2 Worlds at War

I went to my sister's flat yesterday for the first time and we played Halo 3 together for the first time from 3pm till 1am with only a 2hr break for dinner and to watch The Kingdom.

Halo 3
It's an evolution not a revolution. The weapons are similar to Halo 2 and 3 and there are a few new vehicles such as a Judge Dredd-style bike and a jetpack. The missions are similar to Halo 2, even down to tackling armoured spiders by jumpling onboard and shooting out the engine core. The storyline consists of Master Chief teaming up with the Covenant Arbiter to defeat the Covenant Prophet. Co-op means someone has to play the Covenant, which I did not like. The graphics are a bit better than Halo 3 and the music is just as good.

The game is clearly built for online play as the offline version only has 10 levels and we completed 8. So, it's a short but pleasant game without the extension of online play.

The Kingdom
Micheal Mann does topicality with a film about the Middle East, specifically an FBI investigation into the shooting and bombings of Americans in The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. For those who need it, there's a short history lesson for the country and how the Brits & Yankees carved up the land and then came back to grab the oil. It's a reasonable film, painting a civilised portrait of the Saudi colonel, played by Ashraf Barhom, helping Jamie Foxx & Jennifer Garner's culturally insensitive infidels. Both performaces seemed enervated in the heat of the desert. Mann is my favourite director but The Kingdom, which he produced, isn't as good as my Mann favourites, Heat & Manhunter. Peter Berg directs.