Over the weekend, David at MyArcadePlanet tossed around the idea that the Halo 3 beta actually hurt the game and killed off much of its hype. He feels that the beta was both a fun and entertaining experience, but his hands on time with the game released much of the built up Halo 3 excitement within' him. His personal stash of Halo 3 hype is gone.

And we can agree with David to some extent, because Bungie is treating the Halo 3 release differently than its we're tight lipped, no one can touch our game, Halo 2 launch. So, we're sure some fans' hypometer may be running lower since they got hands on time and know what to expect, even if it was only a little taste of what's to come. But on the other side of the coin is that the beta has actually increased the hype in other fans' eyes, because they loved their time playing the beta and want to see, learn, and play more. But we can all agree that the Halo 3 beta has had some effect on those who played it, good or bad.

But what about you. Did playing the beta increase or decrease your excitement (and overall hype) for Halo 3?

Not satisfied with gigantic numbers and statistics? Bungie has posted a brief article detailing the team's thoughts on the Halo 3 beta. We must share one more number first, though. Remember those twelve million hours that were logged into the beta? According to Bungie, 816 years worth of that time was spent in-game. Yowza. Back to the task at hand, the Bungie team is pleased with the information gleaned from the beta. Network bugs in particular were weeded out very effectively. However, those of you hoping for any drastic weapon changes may be disappointed, as the team will leave the weapons mostly the same. There will be minor tweaks, of course, but don't expect anything drastic. Finally, the team is definitely aware of the many map escaping exploits (particularly Banshee ... in ... Space) and plans to seal the maps a little tighter for the retail release. Still, Bungie knows that fans are dedicated to finding ways around such measures, and has no illusions that they won't. Hit the "read" link for the full article.

Update: Clarified Bungie's claim of 816 hours worth of play time.

Now that the Halo 3 beta has been over with for over 72 hours, some statistics for those number crunchers out there to feast upon. First off, with 820,000 unique gamertags playing online, that's a lot of copies of Crackdown, probably well over 750,000 after you deduct the initial beta registrants, 13,333 "Rule of 3" winners, and Friends and Family testers. Those gamers also logged twelve million hours of play time in the three weeks, with 350 terabytes of data being transfered across live, from downloading the beta, as well as possibly bandwidth for games, and file share movies. Either way, that's pretty impressive.

From day one Halo fans have been wondering what's hiding under that Spartan helmet and what our hero really looks like. And thanks to the Halo 3 beta and some nice camera work, fans were able to position the Mongoose camera inside the helmet of another player. The result, a look at a fully modeled face behind the visor featuring some pale skin and glowing eyes. True, it isn't the best look behind the helmet and one could make the argument that it's just a generic multiplayer model and not our Master Chief. But we can't help but take this one step further and fantasize about the possibility that Master Chief will be taking his helmet off this September seeing that Bungie went through the work to model faces. Speaking of which, would you be down with seeing the person behind the helmet or do you think Master Chief's badass appeal comes from his semi-hidden look?

[Via Game Stooge]

The Halo 3 beta wrapped up earlier this morning and for the most part everything was grand. That is except for one major issue that has been taunting us with an evil grin since first playing the beta ... lack of an open chat system. True, open chat has never been a part of the Halo franchise, which opts instead for a push to talk system, but with the trilogy coming to an end it's a feature that needs to be included. Who really likes pressing a button to talk anyway? So, we're asking you for your help. We want you to comment on this post stating that you support an open voice chat system in Halo 3 multiplayer and want Bungie to get rid of the push to talk mess. We'll make sure the big guys over at Bungie see this post and all the fanboy support for opening up Halo 3's chat. Let's band together and fight this push to talk madness, comment away fanboys and let's make a change! Hoorah!

But wait, you aren't sold on the whole open chat idea? Well, after the break we've posted a few reasons why open chat just makes sense and why it will make Halo 3 a better game. Trust us, push to talk is so 1977.

Yes, we had a rough start at the beginning, but we soon got into the swing of things and have had a lot of fun these past few weeks as tripmines exploded, Banshees flew out into space, and custom games were created. But all the Halo 3 beta goodness will come to an end tonight as Bungie pulls the metaphorical plug at midnight pacific time. So we advise everyone to jump online, play a few games, and pull off a few last Spartan laser kills, because you'll have to wait a few months to get your next Halo 3 fix. We bid you fine farewell Halo 3 beta, you were all that we had hoped for and more. We'll see you in September.

A couple weeks back we showed you video footage of the Banshee "... in ... space!" This time involves the Needler, which as you may have noticed since the release of the beta, has gotten a significant boost of power as it is not dual wieldable as found in Halo 2. Whenever in High Grounds on Snowbound, nabbing a few needling kills always adds a slightly more satisfactory experience to you killing spree. So, where does the extraterrestrial extension come into play here? You'll just have to watch and see. In spite of the source, it's still pretty catchy in this context. Enjoy!

Game Daily whipped together a list of what they think the top five Halo 3 beta weapons are in their current state. Making the list at number five is the slightly less powerful Rocket Launcher with the Chaingun, Brute Spiker and Shotgun all making an appearance. And what's Game Daily's favorite Halo 3 beta weapon that they feel has the most pwnability? Old trusty herself, the sniper rifle. Though, we can't help but notice that a few of our favorite weapons are absent from their list including the beefed up Needler, the punishing Spartan Laser and the good-in-any-situation Carbine. So, we can't help but disagree.

