Maybe EDGE is just being more lenient, the fact that Halo 3 got a 10/10 score is proof, it were just a smoother version of Halo 2.
YES THANK YOU. seriously though, i talked to a lot of people who really like halo and they didn't like a lot of things they did to Halo 3, like some of the game tweaks. For on of the big things was the shield strength reduction.