Halo 3 hits shelves today

Along a back wall of the Wolves’ Den there was a heated competition in progress. Four TVs illuminated a long row of faces that varied between concentration, frustration, humor and pure joy.

This is a slice of the Halo community.

There are cheers, groans of defeat and shouts of tactical information.

“Two of ’em went rocks; there’s a sword and a sniper over there,” yelled Jim Richmond, a sophomore in materials engineering, as explosions and gunfire sounded through the speakers.

They all know the lingo, and they all know one another.

“You see ’em on campus, and you’re like, ‘hey, Assassin!'” said Brent Folks, an 2007 alumnus, referring to a friend’s in-game alias.

That was Halo 2, a first-person-shooter that had already become a gaming phenomenon.

Today, however, marks the release of Halo 3. The game was developed by Bungie Studios and published by Microsoft for the Xbox 360. The software giant expects Halo 3 to net more than $155 million by the end of the day, dethroning the cinema release of Spiderman 3, which holds the top box office record.

To non-gamers, the game’s release means more commotion in the Wolves’ Den starting tomorrow. It means a new flavor of Mountain Dew on store shelves. It means distracted boyfriends and the rattle of assault rifles through dorm walls when trying to sleep.

To the players, however, Halo 3 will mean much more.

The game marks the capstone to the Halo trilogy. As Bungie’s final draft for the series, the game includes vehicles and features cut from previous editions and allows gamers to finally finish the fight.

And fans said they want it to be perfect.

Brandon Johnson, a sophomore in aerospace engineering, said he has high hopes for the game. Known best in the Wolves’ Den by the alias “Seraph,” Johnson is a regular there. Players who frequent the game room in the basement of Talley know his name, his reputation and even when he’ll show up.

“They’ve refined it and added all this new stuff to it,” he said.

His primary focus is “definitely the multiplayer,” referring to the competitive side of the game that can include as many as 16 players.

However, when gamers first get their hands on Halo 3, the first order of business will be to “finish the fight” and experience the final chapter of the story.

“I will probably play the campaign first,” Johnson admitted.

In the Halo 3 campaign, humanity faces destruction as a crumbling covenant of alien races erupts into civil war and all parties race to control ancient artifacts buried in earth’s crust. In the midst of it all, the zombie-esque “Flood” continues its attempt to consume all sentient life.

After Halo 2 left gamers with lingering questions and a painful cliffhanger, fans said they are particularly eager to see how it all ends.

And this time, they can find out together.

For the first time in the Halo series, four players can explore the campaign cooperatively on a local area network or on Xbox Live, though only two players can share a single screen.

When gamers finish playing, they can take advantage of a new feature called “saved films” to watch a recording of the action from any angle. The mode includes options to use slow motion and even pause the action. When gamers find the right angle, they can upload high-resolution screenshots to bungie.net, the official Web site. Users can record from both the cooperative campaign and competitive multiplayer matches and share from one Xbox 360 to another.

Another new feature is a game mode called “Forge,” which allows players to add weapons, vehicles and other objects to multiplayer maps and move them around. In Forge, gamers can toggle between inventing and playing, within the same match.

If people ever get tired of tossing tanks at one another, they can save the modified multiplayer map and share it with friends.

For Johnson and other competitive players, that means the ability to tweak and fine-tune the arenas to their liking.

Once the maps are modified to perfection, it’s tournament time.

Talley operations manager Theo Kingsberry, a senior in electrical engineering, intends to have one organized for next week. Kingsberry said he hopes to make good use of the saved films feature to entertain onlookers between matches.