I Don't have an overall impression of the game yet cause I only had about 30 minutes of play time before coming to work today.
I Got my copies at EB games in Redmond. My wife (Elena) being the great wife that she is was willing to get a number and stand in line just so that my son and I could see first hand what all the excitement was about. She happened to draw #1 so she ended up being given some cool stuff along with getting us our coveted copy of Halo 2.
Elena said that it was a pretty exciting event, 600 people lined up to by a video game at 12:00 midnight, she was amazed at how jazzed people were. Eb games was a gracious host providing pizza, cow chip cookies, etc… to those who waited.
I hope the game lives up to the hype!