I did the midnight thing at EB here. We had a slightly different system. People stood in line around 9 and were given fliers with a number on them. Then when we returned at 11:45 we were let into the store in groups of 10 in that order. They also raffled off prizes, but most of the prizes were lame and since the raffle started later than it was supposed to, people were getting agitated that they had to wait for the raffle to end. There were of course hundreds of sarcastic remarks and lots of uber geeks talking about sticky bombs to no end.
As for the game, I've only played the campaign mode so far and am not too far into it yet. So far it's fun, though not as good as I was expecting. The most interesting change for me is that in legendary mode, if either player dies in coop, the checkpoint is reloaded. This made it a bit too difficult for me and my friend. However, Heroic seems just a tad too easy, though that is what we are playing.
I don't like some of the weapons now. The SMG is almost worthless. The pistol is less useful than before, though still has its uses occasionally. I don't like that you can't shoot while remaining zoomed in with the pistol. I used that many a time. The plasma pistol seems weakend too, but it might just be that the enemies are harder to kill. The battle rifle and shotgun are really good, though, and the plasma rifle seems better.
Dual wielding is really nice and offers a lot of strategic choices. My favorite tactic is to get a plasma pistol in the off hand, charge it up, fire at an elite, then mow him down once his shields are down.
I'm sorry to say the AI is not great in Halo 2. I don't know if it's the complexity of the levels or what. They will often stand there and let you kill them, walk into walls, and that sort of thing. Not all the time or anything, but often enough to reduce the satisfaction of clearing an area.
As far as the level design... there were only a few occasions where I thought it was impressive. The rest were just your average boxy levels. The supposed city is so far pretty lame looking. Like something out of an ed wood movie.
The main reason I like the game quite a bit is just the frenzied pace of it. It seems to me that they were going less for the cool factor and more for the fun factor and to some degree the story.
One note, so far I think that playing as an elite is a lot more fun. The energy sword is 400,000 times better than the SMG as a secondary starting weapon.
