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February 2005

February 2005 Archived News

News February 28 2005

It's Probably Not True
A very large number of people have pointed us to this article on IGN. This page reports that, allegedly, Microsoft and Bungie are already working on Halo 3, and that it will be timed to coincide with the release of the PS3 (expected in early 2006, but Sony hasn't fixed a date yet). Remember, this is a rumor- there is absolutely no evidence for this anywhere else on the net. Try to think of it the same way as you would a Halo movie story. (Count Zero 23:46:27 UTC) (permalink)

Old and Canny beats Young and Stupid every time
Over at Geezer Gamers, there's a writeup of a game in which a team tried to glitch their way to victory - but didn't count on the tenacity of geezers. (Go geezers!) Worth a read because it points out the sort of unsportsmanlike conduct you can run into on XBL - and what can be done to counteract that conduct. First brought to our attention by 3Suns, but I was goaded into posting by Dave Friesen. Go read. (Louis Wu 17:45:48 UTC) (permalink)

Game With Fame - Writ Large
Matt Stum wrote to let us know about playroster.com - a new network that is billing itself as 'the World's First Online Celebrity Gaming Network'. Their launch title will be Halo 2 - and their goal is to hook you up with celebrities playing online. They plan to list what celebrities are online at any given time (along with their gamertags), plus scheduled gaming events and live streaming video of celebrity sessions. This looks like an expansion of the existing (Microsoft-run) Game with Fame program - done by a third party. It's unclear from what's online at the moment how much of this is actually sanctioned by the celebrities they'll be tracking. If you sign up now, you get a free 12 month membership; once the offer expires, you'll have to pay to get in. (Louis Wu 16:42:48 UTC) (permalink)

Washed Down With 117 Up.
Today's One One Se7en shows that you can, indeed, take a joke too far. (Louis Wu 14:55:56 UTC) (permalink)

More tournaments
A couple of tourneys came across our inbox recently... Michael M. pointed out one that's taking place in New Zealand - visit the Halo 2 Battle website for more details. (It's happening the first two weekends in April.) And Kevin Bunch pointed out a pair of tourneys being run by MVP Gaming in Michigan; end of April/Early May, Halo and Halo 2, $70/$120 per 4-man team to register (for one or both tourneys, respectively), $1000/tourney payout. Details can be found on the tournament web page. New Zealand and Central US - Halo gaming, spanning the globe! (Louis Wu 13:42:03 UTC) (permalink)

The Pillar of Autumn, Realized
Stephen Loftus has spent an awful lot of time studying the intricacies of the Halo world - to a degree that some might consider fanatical. In the coming weeks, we'll be bringing you a variety of his speculations and analyses... but to start with, we've put up a page devoted to a 1/1000 scale model of the Pillar of Autumn he's building. This is a work-in-progress; at this point, it's a skeleton of the ship. The detail, however, is astounding... check it out! (Louis Wu 00:00:57 UTC) (permalink)

News February 27 2005

Not a very good day to be Church...
Red vs Blue episode 50 has been posted for sponsors; it's MASSIVE. 124-129 mb, depending on format... 16 and a half minutes of revisionist history. A whole bunch of mysteries from Season One are finally cleared up - sort of. Awesome episode, overall... for everyone except Shishka. If you're not a sponsor, this should be available by mid-week. Thanks to all who wrote in to let us know. (Louis Wu 18:44:02 UTC) (permalink)

On the money... in some places
Jillybean sifted through some forum posts and emails to put up another few tidbits on the Halo Story page today; a novels-based morsel commented on by Eric Trautmann himself, along with some speculation about the mechanism behind Halo's offensive capabilities. Go read! (Louis Wu 17:10:05 UTC) (permalink)

What's that big yellow thing?
Today's Prickly City comic looks at one of the pitfalls of pushing the visuals envelope... thanks, pirate stunn. (Louis Wu 17:02:12 UTC) (permalink)

Halo 2 as a serious player
HALOChat has also posted an interview with a high-ranking Halo 2 player - it's described as part 1 of 3 of 'Speaking with a Pro'... but from reading the interview, it looks like cAPPy204 is just someone who plays a lot. (I can't see anything that suggests that he does this for money anywhere.) Comments can go in the forum thread HALOChat started to announce this. (Louis Wu 16:39:56 UTC) (permalink)

Tsquared talks to MLG
MLGPro has turned the Pro-Player Spotlight on Tsquared, a 17-year-old signed MLG player. Go read for a taste of what it's like to be young and a professional gamer. Thanks, 3Suns. (Louis Wu 15:12:01 UTC) (permalink)

Scotland Gaming
We got a note from Jim Smith that there'll be a Running Riot tourney happening at the Sauchiehall GameStation (upstairs of the Sports Cafe Glasgow) in Glasgow, Scotland, on March 7th. Registration opens at 7, gaming happens until midnight. There's a small entrance fee. More details can be had by contacting running_riot@btopenworld.com. (Louis Wu 15:07:25 UTC) (permalink)

News February 26 2005

Unintended Consequences
Dennis Powers dropped us a note to let us know that Episode 6 of the Halo CE Chronicles has been released - 3:49, 4.2 mb, in Flash video format. The Spartan takes on the Covenant troops that killed his friend, and finds he's not just a killing machine. Update: Dennis writes to say bandwidth might be limited at the start; if the stream is slow, try again later. Thanks! (Louis Wu 21:27:31 UTC) (permalink)

MC Suit Progress
Not long ago, we put up a page detailing the progress Alan James has been making with a new MC suit he's building. He just sent us a couple of shots of the gun he's building to go with it - we've added them to the page. Great start! (Louis Wu 19:05:59 UTC) (permalink)

Brain Ninjas
FugitiveSoldier and some buddies played a marathon game of Zombies, and the resultant film is pretty funny; Brain Ninjas is just under 5 minutes of Benny Hill-type humor (complete with soundtrack), zombies chasing a poor living spartan. Latest thread for this can be found here on our forum; the movie is WMP9 format, 20.6 mb. adrenaline786 has tossed up a mirror, and we added a pair more - both for the original WMP9 (mythica.org | bungie.org), and for a QuickTime version (20.7 mb, mythica.org | bungie.org). Update: Chester the Destroyer has mirrored the WMP9 version, as well. (Louis Wu 18:08:08 UTC) (permalink)

Stop Motion Reload
KillR posted a small Battle Rifle Functions video in our forum - stop-motion footage of a White MC action figure and his Battle Rifle. Pretty nice work! I've tossed up both the original WMP9 version (1.5 mb) and a QuickTime version (1.9 mb) on local servers, in case his bandwidth runs out. (Louis Wu 17:28:10 UTC) (permalink)

A power shift
After War episode 14 has been posted over at Black Arts Studios; the story's getting a bit difficult to understand, but hang in there. Thanks, Kevin. (Louis Wu 17:21:32 UTC) (permalink)

Saturday Stories
Small buildup of Fan Fiction pieces during the time I was gone; 26 new items added today. (There was some talk on the forum about starting to call it Fan Literature, so that searches for Fan Fiction in the news wouldn't return more than the 777 items written before today... but no, we'll stick with what works. Consider this the first post in the SECOND batch of 777 fan-fiction-related news posts.) (Louis Wu 16:07:00 UTC) (permalink)

News February 25 2005

GSJ Rocks.
MrJukes has been busy - there are two more Jump Sessions and a pretty fun flag cap on his Trick Jumping site. Some pretty cool stuff in that new one... go start downloading! Update: oops - I should have reminded people that we've mirrored the entire site - if you have trouble getting to the original (like, say, now, when rabid fans like you have brought it to its knees), you can grab files from us. (Louis Wu 23:25:28 UTC) (permalink)

LEVEL 28 MORONS/LOSERS
The Bungie Weekly What's Update is up, and boy is Frankie mad. Steaming mad. Luckily for us, however, he put aside his boiling rage long enough for another peek into the vast intellectual emptiness that is his mailbox, some answers to some questions, and an old-skool Mister Chief, simple-style. (mnemesis 23:01:32 UTC) (permalink)

G4 broadcasts 3 Doors Down GwF
A couple of weeks ago, we mentioned the Game with Fame event with 3 Doors Down - a couple of Los Angelenos got the chance to play, and G4 filmed it. It was broadcast yesterday on the show Screen Savers for the first time - sorry about the short notice. Never fear, though - it's on again on Sunday, February 27, at 12am ET/9 pm PT, or your can watch it online (Flash video format) at G4's website. Check out 3 Doors Down getting schooled by 23-year-old Katrina L. Thanks, TriXie! (Louis Wu 22:57:34 UTC) (permalink)

BBQ (and more)
Mr Smiley has interviewed CJ Cowan, Cinematic Designer on the Halo 2 team. Where he came from, what he does, what's tough and what's not. Meaty - go read, and get inside the head of a Bungie cinematographer! Update: credit for the interview goes to cmwak1, not mr smiley. (Louis Wu 19:24:42 UTC) (permalink)

Store Stocks Sufficient Swag! Spend Simoleons!
The Bungie Store has re-stocked some of their supplies, so if you're in the mood for a tall, cool drink in a Legendary Beer Stein while wearing the stylish Bucket Hat, go to it. Also available (finally), Drone, MC, White Spartan, and Warthog action figures! Woo! (mnemesis 18:52:19 UTC) (permalink)

They'll Never Find Me Now.
Hiding... in plain sight? Don't try it, says Stuntmutt in today's One One Se7en. Hmm... Maybe the HBO Helljumpers ARE moving forward... (Louis Wu 18:11:44 UTC) (permalink)

Brian Jarrard Interview
Singapore news site The Electric New Paper has an interview with Brian Jarrard, Bungie's Community Guy. Will the Master Chief stop the Covenant? Will there be a Halo 3? A Halo movie? Check it out, and see for yourself! (Heh, not that there are many answers, mind you, but there might be a few hints... ;) Thanks to danbrennan.org for the heads-up. Update: Drat, mnemesis got to this before me... I wanted to also point out a discrepancy in one of their 'did you know?' facts. There's a claim that Halo 2 has sold 15 million copies to date; given that as of January 20 (just over a month ago), they'd sold 6.4 million copies worldwide, this number seems a tad unlikely. I suppose as a TOTAL of all Halo-franchise titles it makes sense (they were at 12 million last month)... [-lwu] (mnemesis 17:05:39 UTC) (permalink)

Movies, movies, MOVIES
Wow... lots of vids posted to our forum while I was gone. I'm taking them at their word and assuming there's enough bandwidth to go around. (We have a bunch of stuff in the queue, hopefully that I can get to soon - we're going to have to let these stand or fall on their own.)

• CollaterHalo - the club scene from the movie Collateral, reproduced on Midship/Headlong. Hosted by Vypers.net. WMP9 format, 22.3 mb.
• Monkeys Gone Wild - a tour of all the trees in Halo 2 multiplayer maps (and how to get into them). Hosted by vypers.net. WMP9 format, 17.9 mb.
• Anti-Cheating PSA - from Rampant Stupidity Productions, a look at cheaters and why they suck. It's in AVI format, but recorded with the WMV3 codec, so it won't play on a mac. 12 mb, hosted by Rampant Stupidity. (Update: And here's a 15.3 mb .mp4 file, thanks to Chester)
• Devin's GreenRoomEffect - another Devin Olsen montage. Nice work. WMP9 format, 33 mb. Hosted by syeren.
• WaLKa's Montage - some pretty amazing sniping, and general gameplay. WMP9 format, 24.7 mb. Extra mirrors can be found in this thread on the MLG forums.
• Outpost 2 - the second episode of Outpost: Coagulation. Covenant politics... or something. WMP9 format, 21.2 mb, ALSO hosted by vypers.net. (Here's hoping they hold up... that's a lot of vids.)

