With the sudden flood of good games as of late, I haven’t been writing as much as I’d like to. I’m having a blast with Halo 3. It’s everything I hoped it would be, but not without flaws. What game doesn’t have flaws?

For one, they made a change to the melee mechanics that pretty much make it shit. Basically, in Halo 1 and 2, if two players go to melee each other, reflexes win. In Halo 3, regardless of who melees first, the player who has the most shield wins. That’s pretty much my biggest gripe at this point, as most of my Halo kills are by melee. I suppose this was Bungie’s attempt to combat latency/host advantages, but we’re pretty much thrown right back to square one, as it seems nobody has a skillful advantage with the new change. It’s a gamble now.

Secondly, there’s a hit detection issue with the sniper rifle that Bungie’s currently dismissing, even telling the community that it’s working as intended. Bullshit. I’ve witnessed players being shot directly in the face more than once — up to 12 times on one replay a friend had on his file share — and not die or take damage. All in all, I love the game, but I hope these flaws will be addressed in the future.

In other haps, I played and finished Half-Life 2 Episode 2. Short and sweet, just like this here write-up about it. I can’t say much else other than it sucks that it was shorter than Episode 1, but I loved it just as much, if not more, and I can’t wait for Episode 3. To buy or not to buy the Orange Box? My gut is telling me to wait.

Call of Duty 4 draws near. That’s next on my list.