Halo 3- shifting opinions

Ok, my first blog post, and my first review. The topic? The first game or movie to gross $300m in it's first weekend, Halo 3.
When i had first intended to review this game about two weeks ago, being the kind of ratings-obsessed person that i am, i was thinking i'd give it at least a 9; possibly not one the all-time greats like ocarina of time or deus ex, but not very far off either. The second game i played on a 56" hd-ready tv, i was initially blown away by it's beauty, especially in 1 player w/o the split-screen (tho the player models were a bit less impressive than the scenary, which, bar the slightly jaggy edges, was magnificient).
In addition, the a couple of problems that annoyed me so much when playing the first two games seem to have been fixed. Firstly, masterchief (a stupid name, but it's too late to fix that) can now turn his head faster than the average pensioner. In previous installments, the look sensitivity had to be maxed out to make things bearable. One thing that previously couldn't be fixed, was the zimmer-frame speed at which masterchief ran. Thankfully, masterchief now moves faster than a one-legged OAP.
Here's my theory for the more youthful masterchief: cloning. "Spartans" (the space-marine type uber-soldier which masterchief is one of) are cloned on earth and shipped off to the battlefield in sub-light speed ships. Thus, by the time he reached the settings of the first 2 games, masterchief was almost 100 and kept alive by his biohazard suit's built-in life support (i wonder what happens if he needs to use the toilet mid-mission.... probably some sort of hatch). Of course, the third game is on earth, some no shipping was necessary, so the Spartan in Halo 3 is still young.

Another huge improvement was the fact that the 360's controller is much more logically designed and user-friendly than the hideous controller used for the first xbox (especially the original behemoth). The fact that i played the game shortly after trying the rather disappointingly monotonous Dead Rising didn't do my opinion of the game any harm either.

With all these improvements made it possible for me to fully appreciate all the features that, on paper at least, made the first two games sound like a lot of fun; the co-op mode, the numerous and varied guns and grenad, the tanks, jeeps and hovercopter-things and the larges set-piece battles with an impressive number of allies.

Since then, two weeks have passed, and the fact that there's only ten hours of play in the normal difficulty setting means has meant that it gets a bit repetitive after a while, though changing the difficulty does spice things up quite a bit, so it still highly replayable, though i found the levels featuring the endless hordes of The Flood to be, for the most part, mindnumbingly boring and dull enough the first time round.
Overall though, it's still a very entertaining game, so I'm thinking 7 1/2- 8 out of 10, so let's say 7.75/10 :) .