I've been playing Halo 3 on multiplayer campaign mode. The design of the game reminds me of Alien in a vision of a futuristic pragmatism in war sort of way, except that the ringworld is absolutely beautiful. It's worth mentioning that Halo is based on the Ringworld series by Larry Niven. I have yet to read them, but I may just order them from Amazon sometime soon.

The combat NPCs aren't absolutely retarded except if they're driving and you're shooting. They seem to hang back a bit too far, which I think is just an over-caution to make up for a lack of any real intelligence, and to make you feel like they are, indeed, the Master Chief's followers. I like shooting them in the back of the head with a grenade launcher and laughing when one of the survivors utter, "he was on our side :("

The enemy, the Covenant as they are called, seem to be following a crazy leader bent on the annihilation of all life, or something, so they fight with a religious zeal that is actually kind of impressive. My favourite enemy in the game, so far, has been the giant mechanical spiders that come lumbering over the sides of oddly-shaped buildings firing their huge lasers at your tanks. I had a hard time pulling those things down even with a friend helping me. 

I always thought that Halo was a silly, shallow series with awkward controls that was made for the lowest class of gamer, Madden fans. I've come to discover: It is that, but that blasting these shrewd bugs is actually pretty fun. I'd like to get a four player campaign going, I've only experienced two player, so far, so that I can crank the difficulty up to 11. Anyone interested?