Wow... will that keep you busy for a few minutes? (Please - if you try one of these links, and it's dead... you don't need to mail us. There's not much we can do about other people's bandwidth.) (Louis Wu 16:03:12 UTC) (permalink)

Photoshop contest - now with a bonus round
ICDedPpl has started a bonus round for his Halo Photoshop contest; entries are due by Sunday night, voting will be up for 3 days. The winner will get a full year of webhosting with free domain registration or transfer. The catch? Your photo must include a cartoon character. Go read the site for more details! (Louis Wu 14:53:23 UTC) (permalink)

Real Marines Wear Pink
New strip up over at Halo Babies; Baby Sarge is a little... mature for his age, I guess. (There's also a nice concept sketch of the newest character - check it out!) (Louis Wu 13:30:18 UTC) (permalink)

Big Floaty Thing Talks
Ducain, over at High Impact Halo, has interviewed FrogBlast, trickster extraordinaire, about what drives him to do the stuff he does. Great read - thanks to both of them! (Ducain pointed it out in our forum.) (Louis Wu 12:33:47 UTC) (permalink)

The death of 1v1
Interesting article over at MLGPro.com - Brick Shoemaker lays out why he thinks Halo 2 is no good for 1v1 battles. The main argument is a solid one; Halo 2's multiplayer focus is geared more towards teamwork and cooperation than solo heroics. Go read. Thanks, 3Suns. (Louis Wu 12:16:02 UTC) (permalink)

Fragging MCs for flood relief
Thanks to Frankie, for pointing out a writeup at Aussie Xbox of a charity bash they hosted to benefit the tsunami relief effort. Great pics - that's a lot of people playing Halo 2! Update: Gah - looks like mnemesis got to this one already; you'd think I'd be more careful reading existing news... (Louis Wu 11:21:22 UTC) (permalink)

Real Life Gamers, Part 1
Bungie has put up an interview with BlAcKjAk, a high-ranking XBL player (he's currently number 2 in the Rumble Pit stats). It's just a quick 'what do you like/dislike about XBL/Halo 2?' piece - but it might make some people feel better to know that the folks at the top of the leaderboards are complaining about the same things that the common folks complain about. (Louis Wu 11:17:17 UTC) (permalink)

Halo news around the net
There were a few news bits recently that might be of interest to Halo fans...

• Business Week has an article about the big-business aspect of the current videogame market - and Halo/Halo 2 play a pretty big role.
• The Oregon Daily Emerald looks at Halo's ability to suck in and keep players.
• Pantagraph.com focuses on Steve Scott, a native of Central Illinois and a member of the Halo 2 dev team.

I'm slowly cleaning out the inboxes that mnemesis and CZ didn't have access to... (Louis Wu 11:08:02 UTC) (permalink)

Mjolnir Mix, Tabbed
Eternity 117 sent along a tabbed version of the Halo 2 theme, Mjolnir Mix, as played by Steve Vai. Go play! (Louis Wu 01:09:58 UTC) (permalink)

Broken, Again
We mentioned a vid called 'Broken' a few days ago; one of the mirrors came from HaloImpulse. Wasn't until just now that I saw the actual link to the mirror... if you still haven't gotten this, you can grab it here (12.7 mb, .rar format). (Louis Wu 00:45:43 UTC) (permalink)

Artwork at the Baby Place
Another hefty art update over at Halo Babies; some really, really cool stuff. (If you like the 'Ambush' piece by tanqexe, be sure you've seen his other Halo-related work in our Misc Art section.) Thanks to mrsmiley, who sent this along a few days ago - sorry I wasn't here to pass it along to someone who could post it then. (Louis Wu 00:31:17 UTC) (permalink)

Another Accolade
Dzejms writes to point out that "Pete Parsons & the Bungie Crew" have won the Wired Rave award mentioned here recently. (mnemesis 00:07:43 UTC) (permalink)

News February 24 2005

What, you can make movies with this thing?
A couple of interesting (to me, anyway) movies popped up recently on our forum. The first, mentioned by nof, was done by Blackstar and stars the HBO Lekgolos in a send-off to one of their own. That Blackstar sure knows his stuff. The second was put together by Hikaru-119 as a sort of tribute to one of the less appreciated characters we know. Makes you wonder, maybe there's more to the little blue guy than you thought. Perhaps he's not just an irritating, bureaucratic, tin-pot dictator. Nah.

Nice work. (Before anyone gets all light-headed about "movie guidelines" and whatnot, I'm just posting to make sure the news page isn't empty. Louis gets all cranky when the news page is empty.) (mnemesis 06:33:07 UTC) (permalink)

The Old Multi-Blind, Running Slide Sequence
Jump Tactics, mentioned here a few times before, has released a whole mess of styles vids via their forum. Give 'em a look and see if they don't improve your pouncing panache, your vaulting verve, your evading élan. They may possibly help you jump better, too. (mnemesis 06:32:22 UTC) (permalink)

Charity Down Under
Hep, from Aussie Xbox, writes to tell us of an article on their site detailing the results of the charity Halo 2 tournament, held this last week on the 12th, that we'd previously mentioned. Check out the final stats, plus all the tons of great prizes from Logitech, Xbox, and Netgear and the fun being had in the name of a good cause. (mnemesis 06:31:31 UTC) (permalink)

An auspicious beginning
Episode 3 of the machinima series The Codex has been posted. It's called "Aftermath", and it's available in Quicktime format for now; with Divx and WMV versions coming soon. The plot thickens... (Count Zero 02:28:29 UTC) (permalink)

News February 23 2005

The Numb Skull.
To sleep, perchance to dream... or to play. Check today's One One Se7en for deep philosophical meaning. Or not. Pax. (Crux Fidelis 22:19:30 UTC) (permalink)

Please Stand By
Somebody was messing around in one of the sub-basements where some of the servers are. This somebody apparently spilled their drink, or possibly some soup, all over a bunch of arcane equipment I can't understand. Anyway, some sections here are offline for awhile, like Tips, the Story Page, and maybe some others. I blame Crux. (mnemesis 07:11:57 UTC) (permalink)

News February 22 2005

Oracle, dissected
Deep thanks to Mike Miller, who submitted his Oracle chapter of the Halo 2 Legendary Walkthrough early enough that Louis could format it and prepare it for the masses before he left. Because of Mike's consideration, you can read it on time, today, rather than at the end of this week. This level contains the first 'Boss Battle' in Halo 2 - and Mike shows you how to completely sidestep this annoying addition. 7 movies in all for this level. Pax. (Crux Fidelis 12:56:05 UTC) (permalink)

Wink Wink Nudge Nudge
OK, you naggers finally have your new Mailbag. Can I go back to sleep now? (Count Zero 03:48:02 UTC) (permalink)

Hot grits!
A number of people have written to point out that tech news site Slashdot has posted a rather belated review of Halo 2. They give it an 8 out of 10, and also comment on the MagicBox XFPS, another adapter that lets you plug a keyboard and mouse into an Xbox (it gets a 6 out of 10). (Count Zero 02:50:02 UTC) (permalink)

News February 21 2005

Vindication
Unable to pass up a golden opportunity, and with a bunch of other great stuff to boot, Jillybean takes time out from her busy schedule to update the Story Page once again. (mnemesis 20:21:56 UTC) (permalink)

Gone
That's it - I'm out. My family and I are on vacation for the next few days; I'll be back Thursday night. There's a chance I might find a few minutes to add stuff here and there (mostly late evening)... but the bulk of the updating job is going to be taken on by mnemesis (and maybe Count Zero). If you mail news to lwu at bungie.org, it will be in limbo until the end of the week. I haven't figured out why folks can't seem to get it that Halo news for our site should go to halo@bungie.org... but they don't. This week, though, if you don't get it, you won't see your news. It's that simple. (Louis Wu 12:03:42 UTC) (permalink)

Broken
Hogmasta put together a Halo 2 gameplay vid called 'Broken'. Lots of folks on our forum liked it - but Hogmasta was pretty afraid of the bandwidth rush. Two kind souls have leapt to his aid - PLEASE, use these links instead of Hogmasta's. Thanks to the DJ, of HaloImpulse (hmm... that link doesn't seem to exist yet, but should, sometime today), and Nirvana, of Halo-Vids, for their help. There's also a copy here. (Louis Wu 11:59:06 UTC) (permalink)

With Apologies to Warbow et al.
Stuntmutt pins down a nagging paradox in today's One One Se7en. (Louis Wu 11:50:40 UTC) (permalink)

Monday Morning Stories
Fourteen new stories for you in the Fan Fiction section today - and an apology. There was a story in German I needed to reject - we made a rule almost two years ago that we'd only accept fan fiction in English, just from an administrative perspective... but I never added that to the rules page. I've rectified the error; apologies to the submitter. (Louis Wu 11:41:26 UTC) (permalink)

Another handcrafted helmet
Recently, we posted a bunch of pictures of a Master Chief suit created by Alan James - today, we've got a helmet from Germain Couët. It's possible he'll continue with the rest of the suit - but for now, he's got some nice headgear! (Louis Wu 04:56:03 UTC) (permalink)

Halo Story Page Update/Recovery
Some of you may have noticed that the Halo Story page had some strange rearranging of news posts. We had a database glitch, and needed to input a few lost records - the upshot is that the newest entries, from mnemesis, are now well down the page below Jillybean's recent work. They're the last two entries for February 19... but if you haven't read for a bit, check out the top few posts, as well. (Louis Wu 04:03:26 UTC) (permalink)

News February 20 2005

Tainted Love
TheTaintedOne has created a pretty massive gameplay vid; it's 12:22 long, in widescreen format. Timing is quite good; composition does a nice job of moving you from kill type to kill type. Movie ends with another melee-only oddball clip (just like the very first release I ever saw from TheTaintedOne) - all in all, if you like watching Halo 2 gameplay footage, this is one worth seeing. It's available via BitTorrent right now in both QuickTime (64.5 mb) and WMP9 (61.2 mb) formats. It's a little scary being the first movie posted after a 'stop sending us bad stuff' newspost... but someone's gotta do it. Update: TheTaintedOne started a forum thread about this, if you want to comment. Update 2: HALOChat has provided a web mirror for those who'd rather use a browser than BitTorrent. (Louis Wu 16:32:59 UTC) (permalink)

Depressing administrivia
I HATE making posts like this one - but I think it's become necessary. Recently, we've received a mountain of video announcements and submissions; some bits are quite good, and we're happy to host them, or point them out if others are hosting them. Others are not great, but okay... and as long as they come with their own bandwidth (that is, nobody's asking us to help with the hosting), I don't mind putting up a news post. Unfortunately, many of them (more every day) are, simply put, crap - and lots of these come with their own hosting. If I want to pass on an announcement, I have no choice but to tell the maker that we're not posting because the movie is crap - and that's just mean. Please - save me the trouble, by LOOKING SERIOUSLY AT THE PIECES YOU SUBMIT. If nobody outside your immediate family would leave the thing running for more than the first 30 seconds... scrap it and try another tack. I don't want to discourage budding movie makers; there are certainly MANY examples over the years here at HBO where someone who was given just a little bit of encouragement when they were raw and inexperienced blossomed into a spectacular moviemaker. I do want to make you think about why you're doing this, though; if it's just for the exposure, take the time and make a GOOD film instead of shooting us everything you've ever recorded. I know I've said it before - but clearly, it was far enough in the past that many folks never saw it: if a movie doesn't show at least SOME level of entertainment value or originality, even if it comes with its own bandwidth, I'm going to pass on mentioning it. You're welcome to circumvent me and post it in our forum, if this happens to you; if the announcement is met with enthusiasm and excitement, I'll realize I made a mistake and take another look. (Louis Wu 13:41:42 UTC) (permalink)

