@StrategyKing2: He's referring to the "magnetism" effect.  In Halo, if you get your reticule very near a target or an a target. it'll be attracted to the target a bit.  It also ends with the result that your reticule also a degree of stickiness once on a target, that some people take advantage of when sniping (if you flick your reticule over a target it softly enough, it'll stick to that target.)

@TheBigFatJ: The most competitive parts of Halo 3 is definitely the multiplayer, where a lot of strategy and teamwork is involved in addition to aiming and grenading skill.  The competitive parts of the single player come from the arcade scoring, 5 difficulty modes and skull multipliers. 

You should also know that Halo features real difficulty levels, where the enemy AI increases, as opposed to MP3 where the enemy's stats are simply increased but they behave the same.  If you've played MP3 on its higher difficulty levels you know that the main result of the increased stats are long and tedious boss fights, especially if you're going for a low % run where you never have enough missiles to take out the bosses straight out and have to whittle away at them with your cannon.

Furthermore, I don't think anyone has come even close to beating any of the level sof Halo 3 on the highest difficult and all the skulls on, so the difficulty level can be made effectively made as arbitrarily difficult as you want.  Nonetheless, the multiplayer experience is really the meat of the game of the game and most relevant for comparison.

Metroid is an adventure game.  You must collect new power-ups to gain access to new areas of the game.  That said, it also has very heavy FPS elements.  Anyone watching the game would describe it as a FPS.  The whole game depends on you being able to shoot your enemies.

Why would being an adventure game exclude it from being "hardcore"?  Zelda is an adventure game, and Zelda is definitely a hardcore game.

I don't consider Halo to be hardcore.  Every frat boy who knows nothing about gaming still plays Halo.  Halo is a pretty casual FPS.  Not that that is a bad thing.  It has been a hugely successful game because of that.  Tons of people have played the games for hours on end, and I am one of them.

@OP:

I never noticed anything like that in Halo 1 or 2, and in my short time with Halo 3 I didn't notice it either.  I quess I don't think it is a problem then.  I do prefer the controls of Metroid though.  The remote gives you so much accuracy and freedom you just can't get with a regular controller.

Did they change what they do for Halo 3 then?  In Halo 1 and 2, the only differences between the difficulty levels were that the enemies took more damage, they were more accurate, the inflicted more damage, and they were quicker on the draw.  They behaved the same, but the enemy stats were boosted.  I think they may have also added more enemies as well.

Yes, the enemies actually act differently based on difficulty. 

@FightingGameGuy - I agree with all your points but Bungie did get rid of the 'swipe and snipe' stuff from Halo 2.

Very true, but many people in these and other forums seem to think that FPS games are supposed to be played only by the hardcore... Not true at all, when I was in high school there was this group of guys (including me) who often went to a nearby Internet/Games café to shoot a couple of rockets at each other in Quake 3. FPS is not a hardcore-only genre.

@TheBigFatJ: I don't notice the auto-aim that much, maybe because I'm playing the game differently (I more or less suck with dual analogs). I'm more annoyed by the framerate slowdowns, particularly in boss battles.

The reason Halo does it is becuase it is a console shotter. It's almost mandatory as it lack precises and full controls.

it doesnt only happen in halo 3 it happens in other console shooters also