The Master Chief Signal

Fans and media were out in full force last night, all waiting for the launch of Halo 3 . I was down at the Dundas Square Best Buy to check out the nights happenings, and quite a bit was going on. Walking from Yonge St. and Dundas the crowd was quite noticeable, and arriving at Xbox Canada's Halo 3 event tent, the sound was pumping and the atmosphere was high. Inside the tent, groups of people were taking each other on in Red vs. Blue eight-on-eight multiplayer. Major League Gaming Canada was also on hand to promote the upcoming MLG Canadian Open (November 2 ^nd to 4 ^th at the Direct Energy Centre), and MLG Canada's own Nelson “G-SpOt” Triana (Canada's top ranked gamer) was giving challengers a lesson in humility, taking them one-on-one and winning every time (he had only started playing Halo 3 earlier that day).

“ Just like everybody else, I'm playing Halo 3 for the first time,” said “G-SpOt” about his presence at the launch event last night, “but because I'm Canada's top gamer, I have to play against the challengers. They have my section and a different section. Whoever wins in the different section comes to me and I play against them one-on-one. So far I haven't lost. The only person I've actually lost to is my own teammate, TheBo. He's pretty nasty at Halo 3 . He's definitely a good player, but I'll get to him.”

When asked about the launch of Halo 3 he said, “I'm very excited. As soon as I get the game, I'm not even going to go on Xbox Live to play the multiplayer. I'm going to play the campaign story first, until I finish it, just because I'm curious to see what happens. From then I'm probably end up playing on Xbox Live to play against the rest of the world.”

A Spartan leads the pre-order lineup inside.

Off to the side, the lineup started to form in front of the doors at Best Buy. The numbers were small at first, but the closer it got to midnight, the bigger the line grew. By midnight, the crowd had been syphoned into a neat lineup faced towards Best Buy. Finally, just a few minutes before midnight, the pre-order crowd, who were in a separate lineup, were marched in, lead by a Spartan. Being handed the first Legendary Edition, the first person in line triumphantly raised it for all to see, just before dashing to the registers to pay for it. Soon after, the rest of the crowd was allowed in (a few at a time, so everything was calm) and, once they got their copy everyone rushed home to play.