Outpost: Coagulation
Outpost: Coagulation was announced last night - there's a trailer and Episode 1. (The trailer was sent in a few days ago - I apologize, it got lost in the shuffle.) Heavily inspired by Red vs Blue, it's the story of a team of Spartans on Coagulation, living and working under the threat of Covenant encroachment. Audio can be a little hard to hear at times. HALOChat has provided a mirror for episode 1, in case bandwidth runs out. Both vids are WMP9 format - the trailer is 14 mb, ep 1 is 22.5. (Louis Wu 13:19:38 UTC) (permalink)

News February 19 2005

DC Aftermath - via http
Yesterday, we posted BitTorrent links to synide's MLG DC Aftermath vid - and almost a thousand people grabbed a copy. Those torrents are still open, and seeded nicely; if you want the vid, and have access to BitTorrent, this is really the fastest way to get it. If, however, you can't use (or don't want to use) BT, we've put up http links for both the WMP9 version (bungie.org | mythica.org) and the QuickTime version (bungie.org | mythica.org). Grab what you need! Again, these vids are about 34 mb, and will give you a taste of what an MLG tourney is like. Most of us will never actually be there in person... but synide's shakeycam can make you FEEL like you're there (well, after a bad burrito...). (Louis Wu 22:58:23 UTC) (permalink)

Feet First into Hell
The HBO Helljumpers are holding a tourney - rules and details can be found here. If you're European, and you're interested... swing by their forum - there's plenty of room! (Louis Wu 22:49:22 UTC) (permalink)

MasT3r's gameplay
MasT3r would like very much if you'd take a look at his gameplay vid, currently hosted at That Weasel Television. Gameplay is decent... but it's pretty long (9:35, with more than the first half devoted to slayer-type play on Lockout). 39.5 mb, WMP9 format. There are a couple of threads on our forum for comments - this one was first. (Louis Wu 22:29:32 UTC) (permalink)

TonyDanzaphobia
There's a new Public Service Announcement posted over at Red vs Blue - it's called 'Cold and Flu Season', and it uses the RvB team to pin down what causes the illnesses we come down with around this time of year, and some of the best ways of combating them. Well, okay, not the BEST ways... Hi-res for sponsors, standard res for the rest of the world. Thanks to altodarknight for the heads-up. Update: Bah. Sorry - it's NOT yet available for the rest of the world yet. Soon. (Next time, I log out before posting. My bad.) (Louis Wu 11:18:16 UTC) (permalink)

Thy Pain be Mine
The Halo CE Chronicles continues over at Halo Maps, with Episode 5 - 'Thy Pain be Mine'. Definitely a different view of human-Covenant interactions... this ain't your standard Spartan. Flash format, 6:16, 7 mb. (Louis Wu 06:34:45 UTC) (permalink)

Nightmare Armor - maybe your last chance
Wow. Webshift (the original webmaster for the Nightmare Armor website, but someone who left the team a ways back) is selling his personal Master Chief full body armor on eBay. Starting bid is $2000 (less than half the price a set would have cost you direct from Nightmare Armor, even if they HADN'T stopped selling it), and there's almost 7 days left in the auction. It's silver, and comes with undersuit and boots, and a storage bin. Check it out. (Louis Wu 06:18:02 UTC) (permalink)

Aqueduct
The Weekly What's Update has been posted at Bungie.net. Summary: Downloadable content is coming, cheating fixes are coming, you can be banned for being stupid on the b.net forums, and they can't answer the questions they want to answer. If you are one of those people who don't want to read an update that basically says "we're still doing what we said we were doing last week" - don't read this. More importantly, don't whine about this on our forum. Thanks. (Louis Wu 05:16:00 UTC) (permalink)

News February 18 2005

DC Aftermath, from MLG
MLGPro.com has released its Aftermath video from MLG DC. (synide says it's lame, but I think he's biased.) It's about 4 and a half minutes long, and will give you a taste of what MLG's tournaments are like. WMP9 is 34 mb, QuickTime is 33 mb. If you're a Video on Demand subscriber at MLG, you can grab a copy via that service now. If you're not, but you have access to BitTorrent, you can snag torrents from us (WMP9 and QuickTime) - we're supplying a healthy chunk of seed bandwidth, and the more people who grab this the better that situation will get. If you're not a VoD subscriber, and you have no access to BitTorrent, don't fret - we'll release web versions tomorrow, after the initial rush has been dealt with. Go get it! (Louis Wu 20:17:18 UTC) (permalink)

Speed Runs
lAbsolutel pointed out that his speed run of the level The Arbiter has been posted at High Speed Halo; quality's not great, but you can certainly see the action. While you're there, check out Flechette's amazing Uprising run; 2:25 from opening to closing cutscene. Wow! (Louis Wu 17:53:30 UTC) (permalink)

Desktop Shenanigans
We recently got a rather odd submission - Zytz grabbed a copy of Cortana's Core, a recently added desktop image created by Demonic Spartan, and altered the hue - a dozen times. All 13 images are in his Cortana's Core Mod Package (3.5 mb, zipped); the idea is that you use them as rotating desktops. If you're using MacOSX, this functionality is built into the OS; simply select the folder in the Desktop and Screen Saver pane, set the Change Picture menu to 5 seconds, and sit back to watch the trippy show. If you're a Windows user, you'll need to find a 3rd party program to use this; this one was suggested by the denizens of #hbo, except that the minimum cycle period is 15 minutes; sort of defeats the purpose. If you like melting, flowing wallpaper, and you think you can find a program that will implement it on your system, grab this package; it's definitely cheaper than LSD. Update: I didn't mention this product for Windows, because their website says that the free version is limited to 20 uses - but DSmooth wrote to tell us that that's old info, and that the free version is fine for this use. (Louis Wu 16:01:39 UTC) (permalink)

It's Miller Time.
Hehe - today's One One Se7en was originally scheduled to be a Wednesday strip, so that it could properly whinge about the Legendary Walkthrough chapter that had been released the day before. We did some shuffling recently, and I guess I screwed up. Pretend it's Wednesday. In fact, pretend it's Wednesday a few weeks ago, since the MC's still in Cairo Station. Gah. (Louis Wu 15:25:51 UTC) (permalink)

Friday, Text
Fan Fiction gets another 15 pieces today. Go read. (Louis Wu 14:14:36 UTC) (permalink)

NJ tourney tomorrow
NJHalo.com is hosting a $1000 Halo 2 tourney ($30 entry per person for 4v4 gaming) tomorrow (Saturday, Feb 19) in Dover, NJ. Check their post on our forum or their website for more details. (Louis Wu 13:55:19 UTC) (permalink)

Arbiter Tribute
Sniper 058 put together a six minute tribute to the Arbiter - mostly Legendary gameplay (the final scene was done in Heroic, because he didn't want the movie to last all night), interspersed with (nicely) overdubbed cutscene footage. Available in WMP9 (16.9 mb) and QuickTime (19.9 mb) formats. I probably shouldn't need to say this - but there are game spoilers here. (Louis Wu 13:48:06 UTC) (permalink)

Xbox Solution reviews Halo
Xbox Solution has reviewed Halo 2 - they gave it a 9.7/10. Took 'em this long because they couldn't put the controller down long enough to write. (Louis Wu 13:19:17 UTC) (permalink)

Cereal and World of Warcraft
There's an interview with StK, the top team on the Halo professional circuit right now, over at MLGPro.com. It's a pretty interesting read; they discuss how Halo 2 is different than Halo was, in terms of team competition, and what you need to do to be on top. It's all about teamwork and positioning - being awesome with a single weapon will no longer pull you through. Thanks, 3Suns. (Louis Wu 11:57:22 UTC) (permalink)

Mark me well...
New Halo Babies strip today - it's Friday. I gotta say - Baby Arbiter rocks. Go check out the new elite concept art, as well (link is in the same post). (Louis Wu 11:26:32 UTC) (permalink)

Talkin' bout poo
The Halo Humpday Challenge this week was between Bungie and the Pooflingers. Looks like it was ugly all 'round. Poor Frankie. Go read the details... thanks, Skedar. (Louis Wu 03:20:01 UTC) (permalink)

News February 17 2005

Action Figure pics
Littlebigman found pics of the next couple of series of Halo 2 action figures at figures.com - they're shots taken of displays for Toy Fair 2005, opening this Sunday in New York City. The Arbiter looks pretty cool! (Louis Wu 21:22:09 UTC) (permalink)

Building His Own
Alan James has undertaken another fan-created Master Chief suit creation project - we've put the first 10 photos he's sent us up, and will add to the page as he progresses. Nice beginning! (Louis Wu 20:09:34 UTC) (permalink)

Halogen Update
Logical2u pointed out that Derelict Studios has updated their Halogen website again - this time with pics of a Longsword, the Hammerhead (a heavy transport vehicle), and some player characters (spartans and other UNSC soldiers). Getting there! (Louis Wu 20:07:24 UTC) (permalink)

Gametype Organizer
Interesting - JSatt has created an Access database to organize your Halo 2 Custom Gametypes. You can grab a copy off his website. I don't have a copy of Microsoft Access, so I have no way to test this... but it looks useful for those who maintain a large collection of custom gametypes and want to organize them. Update: Halo2Customs.com has just mirrored the file, so if the original Freewebs site goes down, you can grab it there. Thanks, Timdogg. (Louis Wu 18:02:11 UTC) (permalink)

The Codex Series Episode 2
The Codex, a machinima series started a few weeks ago, released episode 2 last night. Currently available as QuickTime only (but with DivX and WMP9 coming soon), this episode continues the storyline of a Covenant invasion of Earth, aimed at recovering an ancient Forerunner artifact. As with previous releases from this team, this vid shows off great camera work, solid voice acting, and a plot that's not just there to validate the filmmaking. Grab a copy! (Nerrolken started a thread on our forum, and HALOChat has already chimed in with mirrors; both at HALOChat and at Filefront. (Louis Wu 16:07:41 UTC) (permalink)

Your Xbox might need a new cord
Wow - Microsoft is recalling 14 million Xbox power cords because of potential burns and carpet scorching. If you're in the US, and your Xbox was manufactured before October 23, 2003, or you're in Continental Europe and your Xbox was manufactured before January 13, 2004, you're eligible for a free, new cord. Read this CNN Money article for details, and then visit Xbox.com to sign up for the warranty program. Thanks, Mr Yun. (Louis Wu 15:58:29 UTC) (permalink)

Sponsors vs Freeloaders Ep 5 out
Yaksha dropped by our forum to point out that Sponsors vs Freeloaders Episode 5 has been released. SvF is a parody of Red vs Blue; it chronicles the battle between those who pay for the hi-res versions of RvB's videos and those who try and steal them. The first four episodes were standalone, mostly joke-based - but this episode begins a 5-part series with a real storyline. It's available in 3 flavors; Hi-res WMP9 (70 mb), lo-res WMP9 (15 mb), and lo-res QuickTime (25 mb). It's almost 15 minutes long. More links and info can be found in Yaksha's forum post, or on their site. (If you like what you see, explore; they've been around for a while, and there's quite a bit of video content on their site.) (Louis Wu 15:46:35 UTC) (permalink)

Online Tourney
DoctorEvol sends word that his group, Coconut Productions, will be hosting a Tournament of the Coconuts on Xbox Live in March. No word on prizes, past bragging rights. Follow the Tournaments link for details. (It's a framed site, so I can't give you a direct link.) (Louis Wu 15:20:57 UTC) (permalink)

