Today I've been reading an interesting Wired article about Halo 3. I strongly recommend to you, because it's very interesting how Microsoft has setup a "gamers lab" to test their responses to playing games.
They use in-game data (hot-zones for maps, statistics,...), playing sessions recorded in first person view and even videocameras recording the players reactions. Seems that they're taking very seriously the "fun" component of the game.
Apart from little bits of text which smell like unnecessary flatteries to Bungie, in general the article is quite good, explaining the problems the studio had when developing Halo 2, and they made the same point I always say when talking about Halo franchise: Part of it's success was that there was no other good FPS in the console market.
Probably both Halo's have been a disaster on the PC, mostly because there are lots of FPS much better, both in history (Unreal, Half-Life, to mention a few) and in multiplayer (Unreal Tournament, CounterStrike, Quake series...). The main character name is the most stupid one I've ever heard of, but hey, if game sells, cheers to them.
But still seems that Halo 3 may be better, as they are focusing on making a "perfect" title both in singleplayer and multiplayer. While in single player I doubt it will shine too much (having The Darkness, Bioshock or the incoming Crysis), adding the high number of franchise fans with the success of XBox Live it will become a must-have for lots of console owners.
I love FPS and although I prefer playing it on the pc (Mouse + Keyboard will never, ever be defeated with a gamepad), but I'll probably give it a try.
Meanwhile... I'll return to Rapture, I've got more little sisters to save... or to harvest, who knows ;)