D15AV0W3D over at The Hushed Casket tries to put all three Halo games into perspective, but generally, he thinks Halo 3 corrected a lot of the issues in Halo 2:

Enter H3, the end of the trilogy, and Bungie's triumphant redemption to the lackluster campaign on H2. Enter more user-customization than ever before. Map Forge, Theatre-mode, and more. It has possibly more bells and whistles than any other console game, ever. But are the multiplayer extras and customization enough to win over the H1 fans? The auto-aim was turned down, but is it enough to make the H1 crowd forget about their beloved scoped pistol?

In my opinion, H3 is better than H2, hands-down. Absolutely no comparison. I think most reading this will agree. The auto-aim was turned down significantly. I played some H2 last night, and after having played H3 for two months, was struck by how strong the auto-aim was. I like this about H3. Less auto-aim requires more skill, and rewards skilled players more than H2.

See THX for the complete text.

Couple of great behind-the-scenes articles pointed out over at HBO: Next Generation interviewed Marty "The Elder" O'Donnell about music in games in general and polishing the Halo series in specific, and Sci Fi Tech put up Faces of Halo that shows us some of the actors and actresses who lent their voice talents to the Halo series and points out other things you might have seen (and heard) them in. Thanks HBO.

If you were one of the (undoubtedly) many who grabbed the Halo 3 Official Soundtrack from the iTunes Store since it became available in the last 24 hours, take a look at disc 2, track 5.

"No More Dead Hereos"

From any other game publisher, of course, this would be attributed to a simple clerical error, either by Bungie or by Apple. However, since this is Bungie and Halo, it is obviously a cleverly-hidden hint for faithful Bungie fans that the Master Chief will soon have his own line of heroic sandwich cookies.

Bungie's "big news" for Monday was, as many predicted, the official announcement of the first installment of downloadable content for Halo 3. In this case, three new maps: Standoff, looking quite similar to parts of Tsavo Highway or The Storm, Rat's Nest, based on Crow's Nest from the campaign, and Foundry, based on the warehouse interior from The Storm and Floodgate and designed to be a Forge-friendly map with a highly configurable interior space.

Oh, and the date? Just under a month-- December 11, 2007.

VVV thinks the graphical improvements to Halo 3 are nice, but that under the hood, the gameplay mechanics are still broken.