File Mirrors
A couple of recent, large movies have been mirrored - if you've had trouble getting either of these, try again. Nirvana points out that the high-res version of the Ogres Halo 2 montage (previously only available via BitTorrent - though a lower-res version could be grabbed via http) is now mirrored at Halo-vids.tk (along with a second BT seed). And Halo Planet has mirrored the Jump Tactics' Techniques Tutorial Pt. 2 - you can find it on FilePlanet. Always nice to see extra bandwidth! Update: Eep - I almost forgot (silly me, I encoded it myself) - Jump Tactics has put up a QuickTime version of the video, as well; 23.5 mb. (Louis Wu 15:11:09 UTC) (permalink)

HaloPC still selling well
Evil Avatar has posted the top 10 PC games for the week of January 30 to February 5... and Halo: Combat Evolved is STILL on the list! (At position 7, no less.) For those who say the PC community is dead, and that nobody plays any more... take heed. Thanks, 3Suns. (Louis Wu 14:27:07 UTC) (permalink)

Afterwar Episode 13
Kevin Ryan writes to point out a new episode of Afterwar - Episode 13 brings the Arbiter in touch with heretics. They're coming faster... (Louis Wu 14:24:51 UTC) (permalink)

Attack of the New Guy!
There's a new article up at Bungie.net - this one focuses on a new hire, Lee Wilson. (Wilson has freelanced for Bungie in the past - he did some of the original Halo storyboards - but now he's a fulltime employee.) Read the interview to get a sense for what drives him; it sounds to me like he'll be a pretty cool addition to the team! Thanks to many for the heads-up - looks like hank was first. (Louis Wu 13:33:39 UTC) (permalink)

News February 16 2005

Two movie groups find a home
That Weasel writes to let the Halo world know about a couple of new Halo machinima projects that now live as subsites on the That Weasel Television website. Team Destruction can be found there (their trailer vid was mentioned a couple of weeks ago, but now it has a proper home, and multiple formats), as can Masters of Devastation. (The latter group doesn't seem to be doing machinima so much as Halo PC tricking.) See what you can find! (Louis Wu 22:50:08 UTC) (permalink)

Telling 'em what you think
Bungie's looking for feedback on a number of issues, ranging from playlists to starting weapons. Check out the news post, then go vote! (Louis Wu 22:02:01 UTC) (permalink)

Cool pics at HB
Looks like there's another big art update at Halo Babies - some really good stuff in there. (I love Deus' new weapons...) Thanks, PlasmaFire. (Louis Wu 22:00:37 UTC) (permalink)

Halo 2 in New York
Mike from Gameheads writes to point out that they've got a bunch of tourneys coming up soon - a 2v2 this Saturday, a 4v4 next weekend. Gameheads is also participating in the National Halo 2 League, and needs teams to sign up. If you're anywhere near Marlboro, NY (north of New York City), swing by and sign up! (Louis Wu 19:49:13 UTC) (permalink)

LiL Poison - Starting Young
Wonga. Xtournaments has a tidbit on LiL Poison, who at six years old is the youngest signed Pro Gamer in the world. (Apparently, he just signed with MLG.) Check it out! (There's a picture a little ways down the main page.) (Louis Wu 19:43:39 UTC) (permalink)

Age Of Application.
Stuntmutt has his own theories about the Hall of Murals artwork - you can see one in today's One One Se7en. (Louis Wu 18:48:41 UTC) (permalink)

ODST vid - now via http
More movie stuff - the Project ODST movie we mentioned yesterday now has http mirrors online - and a High-res version. WMP9, 28 mb (the Lo-res is still available, at 12 mb). Forum feedback is quite good - check it out! (Louis Wu 14:50:33 UTC) (permalink)

Jumping for Joy - er, Halo
Lots of Jumping vids out right now - you can find Jump Tactics' Releases Techniques Tutorial Pt. 2 vid at their website (registration required, free - vid is WMP9 format, 5:21 long, 23.5 mb), and HALOChat has put up a forum post for discussion... and MrJukes has once again updated his website (thanks, Cody Cress), with some Long Jumping displays from Broncho - the original WMP9 is 9.6 mb, and we've added a 10.8 mb QuickTime version. Give these a look! (Louis Wu 14:36:38 UTC) (permalink)

News February 15 2005

Halo 2 nominated for IGDA Audio Award
The 5th Annual Game Developers Choice Awards nominees were announced yesterday - and Halo 2 was nominated in the Audio category. Good luck, guys! Winners will be announced March 9 at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. They won this award in 2002, for Halo... let's see if they can do it again! (Thanks, Rampancy.net.) (Louis Wu 18:39:37 UTC) (permalink)

The Legend Continues
It's Tuesday again... that means it's time for another installment of Mike Miller's Halo 2 Legendary Walkthrough. This time around, it's The Arbiter - Mike gives you multiple ways of dealing with multiple problems, with lots and lots of visuals. (There are 12 movies this time around.) I found myself feeling rather inadequate at grenade-sticking after watching a few of these... but one of the best ways to improve is to practice, and this guide can help keep you alive long enough to make that a feasible option. (Louis Wu 16:45:59 UTC) (permalink)

Pro Halo - a viewpoint
Interesting article, written by someone outside the tournament scene, on the recent MLG DC tourney. Nice discussion of tactics and strategy. Thanks, Pizack. (Louis Wu 16:14:59 UTC) (permalink)

More bandwidth for Ogres
Almost 700 people have grabbed copies of the Ogre's Halo 2 montage via BitTorrent in the past 24 hours - but lots of people can't use BT. Halo-Pro.com has put up 4 mirrors of the file, so if you want an http copy, go grab it. (This is NOT the same file you can grab via BitTorrent - it's a lower-res version of the film, only 26 mb instead of 51.) Thanks, tutone. (Louis Wu 14:28:07 UTC) (permalink)

Spartan III Virtual Training - or something
IGN has put up another spartan (no pun intended - okay, I lie) Vehicle FAQ - check out the Vehicle Operations Handbook for details on the rides you'll find in-game. (Louis Wu 14:21:12 UTC) (permalink)

Stubbs as a Role Model
There's an interesting article over at The Hollywood Reporter today, discussing the 'Hollywood model' of development, as applied to video games - with Wideload Studios, and their Halo engine-based Stubbs The Zombie title, as the primary example. If you're interested in how Wideload is getting this game built on a much smaller budget than they'd have as a traditional studio, give this a read! Thanks, EnemaNurse. (Louis Wu 14:18:01 UTC) (permalink)

Play it again, Sam.
Narcogen has tackled the issue of Halo 2's replayability (in campaign mode, of course) in his latest Retort at Rampancy.net. It's a solid look at what was replayable in the FIRST Halo, and what's worth doing again in the SECOND one. Diehard fans might not like all of Narc's conclusions, but they're honest, and fair, as far as I can tell. (I disagree with some of what he says, but opinions are allowed to differ.) Worth a read if you want to think about what makes a game replayable. (Louis Wu 14:12:18 UTC) (permalink)

Stalk The Enemy. (Or your friends.)
SupaPuerco, of mindquirk software, points out his Xbox Live Friends app, a MacOSX-based program that keeps track of your XBL Friends list (when they're online, what their stats are, and so on). It also has a built-in emblem designer. Pretty slick! Check it out; it's only about 600k. (As far as I know, this is the first standalone stats viewer that runs on a Mac.) (Louis Wu 13:51:35 UTC) (permalink)

Project ODST Teaser
Project ODST, a live-action fan film, has released a teaser trailer - the forum post says 'keep in mind this is not a representation of the final product', so I'm not sure what it is... but you can watch it. Currently only available via BitTorrent, you can visit this page to grab the torrent. 12.2 mb, WMP9 format. (Louis Wu 13:47:58 UTC) (permalink)

Fan Fic Updated
The Fan Fiction section picked up another 21 pieces over the weekend - sorry we couldn't post any of them before now. Go read. (Louis Wu 13:42:07 UTC) (permalink)

News February 14 2005

3 Doors Down want to play you
And the Game With Fame series continues - this time with band 3 Doors Down. Play 'em tomorrow, win Xbox stuff. (You have to sign up to be eligible.) Read the press release for full details - thanks, Ted. (Louis Wu 17:21:19 UTC) (permalink)

Shades in Manila
MLG makes the news in the Philippines, it looks like... INQ7.net has an article summarizing the league and how it started. Sundance Giovanni is rosy about the future:

"I see pro gamers pulling down six-figure endorsement deals and being treated like celebrities. I also think you'll be seeing more and more of MLG on television as those players develop into stars. Eventually MLG will grow into a media powerhouse with a huge silver office tower in the middle of Manhattan. My office will be the one with the hot tub," he quipped.

Thanks, ICDedPpl. (Louis Wu 16:33:22 UTC) (permalink)

A Peck On The Cheek.
Love MUST be in the air... it's even in today's One One Se7en. Happy Valentine's Day! (Louis Wu 15:11:58 UTC) (permalink)

Less Than Three
Hehe - more Valentines wishes, this time from Bluestone. Nice! (Louis Wu 12:13:33 UTC) (permalink)

Halo Stats v2.1
Darkphibre has released version 2.1 of his Halo 2 Stats Tracker - lots of new features. You can read about it (and download it) from his site - and you can comment in his forum thread. (Louis Wu 11:48:39 UTC) (permalink)

Love, Halo Style
Hehe - Pak wished SOMEONE a Happy Valentines Day in Halo fashion. (Not sure how I'd feel if I got a card like that - but from the outside, it's pretty funny.) (Louis Wu 10:47:25 UTC) (permalink)

Kubrick Master Chief
Interactive Civilian took some photos of the Kubrick Master Chief that all Japanese Halo buyers were entitled to (it was finally delivered this week). Pretty cool - I'm guessing the hardcore Halo schwag collectors are gonna be scouring eBay... (Louis Wu 02:19:16 UTC) (permalink)

Ogres Montage - Unlimited Death
The StK Ogres have a new montage vid out - you can grab it off the ComboVideos.com Halo videos page. 50 mb, WMP9 format (almost 11 minutes long). Some really nice moves... I learned stuff from this one. Thanks, BlazeD, for the heads-up. Update: ComboVideos went down last night - excessive bandwidth. HALOChat has put up a BitTorrent - you can grab it here. Update 2: Looks like HALOChat linked to the wrong file. Sorry, folks; don't bother downloading this one, it's just Ripp0n's montage all over again. If this gets fixed, I'll post again. Update 87: Whee, isn't this fun? There's a new torrent file available from our server - along with a little bit of starting bandwidth. Hopefully, enough folks can chime in to make this work! (Louis Wu 01:50:50 UTC) (permalink)

Now THAT'S a lot of pictures.
Wow. Didn't think it was going to happen - but I've cleared out the desktop queue again, and updated the Wallpaper section. Almost a month's worth of submissions - there are 23 new entries, but if you count all the variants (color, size, etc) there are over 50 new images. Check 'em out! (Louis Wu 00:01:20 UTC) (permalink)

Death Cameras - Delineated
Wow. Frogblast has taken the time to compile a list of almost all the death cameras in Halo 2. What's a death camera, you ask? When you die, the camera jumps to a preset angle, depending on where you were and which direction you were facing. Froggie's pinned these down. Go look; as he says, this could be pretty useful information for egg-hunters. (Louis Wu 00:00:08 UTC) (permalink)

News February 13 2005

Time... is on my side
Jillybean continues to work on this beautiful Sunday - check the Halo Story page for a pair of tidbits to advance your understanding of the Halo backstory. (Louis Wu 20:11:33 UTC) (permalink)

