Today, we welcome back the soon-to-be-married Totilo to discuss the virtues and vices of Bungie's Halo 3 multiplayer beta, created for the Xbox 360. The beta officially began on May 16th, but we and a slew of our fellow journalists got our hands on it early; first at a series of promotional events on May 11th, after which we were given an early access code to download the beta for ourselves. In the first part of our "previously recorded" email exchange with Totilo, we examine why in-person multiplayer gaming might be more engaging than its online counterpart and attempt to determine which sport or cultural phenomenon Halo most resembles. Some excerpts:

N'Gai Croal: My heretofore unexplored lack of interest in online multiplayer didn't change much with the release of the PlayStation 2 or the Xbox; save for playing a handful of games with publicists and fellow journalists at industry events and online hands-on sessions, or dabbling with a few more titles shortly after they shipped, I was pretty much M.I.A., or AWOL, depending on how you look at it. And with the exception of a few quick bouts of Gears of War and Resistance: Fall of Man, the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3 simply haven't forged in me the love of online multiplayer that warms the hearts of so many gamers. But in the interest of Vs. Mode, I'm willing to use the Halo 3 multiplayer beta as a springboard to see whether there's a place for me somewhere in this vast connected arena.

Stephen Totilo: Maybe Halo isn't a sport and maybe it shouldn't be treated as if it can be as pure as one. Maybe it's more like "Survivor." I used to watch it regularly, and back when I did I noticed that the rules changed regularly. Those fundamental voting rules didn't, but many of the specific day-to-day ones did. Challenges changed. Tribes were shuffled. Monkey wrenches were thrown. Halo multiplayer games have always been full of tribal challenges: Capture the Flag, Slayer Deathmatch, King of the Hill. We've got VIP mode and Oddball mode. The challenges get mixed every time, even if getting voted off the island consistently involves getting tagging from a hop-and-shoot enemy. If Halo isn't baseball; if Halo isn't basketball; if it's "Survivor," then, yes, it could use more of a remix.

Click on the link below to read Round 1 of our exchange in its entirety.

God of War II

Note: This email exchange with MTV News reporter Stephen Totilo ran on N'Gai Croal's Level Up, in four separate installments, from March 26th-29th 2007. We now present it here in its entirety, under a single permalink, for easier printing, emailing and archival purposes.

1. GOV...of Illinois spent $1 million on failed videogame ban
2. MMO...report, weekly, from Michael Zenke and 1UP.com
3. FPS...Would you shoot a real, live Iraqi from your computer?
4. HOW...Lord British celebrated his 45th birthday
5. RIM...A look at MMO business practices in China
6. RND...Prof to Dept. of Homeland Security: Look at me!