Now we ask you, fellow fanboys, what are your top five Halo 3 beta weapons? Missile Pod need not apply.

What better way to start off your Monday (here in the Western Hemisphere anyway) than with a hilarious YouTube video? No better way, that's what! The fact that it presents a startlingly accurate portrait of Halo on Xbox Live is just a bonus. We present to you Master Chief Sucks at Halo. If any of you have ever played a significant amount of Halo online, then many parts of this video are likely to strike a familiar chord. Without spoiling anything, we suggest you go ahead and watch. (Warning: NSFW. lololololololllololollolol.)

[Via Joystiq. Thanks, Jayman007]

More Halo 3 beta code mining has resulted in the finding of what looks to be the names of all of the multiplayer maps that we'll be playing in Halo 3. The 7th Columnist, with the help of a few others, discovered the map names while searching through the code for juicy Halo 3 information. There's our beta maps Valhalla, Snowbound, and High Ground listed and even recently announced maps Last Resort and Shrine. But there's others we haven't heard about like Chill, Construct and Warthog Inc that make our imaginations run wild. Full list of all twelve Halo 3 map names after the break.

They say all good things must come to an end, and that remains true for us here at Xbox 360 Fanboy. The fantabulous Halo 3 beta T-shirt giveaway has come to an end. Before we bid a fond farewell to our week-long giveaway, we must announce the final winner, who will no doubt accept his or her T-shirt with quiet dignity and grace. The winner of our final shirt, of Large size and brown hue, is ... Gorkinlot, who "likey the free." We all do buddy, we all do. Congratulations, Gorkinlot, we'll be contacting you shortly.

We'd like to thank everyone who participated in the giveaway. We'd also like to let you know that we have many more giveaways planned for the coming weeks and months. Stay tuned to X3F and you could be a winner too.

Ever since the first Halo 3 ViDoc surfaced, fanboys everywhere have been complaining that Halo 3's graphics may not be up to snuff. Speaking to Next-Gen, Bungie's Frank O'Connor offers some hope for ailing fans. First, he does note that multiplayer will always be geared towards performance before graphical wizardry. After all, what's the point of beautiful multiplayer if the framerate is unplayable? Still, O'Connor says that there will be "a few nifty graphical improvements in multiplayer," though he notes that he expects the real graphical polish will best be displayed by the single-player campaign.

Are you at all bothered by Halo 3's graphics so far, or are you too busy enjoying yourself?

For the most part, MTV's Stephen Totilo and N'Gai Croal of Newsweek don't seem to like Halo 3. In a new series of back-and-forth journalism called Vs., these two are debating the merits of Halo 3"s multiplayer. There have been two parts to the article so far, and right now the consensus is essentially that Halo 3 is too hard. Specifically, learning Halo 3 can be unforgiving. Unfortunately, for many Halo players, this is completely true. There are no training modes, unless you count the campaign. Most people aren't concerned with teaching others how to play either. This leaves the uninitiated to absorb weapon strategies, map layouts, and gametypes by themselves, which can be a daunting task. Then again, Croal and Totilo also have yet to figure out how to initiate team speak (hint: press any direction on the D-pad, fellas).

We have to point out, though, that the Halo 3 multiplayer beta really isn't the best arena to judge Halo 3's multiplayer. That may sound strange, given that it is a multiplayer beta after all, but it's true. Right now, the Halo 3 beta is crowded with a relatively small sample of Halo fanatics (several million short of the projected pre-order numbers). These are people who live and breathe Halo, people who went through the Rule of Three, people who spent $60 on Crackdown just to play the beta. Naturally, you're going to be running into lots of people who are better than you. This smaller sampling also limits the effectiveness of the ranking system, as there are fewer people with smaller amounts of skill disparity. Also, and this is important considering N'Gai's misty-eyed memories of LAN parties gone by, there are no custom games in the beta (not officially anyway). Given that N'Gai is vocal about his displeasure at playing with strangers, custom games with friends sound like just what the doctor ordered.

If Stephen or N'Gai is reading this, we'd be happy to show you both some friendly matches of Halo. The rest of you can read parts 1 and 2 of the series below.

[Via HBO]

Read part 1
Read part 2

Update: This giveaway is now closed. To see the winner, click here. To enter the latest giveaway, click here.

This is it folks, the final day of our Halo 3 beta T-shirt extrabonanza. Let's not much up this post with extra wordiness. Time to announce the winner of yesterday's Large brown T-shirt. The winner is ... sam johnston, who proudly proclaims that he is the winner. How did he know? Congratulations, sam johnston, we'll be contacting you soon.

Now, on to the last, final, and ultimate T-shirt to be given away. Today's shirt is brown, size Large. If you'd like to get your grubby little mitts on it (or your delicate, clean mitts), all you have to do is submit a comment on this post (limit one entry per person. Limited to U.S. residents 18 and older). Leave your comment and good luck!

Click here for the Official Halo 3 beta T-shirt Giveaway rules

After the secret got out that custom games were accessible in the Halo 3 beta, it hasn't taken long for more vehicles and weapons to be revealed. Of course, the latest GamePro has some official information, but we've got these positively unofficial videos. The first video, embedded above, shows off the Energy Sword as it appears in Halo 3. It's noteworthy that the sword does have a battery. If you look at the top right corner, you'll notice that the charge decreases as the player makes successful hits. Also displayed in the video, it seems that movement speed has been increased and gravity decreased, making for a sort of Benny Hill version of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Check out the second video, which features a Wraith tank, after the break.