More Prizes for Halo in your Hometown
I meant to post this yesterday - things got away from me. We mentioned a new contest being hosted by ICDedPpl on Friday - by Saturday, the prize list had grown sizeably. Go visit the contest page to see what's up for grabs at this point; there are now 7 prizewinning slots, with a pretty hefty collection of schwag for the top ones. If you have any skill whatsoever with an image editing program, you should enter this! (Louis Wu 18:13:37 UTC) (permalink)

Colored Tablets - finished
Walshicus has finished his conversions of the Hall of Mural tablets from the originally submitted black and white versions that 7he One sent us in late January to full-color, larger renderings - you can find the last 3 in this forum post or on our Hall of Murals page. Nice work, all around! (Louis Wu 18:06:10 UTC) (permalink)

Sounding Different
A bit ago, Eric Oxenberg submitted a movie he'd made for an audio engineering class in college. It's something a little different; it's footage from the E3 2003 trailer, with all new sound effects, music, and dialogue. It contains over 100 SFX queues. It's not for everyone (the video hasn't been altered at all, it's just new sound), but it's well-done and fun enough that I thought we'd offer a copy. It's available in QuickTime (13.9 mb) and WMP9 (14.2 mb) formats. Check it out! (Louis Wu 15:57:28 UTC) (permalink)

News February 12 2005

Roaming Charges
Red vs Blue Episode 49 has been released for sponsors... and for long-time Bungie fans, this one's fantastic. (It's great for everyone, actually - but the Marathon nod is awesome.) This is one of the funniest episodes I can remember; I think I like it when the whole team is feverish while recording. If you're not a sponsor, it'll be up for everyone on Monday. Go watch! (Louis Wu 18:06:48 UTC) (permalink)

More Colored Tablets
Walshicus continues his work on coloring the Hall of Mural tablets; he's redone the third tablet (basically just a recoloring of the Prophets' headdresses) and finished off the fourth. You can find them in his forum post, or on our Hall of Murals page. (Louis Wu 15:50:41 UTC) (permalink)

Ogre Killing Spree back online
Last week, a movie showing Ogre 1 participating in a KotH game on Lockout and racking up an amazing 41-0 kill record started making the rounds. It crushed Boomerica.com for the month, in less than a day. It looks like if you haven't seen it, you can grab a copy off of Halo-Pro.com - thanks to GM KASH for the heads-up. (Louis Wu 15:30:45 UTC) (permalink)

Beam rifles and flag bouncing
Week 13 of TalkXbox's Halo 2 Strategy Series covers Colossus CTF. Thanks again to 3Suns for the heads-up. (Louis Wu 15:27:49 UTC) (permalink)

I Am What I Am
Dennis Powers writes to point out that Episode 4 of the Halo CE Chronicles is now online at Halo Maps. Conceived as a showcase for Custom Edition works, this flash-based series is pretty different from most Halo-based machinima... it's a lot less violent, for example. This episode continues the development of the Spartan and AI characters. (Louis Wu 15:25:45 UTC) (permalink)

The Deathknell
AGoldElite points out that W00tness (a comic we've followed in the past, and one we've unfortunately helped to take offline occasionally, due to bandwidth overages), has a new episode out - and Halo once again features prominently. It's a serial strip, so you might have to go back a while if you haven't been reading it. (Louis Wu 15:22:43 UTC) (permalink)

Happy Fun Times
Yesterday evening, Bungie posted its weekly What's Update - general answers to common questions, with a few oddities tossed in. A hint that a cheating fix might not be too far off, details on when you can and cannot use Halo-related artwork, when downloadable content is NOT coming out (Feb 14), and more. There's also the best Mister Chief artwork I've seen, I think. (Frankie didn't draw it.) Go read! (Louis Wu 15:17:16 UTC) (permalink)

News February 11 2005

Delta Squad Episode 1
KingFarnox and the rest of Chronic V1RU5 Studios have created the first episode of a new machinima series, Delta Squad. Episode 1 is called 'Zanzibar: Hostage Rescue'. Camera work is very nice; has the feel of wartime journalism, at least at the start. Nice timing, nice moves. Originally a 23.7 mb WMP9, I created a 22.1 mb QuickTime as well. (The WMP9 is higher-quality; if you can view it, do so.) Both are 640x480, 4:18 long. Almost a week ago, Farnox posted a low-res QT version on our forum - this one is high-res, and far more polished. We're providing two mirrors each for the WMP9 (mythica.org | bungie.org) and QuickTime (mythica.org | bungie.org). Give it a look-see! (Louis Wu 22:17:17 UTC) (permalink)

I'm Ready For My Close Up, Mr Aronsson.
Hehe. Stuntmutt took his inspiration for today's One One Se7en from today's Halo Babies - how often do you get a chance like this? Made me laugh, anyway. (Louis Wu 11:09:47 UTC) (permalink)

Friday Lit
18 new pieces in the Fan Fiction hopper today - clears out the week. Go read! The weekend's coming. (Louis Wu 11:05:25 UTC) (permalink)

Halo in your Hometown
ICDedPpl is hosting a new contest - Photoshop Halo into a real-life picture, win cool schwag. (Okay, you don't need to use Photoshop - any image editor will do, including MS Paint. But the Halo part has to be there.) Go read all the details - including the $250+ in prizes - over at his website. Get cracking - submissions are due by March 4! (Louis Wu 10:28:21 UTC) (permalink)

Custom Gametypes - for the sharing
On and off, folks have talked about 'custom gametype collections' - websites where folks could get (and share) custom game settings for entertaining multiplay. Halo2Customs just opened its doors - and in addition to maintaining a reader-expandable collection of custom gametypes, it's gone one step further; it's offering Action Replay downloads of the most popular gametypes. (It remains to be seen how this works out in the long run; without some sort of real ranking system, it's conceivable that the useful gametypes get buried in a flood of 'standard slayer on Coag but with ghosts only' type submissions... but the potential is there.) Check this out - add your own, and if you have Action Replay, download a few custom gametypes to try! (Louis Wu 10:04:23 UTC) (permalink)

Bolling for a Halo Movie
New strip over at Halo Babies... Gruntsbane makes clear his opinions of at least one possibility for a director for a Halo movie. Ouch! (Louis Wu 09:24:25 UTC) (permalink)

More Music Transcriptions
Skeletor transcribed The Maw (from the Halo Soundtrack) for guitar some time ago, but forgot about it until he saw a recent news post. He's made it available in Power Tab Editor format, and included a short recording of himself playing it. Grab them in his forum post. (Louis Wu 03:37:32 UTC) (permalink)

All Things in MODeration...
Another Wednesday's gone by, another Halo Humpday Challenge - this one was against the Halo2CE team (who are NOT, as a matter of fact, affiliated with HaloMods.com, no matter what the Humpday Challenge writeup says). Bungie actually WON this challenge, 2 games to 1... but check the stats for the WHOLE story. Nice playing! (Anyone wonder if the win happened BECAUSE Frankie didn't play? Hmm...) Thanks, blackhawk, for the first heads-up. (Louis Wu 03:33:20 UTC) (permalink)

News February 10 2005

Core Jumping
trevor i presume points out a vid he made showing off Fusion Core jumping. It's being hosted over at Team Dirty Tricks. 11 mb, WMP9 format. (Louis Wu 20:46:17 UTC) (permalink)

More Halo Sheet Music
BitMaP sent a note about a transcription he's done for Remembrance (a beautiful piece that can be found on the Halo 2 Soundtrack). Looks like there's quite a bit more on the way, as well... keep an eye on the site! (Louis Wu 19:03:38 UTC) (permalink)

They can't win.
I find this intriguing... recently, GamaSutra offered a Question of the Week, in which they asked readers to discuss the most creative games of 2004 (thanks, Rampancy.net). What interested me was that out of all responses, only one person is quoted as having anything good to say about Halo 2 - and that person prefaces his comments with 'I know I'll take flak for this...'. Around the gaming community, there is talk of Microsoft adoptiong Bungie's innovations with respect to XBL for ALL upcoming games - love matchmaking or hate it, you cannot argue with its novelty and departure from the norm - and yet, when gaming professionals are asked to comment on creativity, they're apologetic when they mention this. Bungie has become the team you love to root against - the 800 pound gorilla of the gaming world, the 'they can't be cool because they're so popular' group. I don't know if that amuses or annoys me... (Louis Wu 17:52:04 UTC) (permalink)

H2AS Updates
Michael Greenwood writes to let us know that H2 Advanced Stats, an online Stats aggregator we mentioned a couple of weeks ago, has moved to new digs, with a new site design, more options, and personalized pages coming soon. Take a look! (Louis Wu 17:40:10 UTC) (permalink)

No 'We' in Team
Looks like there's a new Subzero Rivalries up over at Evilburger.net - and someone has a bone to pick with random team matchmaking. Thanks, MarkHawk. (Louis Wu 15:31:02 UTC) (permalink)

A router just for gamers
3Suns pointed out a review of the D-Link Wireless 108G Gaming Router over at TeamXbox; it comes with some built-in enhancements that help gamers, and some of them work very well with Xbox Live. They did some specific Halo 2-based tests to see how well things worked. If you're totally serious about having the best connection possible, and money is no object, read this review. (Louis Wu 14:44:56 UTC) (permalink)

Project Torlan - Content Pack 1.75
Thanks to zugy, who pointed out that Project Torlan, the Unreal Tournament Halo mod, has released Content Pack 1.75. It's huge - 164 or 200 mb, depending on the compression you choose - so go visit! (Louis Wu 01:45:34 UTC) (permalink)

The Codex - Episode 1
The Codex, a new machinima series that released a trailer about a week ago, has made good on its promise to release Episode One on February 9th. Go visit for the new episode (QuickTime now, WMP9 and DivX coming very soon), as well as lots of new updated content. We'll be posting mirrors if they decide they need them; this one's quite nicely done. (Louis Wu 01:41:37 UTC) (permalink)

Custom Tourneys - and More
Wow. Frankie pointed out a new article on Bungie.net that gets down and dirty with RSS feeds - it's an interview with the guys who run the DeFAS.org website about the tools they're developing that use Bungie's RSS feeds in new and innovative ways. Go check it out! (Louis Wu 01:32:19 UTC) (permalink)

News February 9 2005

A new Rockslide Megabattle
Wow. rockslider has updated his Rockslide Megabattle website, with yet another setup you can try for fighting huge numbers of baddies in the original Halo. Check it out! (Thread is here on our forum, for comments.) If you don't know what a Rockslide Megabattle is... explore his site. (Louis Wu 22:22:02 UTC) (permalink)

Afterwar 12
Kevin Ryan points out that a new episode of After War is now up - we're getting into backstory here. Also, I've been... um, penciled into the Rant at the bottom of the page. Sort of. (Louis Wu 22:06:55 UTC) (permalink)

Ten Seconds To Win.
Stuntmutt's discovered the REAL secret about Carneyholes in today's One One Se7en. (Louis Wu 15:58:14 UTC) (permalink)

Imitation... for the right reasons?
Interesting blog entry over at Lawrence.com - Matt Cox (known to many as Mothergoat around these parts) talks about the trend towards real instruments in game music these days, and how the Halo franchise may have sent the wrong message to developers; instead of focusing on the QUALITY of the music Marty and company created, they focused on the DELIVERY of it, mistaking the medium for the message. Makes you think... (Louis Wu 11:51:27 UTC) (permalink)

Jumping - for everyone
Jump Tactics has posted a new vid - the first of a series showing techniques for doing some of the jumping you can see in previous vids. Registration (free) required for downloads. The vid is 21.3 mb, WMP9 format. This one focuses on Bunny Hopping and Crouch-Jumping. Nice work! (Louis Wu 10:59:34 UTC) (permalink)

