It's true. The first time I walked up to one of those my dad, brother and I just looked at each other. Never before have I said "I'm not going to say anything out loud about this now or ever, but that looks like a fucking sphincter" with a look, but there you go.
As for the game itself, I'd say it's equal parts dissapointment and satisfaction. It was way too short, and ridiculously easy (except for Legendary which they once again made retardedly difficult).
Storywise I feel it was less compelling than the others, I didn't get drawn in at all and really couldn't care less whether or not Cortana was rescued, and after the first few times those irritating bit where she pops up because... well irritating. On the plus side, the story itself was pretty good, and they 'ended' it well.
The gameplay was great. I know a lot of people complained about the enemies doing the same thing over and over in the first 2, but in this one, if you die odds are the enemies wil try something completely different. The AI is great. Fighting is fun, I could do it for hours. My only complaint is that that they seem to have forsaken most of the long range fighting and opportunities to plan and strategise, it almost seems like if you're not in a vehicle then you're fighting short range, unlike the other Halo's which has a fair bit of open areas and such to run around in, snipe, etc.
This is doubtlessly intentional, because the Brutes fight differently from the ELites. The Elites were smart, whereas the Brutes are reckless and aggressive, but the whole scheme made is feel more like Gears of War than Halo.
They overdid it with the new weapons and vehicles, having so many is pointless because:
a) Not only do you not need them all, but I went through the entire campaign several times without using some of them.
b) Some of them essentially do the same thing as others, they just look different.
All in all, it was a great attempt by Bungie, but it's impossible to live up to all the hype that was throws out. If I had picked this up not knowing what it is, I'd probably give it a 9 out of 10. But as the matter lies I'm going with a 7.5 .
I know the collective opinion of the Halo series isn't exactly high here, but if anyone else has played it... what do you think?