Curse living in the UK! As if not having peanut butter M&Ms, GAP Sweatshirts and more TV channels than you can poke a stick at isn’t enough, the US also got their hands on Halo 3 a full day ahead of us. And it’s not just the Yanks we’re sending virtual envious glares at, it’s also the suntanned Kiwis and Aussies who are crossed off our Christmas card lists too. Bah humbug.

Not that us folk living in the UK and Europe have that much longer to wait, as the hugely-anticipated Game Of The Year is dropping into town tonight, with 1,000 stores across the UK extending their opening hours for the hordes of sweaty gamers expected. Of course, some of you may already have finished the last chapter in the trilogy by Bungie, as both Tesco and Argos somehow ‘accidentally’ managed to sell copies before the launch date. “Oh, sorry, mister, a unicorn ran into the store, grabbed several copies from the box, and placed them on the shelf, I didn’t know what to do!”

Let’s take a look at some of the carnage Halo 3 fanboys have wreaked across stores in the US, Australia and New Zealand in the last 12 hours or so…