News February 8 2005

Game with Fame: Molotov
Mexican band Molotov is the next 'Game with Fame' celebrity you can play with; they'll be online on February 16, with prizes like an Xbox, an XBL subscription, and schwag like t-shirts and music certificates up for grabs. You can read the press release here on our site, or visit the Xbox.com page devoted to this event. Thanks, Ted. (Louis Wu 17:22:20 UTC) (permalink)

Halo 2 Tourney in NY/NJ
Vic posted word of an East Coast Halo 2 4v4 Tournament with $3500 in cash and prizes; activities will take place on March 12, adn details can be found at the Xtournaments site. (Louis Wu 15:52:23 UTC) (permalink)

Truth and Recon Suite, annotated
The Halo Sheet Music collection at Rampancy.net has grown again; Spencer "Poop Scoop" Anunsen has submitted the theme from the Truth & Reconciliation Suite. Registration (free) required for download. This one comes in a 3-pack; you get a Midi file, a .mus file (I don't know what can read this on a Mac), and a PDF. Go grab it! (Louis Wu 13:19:35 UTC) (permalink)

If it's Tuesday, it must be Metropolis
The next chapter of Mike Miller's Legendary Walkthrough has gone live - find the hints that will get you through Metropolis, a gorgeous - though limited in exploration potential - level. There are 5 movies this time around, highlighting some of the strengths - and pitfalls - of the gameplay here. Mike has also added a bit to the Introduction; be sure to scan it for an extra tip! Update: Oops, sorry, the movie filenames were mis-capitalized, and so the links didn't work. Fixed! Reload the Metropolis page for the corrections. (Louis Wu 13:05:11 UTC) (permalink)

Finders Keepers
Stryke Force, an up-and-coming machinima series, has just released episode 3, 'Finders Keepers'. If you haven't seen these yet, go watch episodes one and two first - this series is among the best out there, in terms of production quality and voice acting. Episode 3 continues the hunt for Venom - you'd be amazed at how big Blood Gulch really is. The download is currently WMP9-only, but I've already shot them a QuickTime version, so hold tight. Visit their forum for the latest download! (The WMP9 is 26.1 mb, just under 6 minutes long.) Update: The QuickTime link is now up, in the same forum post that contains the WMP9. If you want this right now, you need to register for their forums (free). If you don't want to register, the movies should be available via direct download soon. (Louis Wu 11:43:11 UTC) (permalink)

Halo 2 Timeline
Whoa. Our very own Count Zero created a Halo 2 timeline in an attempt to reconcile the two parallel storylines running through the game. Take a look at this - it might help you put some pieces together! (Louis Wu 11:30:34 UTC) (permalink)

It ain't just babies any more.
There's a pretty big Fan Art update over at Halo Babies; 13 pieces of gallery art, another large handful of fan strips and sketches. mrsmiley's done a great job of delineating all the new work; go look! Some spectacular stuff in there... (Louis Wu 10:19:16 UTC) (permalink)

The Halo2CE Project - Spotlighted
There is a MASSIVE piece over at Bungie.net about HaloCE, and one of the most ambitious teams out there working with it - SketchFactor sat down for some serious in-depth interviews with the folks behind the Halo2CE project. NiTrOuSoXiDe, Mrs. Doublefire, Farsight, Kornman00, JamesD, Stefander, Kerr Halla, Supreme Taco, ZexGX, and rec0 all talk about how they got started, what they do for the team, and why they're at it. Their two major projects - New Mombasa (a recreation of the E3 2003 level, complete with Halo 2 weapons and armor) and Zanzibar (a near-perfect replica of the Halo 2 level) are out or updated this evening - visit the website to download copies. (They're 25 mb each, and this story is going to get a LOT of reads at B.net... so be patient.) Beyond the interviews, there's a whole chunk of info about Halo CE and what it's all about; longtime readers of this site might not need this recap, but there are plenty of folks who found Halo after Halo 2 was released; a summary of what's out there for the PC is a good thing. Go check it out! (Louis Wu 02:59:20 UTC) (permalink)

News February 7 2005

Forerunners - The Movie
N1NJ4 posted a link on our forum to a movie made by Uber Hax0r, to celebrate the HBO Forerunners Clan. The second half is pretty... odd. Worth watching, if only to see how far you can actually push your friends on XBL. WMP9 format, 24.5 mb. Be gentle, it's being hosted on N1NJ4's school connection. Update: Uber Hax0r posted another link for it, as well. I'm lovin' that last sequence of flying Spartans! (Louis Wu 22:01:33 UTC) (permalink)

Colored Tablets - Two and Three
In the last couple of days, Walshicus has colored the second and third tablets from the Covenant Hall of Murals (see this news post for more details; we've added links to our Hall of Murals page. Pretty slick-looking! (Louis Wu 21:06:35 UTC) (permalink)

Feets don't fail me now!
Captain Spark continues to collect large quantities of Halo 2 dialogue - he's posted another batch on his website (zip file, 1.3 mb). You can see the individual snippets in our Dialogue Databank, as well. Some pretty funny ones in there this time! (Louis Wu 17:35:47 UTC) (permalink)

Live-action Halo project progresses
Hikaru-119 posted a note about Project ODST - there are a few more pictures up on the website, showing some of the filming sites and props. (Louis Wu 17:00:20 UTC) (permalink)

The Stats options continue
mfsamuel posted a link to his MyHalo2Stats.com website, another option for folks looking to save their XBL stats on the web. Check it out! (Izual posted this a couple of weeks ago, but nobody noticed.) (Louis Wu 16:16:10 UTC) (permalink)

Melee damage, delineated
Hypnotoad put together a chart showing what's needed, melee-wise, to kill your opponent in multiplayer, depending on what you're holding in your hand and how you're moving. That first chart was updated - and augmented with another way of looking at the data - in this forum post, so if you're going to view only one, view the second one. (Read the whole thread for details, though.) (Louis Wu 15:39:22 UTC) (permalink)

An old friend returns?
Interesting. MereCatfish posted a note on the Gearbox forums announcing that the HBO-COERCE HCE server is back online. Looks like it's being hosted at Gameservers.net (a European gaming network) - ping times aren't too bad from this side of the pond. The coerce.net website is still offline... but if you've been hankering for some good old-fashioned HaloPC-type gameplay, give this a try! (I'm not sure who's involved with running it any more, past Mere.) Thanks, Zerostar. (Louis Wu 15:13:32 UTC) (permalink)

117 Degrees.
Sorry - I actually had to change the title, because using odd characters messes up the RSS feeds of this site, and then I get mail from the most rabid among you. Go read today's One One Se7en to see what really bugs Stuntmutt. (Louis Wu 15:02:38 UTC) (permalink)

Reading on Mondays
The Fan Fiction section grew by another 13 pieces this morning - go see what the crew wrote over the weekend! (Louis Wu 14:58:17 UTC) (permalink)

Ross Mills flapped his WHAT?
I... just don't know what to say. (Louis Wu 13:52:46 UTC) (permalink)

Halo 2 still taking over college campuses
ICDedPpl sent in a link to The DePauw Online, the student newspaper of DePauw University, with an article written by a non-gamer about the popularity of Halo. You gotta wonder when the folks interviewed say stuff like 'you can play 64-player games in Halo 2'... (Louis Wu 13:49:27 UTC) (permalink)

News February 6 2005

The Essential 50
1UP.com has posted its Essential 50 list, the top 50 Most Important Games Ever Made. Halo pulled in slot 50 (they're listed in 'roughly chronological order' rather than ranking). Nice! We got this from Rampancy.net, who got it from Joystiq. (Louis Wu 22:22:25 UTC) (permalink)

Marines - Superbowl Edition
In remembrance of last year's Wardrobe Malfunction during the Superbowl, a new episode of Sector 7's Marines comic takes some precautions. Thanks, Wolfy. (Louis Wu 20:26:55 UTC) (permalink)

Sunday Afternoon Artwork
The Miscellaneous Art queue has been building for some time (again) - there were 25 items in it this time around, ranging from pencil sketches to elaborate paintings to 3d renders. Some really cool stuff; be sure to check out augustc4's Grunter, and I loved heirophant's FlowerDream. If I went through every one of the images I liked, this news post would be way too long - so go look at all of them! (Louis Wu 20:22:24 UTC) (permalink)

Skulls on G4TechTV
Extabyte let us know that G4TechTV will be showing an episode of Cheat showing cheats and the Skulls of Halo 2. It's on RIGHT NOW (1:30 pm ET/10:30 am PT). Next showing is February 12, 1:30 pm (with more listings here). (Louis Wu 18:48:04 UTC) (permalink)

They'll eat your bones.
Grey Wolf points out that the HBO Lekgolos has created its own webpage; we don't normally mention site launches any more on the front page, but they ARE an HBO clan... (Louis Wu 16:19:47 UTC) (permalink)

7 foot MC on eBay
ICDedPpl found an auction on eBay for another one of those MASSIVE 7-foot-tall Master Chief statues used in European promotions. Shipping is from Switzerland, so if you're in the US, count on it costing a fortune. Current bid is $610, and the reserve has not yet been met. 9+ hours left as of the time of this writing; if you're interested, bid now!

Custom game options - all of them
Wow - I nearly missed this. c0ld vengeance put together an Excel spreadsheet containing every possible game variation for each gametype, broken out cleanly into easy-to-understand sections. For someone looking to create a website that allows fans to specify their own variants, this would make the workload MUCH smaller. (It's great for ANYONE wanting to see what all the options are at a glance - but that was one particular use that stood out for me.) Update: c0ld submitted a new version, with a couple of mistakes corrected. (Louis Wu 16:04:50 UTC) (permalink)

MrJukes - now mirrored, and in QuickTime
MrJukes has been creating some pretty darn cool jumping vids for the last couple of months - but occasionally, their popularity pulls them offline. In addition, they've only been available in WMP9 format, which means folks on slower-than-a-G5 Macs can't really see them. We've rectified both of these issues with a full mirror of MrJukes' Guilde to Trick Jumping site - including QuickTime versions of all movies. As he adds new material to the original site, we'll update this mirror. Just trying to do our part to make cool resources available to all! (Louis Wu 14:17:01 UTC) (permalink)

Lek-goal-o.
It's Superbowl Sunday - and even Stuntmutt has gotten into the spirit with a special One One Se7en. (Louis Wu 14:04:48 UTC) (permalink)

Swimming for HBO
Hehe - a little tribute film from Mother's Tooth... cute. Originally WMP9, 3.8 mb... now also QuickTime also, 3.6 mb. Modding can be fun. (Louis Wu 04:26:01 UTC) (permalink)

News February 5 2005

More Swahili Clips
Thanks once again to our forumgoers; Overridea grabbed another 7 Swahili sound snippets off of Outskirts, and rehema again translated; you can find all seven in our Dialogue Databank. These are much more what you'd expect to hear in a city under siege. (Nice pickup by Anton P. Nym, as well.) Good work, all! (Louis Wu 23:18:11 UTC) (permalink)

Pick your friends by their activities
Hehe - Scot Goodhart points out that if you belong to Friendster, you can link their Bungie stats in their Friendster profiles; just copy your XML link into the RSS feed in your profile. When folks view your profile, they'll see your recent games! Geeky to the max - but hey, isn't that what it's all about, anyway? (Louis Wu 23:02:04 UTC) (permalink)

Covenant Murals - in Color
Walshicus decided that the tablets from the Covenant Hall of Murals might look good in color - so he recreated the first one. We've added it to the Hall of Murals page, and will continue to update that with new colored versions as he creates them. (Louis Wu 17:26:13 UTC) (permalink)

