Of course this game has been hyped a lot, it's MS' flagship title, what else did you expect. From what I've read it's just a mediocre game in most departments with the exception of replay value because of the outstanding multiplayer features.
It's probably a very fun game, but with some flaws and especially the single player game, like hushy reported, I wonder if all the superbly high ratings are justified. I mean, it's far from a perfect game so the scores at Metacritic are a bit misleading. Anything close to a 10 should be considered near perfect and covering all bases, Halo 3 does not, again, judging from the nuances made by people who played the game.
Just my impression
