The game has finally made it officially to this part of the world as well, and since the game's presence on the market isn't hot news anymore, something had to be done to get everyone's attention. What could that 'something' be if not a Halo 3 multiplayer competition?

16 Editorial staff members were supposed to make an appearance as Master Chiefs (no, not wearing Spartan armors) at the Media Galaxy store, Bucharest, Romania, for the big showdown, but not all could make it. Thus, organizers TNT Games and Media Galaxy had to divide the contestants evenly, again, and rewrite all rules. Not wanting to waste any time as the organizers were busy checking the hardware and everything, I decided to take a few pictures of what looked worth taking a picture of. Yes, it wasn't very difficult to decide what to start with, as you can see...

Eight machines were rigged in a circle so everyone would stay focused on their own screen, but I'm sure that you know how these things go if you've ever attended a competition like this. So when the formalities were over, each one of us grabbed a controller and started the 10 minute practice session.

As you can imagine, some had never even played the game, while others knew every square inch of every map, so an hour of gameplay (divided by three 20-minute rounds) was more than enough to decide who could shoot a weapon, throw a grenade and drive a vehicle at the same time and who was the sucker getting in the way of them. But hey, no one should miss out on Halo 3 so this was not an excuse for losing. The winner of course, was awarded an Xbox 360 (Core), while second and third places received an Xbox 360 controller each and a bunch of games respectively. Places 4 to 8 received Halo 3 copies.

Halo 3 brought Bungie and Microsoft Games Studios some $170 million in its first 24 hours in the wild. After a week of non stop Xbox Live gameplay, groups that specialize in figures confirmed an amazing 300 million dollars worth of sales as far as Bungie's FPS was concerned. According to several reports, the Halo 3 phenomenon had even kicked Titanic's a*s at first week sales.

And, as the game's mostly played online, the Xbox 360's Internet service, Xbox Live, has also seen a record being broken, as 2.7 million gamers worldwide had logged on to LIVE to take the experience online - that's more than one third of the 7 million Xbox 360 gamer userbase.

Here are more pictures below and some gameplay footage from the event of course.


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