Action figure news
Toy stuff: littlebigman pointed out an interview with Joyride's Managing Director Scott Corley - some interesting stuff about how the sculpting-to-marketing process works, and what happens when fans aren't happy. LBM also mentioned that the Joyride website has been updated with Halo 2 Series 3 and 4 pics. In addition, prvtllchurch wrote to let us know that the 'Special Edition Blue Brute' is in at Gamecrazy - but he says it's exactly like the original Brute. Go check for yourself! (Louis Wu 12:36:38 UTC) (permalink)

mrsmiley, Thai food, and Cat-Bats
I didn't think I'd be here for this... but I am, so I'm posting it. The Weekly What's Update has been posted over at B.net - and as you'd expect today, the top question has to do with a Halo movie. Bungie's answer? "We don't know nuthin'." Other goodies involve what they had to do to keep your game stats, some shilling for the Matt Soell interview we mentioned recently, a 'no plans' answer for Halo 2 PC, a cheap shot at my home state (watch it, Frankie), a bunch of other stuff, and a Gorey-esque Mister Chief. Go read! (Louis Wu 00:42:42 UTC) (permalink)

News February 4 2005

Perchance to Dream
Dennis Powers wrote to let us know that he's posted Episode 3 of his Halo CE Chronicles series - showing off the universe of Halo CE and exploring a more thoughtful side of the Halo experience. The Spartan manages to get lost... and scared. Luckily, the AI's along to help. Sort of. 3:31 long, Flash format. Go watch! (Louis Wu 23:43:28 UTC) (permalink)

Swahili Update
Okay, folks have been looking at the translated Swahili quotes we posted this morning, and overall, it looks like rehema did a great job... but he made one small mistake. Everyone has accepted the Swahili proverbs which make up the bulk of the quotes - nobody's really sure if they actually refer to anything in-game or not, but they're having fun debating it - but one quote stands out, because it's clearly NOT a proverb. It refers to Old Man Water (Mzee Maji)... or does it? What if the announcer had trouble with some common English consonant combinations, and that 'ji' was really an 'rty'? I'd love to be able to take credit for noticing this... but a little Bungie bird did some whispering. (Louis Wu 22:14:44 UTC) (permalink)

Stubbin' it
Looks like the coverage of Stubbs the Zombie, the first title from Wideload Games (expected next summer and based on the Halo engine, justifying its presence here) is heating up again. Alex Seropian talked to 1Up.com via AIM - nice tidbits about the enhancements they've added to the engine, things like stealth and multicharacter animation, plus general background on the company - thanks, wideloadgames.org. And our very own Miguel Chavez scored some choice content himself, and then shot it over to mnemesis for posting on Bungie Sightings. Lots and lots of good info, including 3 new screenshots. Go read! (Louis Wu 22:12:04 UTC) (permalink)

Saving Private Cyan
I'm always amazed by how many people are now working on machinima projects, and how many of them are actually pretty good. I found a series called 'Saving Private Cyan' over at turtleturtleclan.net; Episode One is out now, Episode Two is coming this month. The voice acting could use some work... but the cinematography is quite good. Don't kill their bandwidth downloading from them, though - get Episode One from us. It's available in its original DivX format (25.1 mb) from bungie.org or mythica.org , or reencodings into QuickTime format (24.3 mb - bungie.org or mythica.org) and WMP9 format (25.4 mb - bungie.org or mythica.org). (Louis Wu 18:05:44 UTC) (permalink)

Spawn Campylobacteriosis.
Today's One One Se7en takes a look at what you might do when you have a teammate that's... not keeping up. (Louis Wu 16:50:43 UTC) (permalink)

Lots of backlogged reading
Oops - no Fan Fiction update since the weekend... there are 27 new pieces for you to read. (A few rejections, as well; if you submitted something and it's not up, you should probably read the rules again.) (Louis Wu 16:15:23 UTC) (permalink)

Obscuring your view
Halo Story Page got another update this morning; three theories see the light of day. What don't we know about Miranda Keyes? What's going on on High Charity? and who were the Forerunners, really? Go read. (Louis Wu 15:47:21 UTC) (permalink)

The Philosophy of Matchmaking
Hmm... is disappointment a natural consequence of rational competition? Are we only happy when we win? nof looks at how the impersonal and implacable matchmaking system drives us to be who we don't like. (Something to remember: matchmaking attempts to pit you against those of equal skill level. This means, if it's working properly, that you'll lose, on average, one out of every two games you play once you reach your true level. It also means that BEFORE you reach this true level, you'll win much more often. Could it be this shift - expressed in business as The Peter Principle ("Managers will rise to the level of their own incompetence") - that REALLY causes the unhappiness?) (Louis Wu 15:23:08 UTC) (permalink)

Swahili announcements - translated
Yesterday, we pointed out that Frankie had hinted that some of the Swahili announcements, audible on the Outskirts level, might contain material of interest to fans. Last night, rehema popped onto our forum, and with some file help from m32, was able to listen to the clips - and translate them. We've added all 7 unique clips that ZexGX found a few weeks ago, plus one new one posted by Armum Infirni last night, to our Dialogue Databank, along with the original Swahili transcriptions and rehema's translations. Go take a look! Update: It looks like replay went the next step, and googled the translations... many are Swahili proverbs. It's the Old Man Maji quote that intrigues me... it's not a proverb, and there's no clear tie to a Halo 2 plot point; what's this about? (Louis Wu 14:24:29 UTC) (permalink)

Fear of Matt Soell
Two bits over at Halo Babies this morning... there's your standard Friday strip, 'Fear of Change' - which takes a light-hearted shot at fans and their need for instant gratification - and a great interview with Matt Soell, former Community Guy at Bungie and now working at Wideload Games. Matt's always had a way with words; I'm glad to see it hasn't left him. ("In the meantime, our own web plan percolates slowly to the surface, like a dinosaur fart in a tar pit.") If you weren't part of the community when Matt was around, go read this; the community is as dedicated as it is because people like Matt were there to feed it. (Louis Wu 13:47:26 UTC) (permalink)

Mommy, it's starting again...
Front-page this morning on Variety.com (login required, check the last entry at bugmenot.com) is a story called 'Halo, Hollywood'... Looks like Microsoft has hired screenwriter Alex Garland to adapt the games into a movie - they've signed a 'million-dollar-deal' with him. Apparently, the buzz is that Microsoft (and Bungie) won't be involved beyond the script development stage... hmm. The article also complains about 'spare' characterization for the protagonist - 'Little is known about "Master Chief."' (This has ALWAYS been one of the major stumbling blocks in the road to convert a video game (where the main character has to be empty enough to fit anyone playing him) to a movie (where we NEED to know a little something about the character in order to enjoy the work).) If you don't feel like jumping through the hoops to read this on Variety, there are summaries on IGN's FilmForce (thanks, Brian Linder) and Sci Fi WIre (thanks, rolly poly). There were some who said this day would never come... (Louis Wu 13:26:45 UTC) (permalink)

Jump Tactics opens its doors
Jump Tactics, the clan behind a pretty cool movie we mentioned recently, has launched its website. You can read the PR stuff on our forum, or just go visit the site. Downloads require registration (free) - they've got a couple of new movies up. Go check out the jumping action! (Louis Wu 02:56:29 UTC) (permalink)

Nice Going, Bullitt.
Chester gets his butt kicked a lot. Enough that he decided to make a movie about it. The original version is a 23 mb .AVI that doesn't show up at all on a mac. (Work in Windows Media Player on a PC, though.) The Se7enth Prophet whipped him up a WMP9 version - half the size, but a significant quality drop. (Link is in this forum post.) There's no guarantee that the bandwidth for any of those will hold out - but I can't justify hosting a version that is simply unreadable on Macs, so I created a QuickTime version. It's about 16 mb, and roughly the quality of the original. Grab whichever one makes the most sense to you. (The machine that last is hosted on is having network problems; they'll be working on it overnight. If you can't get in, wait a bit and try again. You don't need to send me mail telling me it's down - if it's down, it's because they pulled the network card out of it, and it'll be back up again soon.) (Louis Wu 02:52:28 UTC) (permalink)

Heh.
Speaks for itself. Thanks, Mr.Cynical. (Louis Wu 01:26:23 UTC) (permalink)

Blame Ryan
Holy crud. Bungie got tired of getting whupped in their Halo Humpday Challenges... so they picked on a team of non-computer geeks. The Discovery Channel crew accepted the challenge... and whupped their butts. (Well, okay, the games were close. But Discovery Channel took all three.) OUCH! (They even had a pair of Clan PMS filling in - but it wasn't enough.) (Louis Wu 01:24:23 UTC) (permalink)

News February 3 2005

(More) MLG News
Dolbex, in an attempt to coopt our front page, sends along the THIRD piece of MLG news for the day; The MLG Houston tournament dates have changed (it will now take place on March 11-13, with registration opening soon), and the MLG San Francisco event (February 26th and 27th) has opened its doors for registration. Go read! (Louis Wu 19:33:51 UTC) (permalink)

An Abandoned Plea, Revisited
Whoa. A month ago ZexGX posted a bunch of sounds collected on Outskirts; public service announcements, playing on loudspeakers in Swahili. He was asking for translation help. (He wasn't the first to find these - but as far as I know, this was the first time they were made available as recordings.) Nobody was able to help, and the thread died. Today, Frankie dropped into that thread with a suggestion that translating might be worth our while... so does anyone know any Swahili? (Louis Wu 19:15:44 UTC) (permalink)

Follow Tab
The Se7enth Prophet found a tab for Incubus' Follow on powertabs.net, and transcribed it on our forum. (The original is a Power Tab Editor file.) If you're a guitar player, give this a shot! Update: He's added the Halo and Halo 2 themes, and Blow Me Away from Breaking Benjamin. (Louis Wu 18:10:48 UTC) (permalink)

Dialogue, Dialogue, and more Dialogue
Yesterday, Captain Spark released 44 new dialogue snippets on his website; it's a 2 mb zip download to get them all. A day before that, we got mail from KaworuNagisa, containing 19 new snippets of his own - most of them from the Prophet Regret (including his sermon, in pieces). Some really good stuff here; both groups are full of interesting things. You can peruse the entire new batch in our Dialogue Databank, or just look at KaworuNagisa's stuff, or just look at Captain Spark's stuff. Oh, the choices you have! (Louis Wu 17:54:26 UTC) (permalink)

Zanzibar Tips
Jumping vids seem to be all the rage these days. Synide's put together a nice one for MLGPro.com; if you're a Video On Demand subscriber, you can watch a direct stream of this, and if you're not, just connect to MLG-TV and wait for it to come around in the rotation. (It's not ALL jumping; it's a general Zanzibar Tips vid, with suggestions to improve your gameplay. Check out the death-by-coconuts bit at the end!) (Louis Wu 16:51:07 UTC) (permalink)

When given the choice...
Today's Calvin and Halo takes a look at the more mature gamer... and what might happen occasionally on XBL. (Louis Wu 16:40:28 UTC) (permalink)

Jump Session 6
Thanks to Cody Cress, who pointed out that there is a new jump session at http://www.jukesbox.com/. This one focuses on slide jumping... wow. 9.5 mb, WMP9 format. Go watch. And come back to this news post later today. (Louis Wu 15:47:04 UTC) (permalink)

Power - at your fingertips
The stats analysis options continue to improve - Tom Mathews has upgraded his Halo 2 Statistics Browser (screenshots show how powerful this is - here and here). (Louis Wu 14:53:09 UTC) (permalink)

Cheaper goodies at the Bungie Store
Black Six pointed out that the Bungie Store is having a closeout sale on a number of items - visit if you want stuff at reduced prices. (The Titanium Eclipse Tumbler is under $10 now. Not bad!) (Louis Wu 14:46:39 UTC) (permalink)

My Little pwny.
GRAH! I'm an idiot. Yesterday's One One Se7en followed Tuesday's Outskirts on Legendary Walkthrough release SO beautifully... but I forgot to post it on time. Wow - it's been a while since i screwed THAT up. Go read it now, though. It's funny. (Louis Wu 14:38:32 UTC) (permalink)

News Roundup
There's a bunch of Halo 2 news that popped up last night, too... again, I doubt this is a comprehensive list, but it should lighten the mailbox just a little.

