The fat lady sings

... aaaaand we did it! Just under the wire, to boot! Halo 3 has been conquered -- on Legendary, no less -- in but a day. The fight is finished!

And what a finish it was. Brian's touched on this, but I want to reiterate how true it is: This game is the culmination of all things Halo. In practically every way, it's everything you could ever want from a game in the series, and then some. We all already knew about how feature-rich the game is and how it's really over-delivering on what a sequel has to be. But what those who haven't played it yet don't know, though, is how the campaign takes the best of the previous Halo single-player experiences, leaves (almost) all of the bad out and throws the thing into overdrive.

By the end of the game, you'll be knee-deep in loving homages to past moments in the series (the last half of the game, in particular, will have fans of the original's best levels re-living the "glory days") and loving every minute of it. It's striking just how much Bungie's borrowed from their past to influence their best work yet, but it never feels redundant, nor cheap. In fact, the story and gameplay are better for it -- we've truly come full circle, plot-wise, and they've managed to rekindle the game's core by revisiting what made it so special back in 2001.

All in all, it's a truly great game. It doesn't reinvent the shooter genre in gaming, but it does set the bar incredibly high for all games to follow. Simply put, everything it does, it does well.

We've beaten the game, yes, but there is still much to do. It's got nearly an unlimited amount of replay value and despite having played for a potentially hygienically unsafe amount of time today, we are now immediately delving back into the multiplayer.

If we don't show up at work tomorrow, fellow Times staffers, don't say we didn't warn you.