I finally got my 360 back today. Well, not the same one, they wound up sending me a refurbished unit that’s actually older than the one I sent in. Though it has a model of DVD drive in it that wasn’t available when it was first made, so who knows how much of the internals have been replaced. As long as it has the new heatsink (it appears to) and works fine, I’ll be happy. It’s venting more hot air than the old one did, which indicates that the heatsink is indeed successfully moving more heat out, as it’s supposed to.

I only completed one chapter of Halo 3 before realizing I’d already missed a skull or two so far, so I might just restart, since it didn’t take very long anyway. Some differences from Halo 2 are already apparent: the Arbiter accompanies you and can help out a lot; there’s already at least one new weapon type, a rapid-firing alien pistol with a slight arc to the projectiles; the HUD curves a bit, a la Metroid Prime; there are now ‘equipment’ items you can pick up and use, like bubble shields; the Brutes have been redesigned and haven’t been as annoying as they were in 2 so far; and Grunts seem to be a lot more chatty.

And, of course, it looks a ton better than 2 did even on the PC, mainly thanks to a new lighting model and higher res textures. Getting used to the console controls after using the keyboard+mouse for 2 didn’t take as long as expected, though I still don’t feel accurate enough. Being able to aim precisely with the mouse and get headshots a lot was nice, and with the gamepad it feels like I waste too much ammo ‘sweeping’ around or trying to aim precisely and just missing. Multiplayer is also supposed to be vastly improved in 3, though I’ll focus on completing the campaign first. Might do a lot of that in co-op mode, though.

Otherwise, I spent most of the evening checking other stuff I missed out on while it was in for repairs, including various demos. Beautiful Katamari was pretty much exactly like how the PS2 games play, just in high-def, no real surprise there. Sega Rally is a bit too arcade-ish for me, and I still have to finish DiRT (which is more my style), so I’ll pass on it. Crash Of The Titans might be interesting, but the demo didn’t have any kind of tutorial on the controls, so I have no idea if I was missing out on something critical. The bit I managed to get through didn’t really show enough variety, either. It goes on the ‘maybe’ pile.

And I got a few more levels done in Eets: Chowdown, until the sound suddenly disappeared on me and trying to return to the dashboard caused it to freeze. The guide still worked and sound was restored once I got back to the dashboard, so I guess it was just a bug in Eets.

Now I still have to figure out what other downloadables I’ve missed in the meantime…