The good news is that I got my retail copy of Halo 3 today. Microsoft was very nice and sent out Limited Editions (the black metal two-disc case) for Saturday delivery. Super cool.
The bad news is that the game disc arrived scratched and will not play. The fancy metal case has very weak CD spindles in it, so the disc bounced around and scratched itself during transit. I opened a sealed package to find a damaged game.
The worst news is that two other media folks reported that their discs arrived scratched too. I guess theirs are not scratched to the point of not playing, but unfortunately mine is.
I have to do some radio interviews about the game on Monday morning, so I kind of need this to work. I can’t exactly take it back to the store, so I blew the $20 on a CD repair device and so far, no luck. I get about four minutes into the first mission and the game stops — disc unreadable. It still won’t play after three runs through the machine, so I will try the toothpaste trick, then try the machine again, and hope.
It happened to three of us, and it happened because of a poorly designed case. Is this going to be a larger problem? It would be not…good…at…all for there to be something wrong with Halo 3 in the wake of the three red lights repairs or the smoking wireless wheel repairs. Anything that causes a customer to open the box and scream “Son of a bitch!” is going to be bad news. Good lord, I hope it’s not going to be like this with every LE copy of the game.
Someone on my friends list sent me a note to say they were envious that I already had Halo 3. Well…um, don’t be.