Even Halo, despite its obvious visual appeal, has a long ways to go as things like the trees that Matt Soell has described in his updates were not present as they needed to be tweaked for the most recent build. To put it simply, the best is yet to come. Halo is not only technically impressive but all that power has been put to excellent use. Within my first minute of play I found myself being sucked in as I hopped out of my jeep and watched the Covenant quickly disperse to find cover and shoot off their first defensive volley in relative safety. The only thing I can really liken it to is taking part in the laser battles from the early Star Wars movies.
Nothing touches Halo graphically.
Metal structures glisten and your gun's muzzle flashes with each shot revealing absolutely stunning, bump-mapped surfaces. Even something as simple as the lights of the Jeep catch your eye as they light up the world perfectly. Halo is the first game to give me the feeling that I was actually playing inside of a real world and not in a graphical world populated with extraordinary eye-candy. After the transition from the PC to the Xbox, many concerns were raised over the controls. I was very pleased to find that I was able to pick up the controls in less than a minute and was pulling off headshots after 5 minutes of gameplay.