I got the game at midnight, posted on BNet, played from midnight to 7:00, went to school, and played after school until 6:00 and beat the campaign on heroic. Multiplayer and firefight I haven't played yet, but it should be good and I'll edit my response in. The story was just incredible. On par with Halo: CE including all the nostalgia. Taken objectively from the nostalgia point of view (but still subjectively overall), it [i]far[/i] every single aspect about Halo 1 and Halo 3. It started out really boring, but I guess they had to put in the tutorial level, and then it got epic quickly and sharply in the last couple of missions. The pelican bomb was also a really emotional thing showing it really was humanity's last hope and it was their time to give it everything they had in their arsenal. The sound was epic. The sound effects were 10 times better than Halo 3, and although this sounds like a tiny thing, it was so much better that I actually could notice the difference. The music started out in the game with me thinking, "this is good, but where is the rest of it". It quickly built up, with the best pieces exclusively on the last two levels. I think some of the previous games had better soundtracks, but this one was certainly not bad, and it was not just good, it was great! The gameplay was incredible. The campaign was harder this time, and legendary will actually be a challenge, considering I got stuck a few times on Heroic. The length was much greater than the Halo 3 and two campaigns. They did the variety the way it should be. I mean, space battles just as good as games that are dedicated to those? And it didn't even hurt the core Halo gameplay, like what we feared from Bungie. My only complaint was how they completely disregarded canon from the books in almost every possible way. The weapons and small things like that, they at least made the excuse that they were prototypes from Reach, but some stuff in the game directly contradicted the previous story. From the Pillar of Autumn being on Reach, to Halsey knowing about Spartan IIIs, to Cortana being an ancient forerunner item and not an AI constructed based on Halsey's brain. I can't blame them though, as for the majority of Halo players, and as a standalone story to come full circle, it does extremely well. For those who read all the book though, it was a slap in the face. I guess I'll just accept the revised ones when they come out. Apparently though, some people say that the journal that comes with the legendary edition explains all of this. I'm not trying to complain, but I'm just going to pretend the books don't exist and have my own personal story line. This is an epic game!