforms...

My game was one of AR/magnum start multi flag. And boy it was intense. My first impression wasn't particularly good. It was a bit dull if i am honest. But then we stole their flag from under their noses. And then they stole ours. Having stopped the flag inches from the return point we were able to recover it, and we got another capture.

At this point we thought it was all over, as we had pulled the 3rd flag, but boy we were wrong. Somehow they managed to keep on their flag and return it, whilst stealing ours. They then pulled our flag again, and  again. But with the score 2-2 Amazingly we once again managed to stop our flag in THEIR OWN BASE, and managed to keep them moff while we scored a third one. Epic game.
 
 
Overall though i think there are some pretty impressive productions, but at the same time there's a distinct lack of originality. It seems as if the authors are trying to be the next Pit or guardian.
 
 
 
 
EDIT: forgot to add halo 3 as relevant page. Could a mod move please?