With the recent news that the Halo 3 beta will be starting May 16th and the release of two new Halo 2 maps I decided to head back into Halo 2 to check them out. The two new halo 2 maps are two of the best maps from Halo: Hang'em High and Derelict. One loading up the maps the thing that jumped out at me is how good they looked. I'm playing these on my 360 and they look very nice in HD. I decided to play a match online to see how I did and was pwned a lot and showed my rust. I'll need to hop into more match making to get my skills back in shape. I decided to play some campaign and that was a fun experience.

I also got a look at the sneaked footage of the Halo 3 beta on the web. There are some cool changes like the HUD is rounded like it would be if it were displayed on a visor. There is also a cool grid that shows up when your respawn. So far the game looks a lot like Halo 2 on the 360 graphically. The game does not look as impressive at a GRAW 2 or a Gears of War. This might change between now and the final build but with all likely hood the game will not look as good as Gears of War. People will argue Gears was a game that controlled what you saw on the screen and didn't have huge battles so they could run at a higher resolution and frame rate. Now I don't feel that's a good excuse because most of Halo 2's battles where the same way. You just had more waves of enemy troops than you did in Gears. Still we will all get a chance to see how good halo 3 looks once the beta comes out.