Forgive me if I’m a little over-stimulated at the moment – put it down to the two cups of coffee I drank earlier or, more probable, a bit of residual excitement from the recent Halo 3 event in Amsterdam, where the single-player Campaign Mode was on fully playable display – and fully played it was too! We have several reports from the event peppered around the site, including an exclusive private chat with the guys from Bungie. Be sure to check them out.

Meanwhile I can tell you that Halo 3 has just become the fastest-selling pre-ordered game in history, with over one million global pre-sales so far. Needless to say the ‘Legendary Edition’ has generated a lot of interest – must be something to do with the Spartan Mjolnir Mark IV helmet included. It just begs to be owned!

It’s hard to imagine that anything could hold a candle to Halo 3, but we have a couple of excellent candidates for the long weeks leading up to September’s launch. How about Mistwalker’s Blue Dragon – a massive role-playing adventure from the magical mind of Final Fantasy creator, Hironobu Sakaguchi, with a little help from the guy who designed the Dragon Ball Z characters. And then we have Bioshock, which is a dank and atmospheric delight that will please FPS fans who like to engage their brains as well as their trigger-finger. Both games have had the critics in a froth recently – Blue Dragon receiving a near-perfect 37/40 in Japan’s prestigious Famitsu magazine.

So which one to buy? We don’t envy you the choice. But then again two more brilliant games for the Xbox 360 this summer – that’s a nice problem to have, isn’t it!

By Mark Eveleigh, Xbox.com Editor, Gamertag: Making Sparks