• MLG posted a writeup of the DC event that took place last weekend; thanks to Dyslexia for the text, and Dolbex for the heads-up. This contains a very nice counter-argument to the folks who yell that Halo 2 is for noobs... and lots and lots of great pics. Full bracket standings are also there.
• G4TechTV has posted a 'Halo 2 Tips, Tricks, and Strategies' article, a somewhat random collection of stuff. Fun read.
• TalkXbox has posted Week Twelve of their Strategy series - Burial Grounds Team Slayer. (Thanks, TricKy.)
• Another bit over at MLGPro.com - Grudge Matches Begin. This is sort of like Bungie's Halo Humpday Challenges... except it's 1v1, and the COMMUNITY decides who fights, not the players. Go read about it.
• Arizona State University's school paper has a story about how it's not a contradiction for a church group to organize a gathering around Halo 2. (This one turned up on Google, but ICDedPpl found the same thing at a different link.)

Again, there's probably plenty more out there today... but this makes a dent. (Louis Wu 14:27:33 UTC) (permalink)

More Movie Stuff
Man... you can't take a night off around here, things just move too fast. Okay, while I was sleeping (and other stuff), we heard:

• Ripp0n's Montage got another pair of direct download mirrors; a bunch of you have gotten it via BitTorrent, but for those who can't, HALOChat has put it up via HTTP, and there's another copy at That Weasel Television. Check yesterday's news if you don't know what this is about.
• Sharkface217 created a Halo PC Tribute Video, and released it at the Gamers Alliance. I'm not sure I get it, completely... but there it is. 31.5 mb, WMP9 format. (For me, personally... if I were a new HaloPC player and this was the first thing I saw... I'd probably pick a different game.)
• Devin Olsen released his own Halo 2 Montage vid - just under 19 mb, WMP9 format. Lots of Killtaculars and above. (Some good footage showing the potency of the plasma pistol/magnum combination... I love the Colossus 'attack while in the air, kill before you land' kill.) Update: this one, too, is having trouble - Devin asks for mirrors. If you can help him out, drop him a line! Update 2: Yayap to the rescue!
• Craven47 posted a short (43 second) 'Dance Movie' (3 Spartans jumping around on Lockout) on Putfile. Just over 5 mb, WMP9 format.
• That Weasel, always around to help, has mirrored a whole bunch of OTHER recent movies, besides Ripp0n's - The Codex Trailer, Vehicular Pwnage, and the Sleeping player are all there now.

I'm sure there are/will be more over the course of the day - but I'll make a new post later. And the bandwidth just keeps going up, up, up, up... (none of this is ours, though.) (Louis Wu 14:08:41 UTC) (permalink)

News February 2 2005

Ripp0n's vid... with lots of BW
Okay, that's it. We killed another account with Ripp0n's Montage... so I'm doing what I should have done at the start... and putting up a BitTorrent seed for it. If you wanted to get this earlier today, and couldn't... get it now. Update: Even easier - a direct download link (50mb). (Louis Wu 23:22:46 UTC) (permalink)

On the internet, EVERYONE knows you're a dog.
Bizarre. SirDougOfUsbek made a film in which one of his party members just... fell asleep during gameplay. Proximity voice let everyone nearby hear the guy snoring... they messed with him for a while. Mantis posted a link on our forum; nof has mirrored a director's cut (somewhat longer). Take this as a warning; fall asleep during a game, you WILL be ridiculed, publicly. (6500 people have downloaded this film from putfile.com; I don't know how many mirror downloads there've been.) (Louis Wu 14:06:44 UTC) (permalink)

Quickie: NJ Tournament
Tourney in Wayne, NJ, this coming Saturday; 2v2 Team Slayer, $500 cash prize. Details in this forum post. (Louis Wu 13:55:54 UTC) (permalink)

Ripp0n's Montage
Holy... so there are tons of skill vids out there, and as I've said before, there's ALWAYS someone better than you... but this was pretty amazing. Ripp0n posted a link to a montage vid he put together from his XBC (Halo 1) gameplay, and man... that guy can stick. There are some grenade throws that will make your jaw drop. Vid quality is... well, crappy. Certainly good enough to see what's going on, though. Vid is 6:23 long, 50 mb, WMP9 format. Hosts are (apparently) spotty. (I had no trouble grabbing the file from the first mirror, but someone else in the thread last night mentioned they were both down.) Composition is quite good; the whole thing suffers only from low video quality. This is certainly Halo gameplay at the peak of its form. (It's a fantastic example of why n00bs don't really enjoy playing on XBC... guys like Ripp0n make you feel really... inadequate.) Update: Bah, that was quick. Vid is down again. If anyone's got a chunk of bandwidth they want to devote to this, drop us a line. (It's a big video, and it's making the rounds, sitewise, so if you've got less than 50 or 100 GB of bandwidth to offer, it's probably not worth it.) Thanks! Update: Thanks a million to linus, who's provided another mirror for this file. Get it while it's hot! (Louis Wu 13:26:29 UTC) (permalink)

Now THAT'S a full plate.
Whoa - more awards possibilities. The Game Audio Network Guild is hosting the 3rd Annual G.A.N.G. Awards, to be held this year on March 10 during the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. Halo 2 is up for:

• Audio Of The Year
• Best Cinematic/Cut-Scene Audio
• Music Of The Year
• Best Live Performance Recording
• Best Interactive Score
• Best Original Instrumental Song (for "Earth City")
• Best Original Vocal Song - Choral (for "Ghosts Of Reach")
• Best Original Soundtrack Album
• Sound Design Of The Year
• Best Dialogue

WOW! Thanks to Music 4 Games for the heads-up. (Louis Wu 11:31:53 UTC) (permalink)

Helljumper Hangout Art Contest
Randomhero has started an Art contest; entries can be almost anything (as long as they haven't been seen before), and you've got until Feburary 28 to submit. Full details, including a prize list, can be found at his 7th Column Group. (Louis Wu 11:24:38 UTC) (permalink)

Mop-Up Movie Action
We mentioned a couple of movies yesterday that have updates in availability... lessee. DementedPuppy has posted a QuickTime version of Vehicular Pwnage; it's about 17 mb. (The WMP9 version is, of course, still available.) And HALOChat has put up a copy of the DivX version of the Codex Trailer - it's always good to have extra help with hosting! If you missed either of these yesterday, go grab 'em now. (Louis Wu 11:21:44 UTC) (permalink)

AIAS Ceremony Goes Well for Halo 2
A week or so ago, we mentioned the Interactive Achievement Awards - they were given out yesterday. Halo brought home 4 of them; of the 6 it was nominated for, it missed only Game of the Year (to Half-Life 2) and Outstanding Achievement in Game Design (to Katamari Damacy). Not too shabby! (Louis Wu 11:14:23 UTC) (permalink)

News February 1 2005

The Codex - up again
Last night, we posted links to a trailer for The Codex, a new machinima production. Their server melted. They moved to a new host, and the links are back online, with smaller downloads (which means more people can view them)... and to make sure it doesn't happen again, we've tossed up mirrors on mythica.org and files.bungie.org.

• DivX (12.0 mb): Home Site | mythica.org | bungie.org
• QuickTime (12.2 mb): Home Site | mythica.org | bungie.org

Go grab 'em! (Louis Wu 21:28:53 UTC) (permalink)

On the Outskirts of New Mombasa
For those waiting breathlessly... it's Tuesday, so it's time for another chapter of Mike Miller's Legendary Walkthrough. This one looks at Outskirts... and the bane of Legendary in general - jackal snipers. Go read, go watch. (8 new movies.) (Louis Wu 17:58:53 UTC) (permalink)

Another side to the game violence issue
There's another interesting article linked from Rampancy.net over on TheHollywoodReporter.com - it's an interview with Henry Jenkins, a professor at MIT and a gamer. It brings up some pretty salient points about video game violence, and why we as a society seem to target it as a cure for our ills... and why this might not be very effective. A solid, thoughtful read, one that anyone affected by the hype over game violence should look at. (Louis Wu 17:55:57 UTC) (permalink)

Vehicular Pwnage
Verdafolio posted a note on our forum a few days ago about a movie called 'Vehicular Pwnage' - it's almost 20 mb, in WMP9 format, hosted over at DementedPuppy.com (thanks also to WhoKnew). This shows footage of the HBO Lekgolos doing some... well, check the title. A QuickTime version should be coming soon. (Louis Wu 17:37:48 UTC) (permalink)

Return to Sender - remixed
A couple of days ago, Xboxter posted a note on our forum - the links in that first post are funky, but the concept is there: he remixed the Last Spartan track off the Halo 2 Soundtrack to recreate the music you hear in the Return to Sender cutscene. I think he did a pretty nice job; you can download his remix from our server (mp3, 2.8 mb), and you can download a version of the cutscene that USES his music, to compare to the original, from his own website (WMP9 format, RAR-compressed, 7.6 mb). Give it a listen! (Louis Wu 16:32:17 UTC) (permalink)

Results from DC and TN
The MLGPro website was having a bit of trouble yesterday... this news isn't on their front page anywhere yet, but Gonzo sent us the details of last weekend's MLG DC event; looks like OGRE 2 took the FFA competition, StK was first in the 4v4, and Walshy and OGRE 2 teamed up to win the 2v2 Halo Side Game. I'm assuming a full writeup will be available on MLGPro.com soon. (Gonzo also mentioned that last week's AGP/LoJo event held last week in Knoxville, TN ended up with first prize in the $8500 tourney going to Team Pony, and the FFA title was taken by KillerN (of Team Pony).) (Louis Wu 14:17:31 UTC) (permalink)

More stat tools
And still more stats tools come on the scene. LunarShadow posted v1.06 of his Halo 2 Online (H2O) Stats reader - details and links are on our forum. (I couldn't get it to work, but I didn't check and make sure I had the latest versions of Microsoft's Visual Basic stuff.) And Todd Houser pointed out Query Spree, another downloadable program. (I haven't tested this one; it said it couldn't continue because 'some system files were out of date' and did I want to let Query Spree update them?) The field continues to expand... Update: Just saw this post on our forum; Aymeric has another online option for you. (Louis Wu 14:00:37 UTC) (permalink)

Playing for cash and causes
New tourneys - Slothboy mentioned one in Oregon; the Frag Fiesta will be taking place in Newberg (south of Portland) on February 12... and Kin Hulamm wrote to us about a 4v4 tourney to benefit UNICEF coming up in Greenbelt, Maryland on February 16; no website, but you can email him for details. (Louis Wu 13:55:05 UTC) (permalink)

Of Arks and Sevens
Jillybean let us know that there are a couple of small updates on the Halo Story page (one that mnemesis put up a few days ago, but we missed, another she posted last night)... go read the latest! (Louis Wu 13:37:46 UTC) (permalink)

The Codex - coming soon
New video to watch - a preview of things to come. The project is called 'The Codex', and the trailer is a bit over 3 minutes of tight camera work, beautiful edits, and great coordination with the soundtrack. Hard to tell yet how the plot will hold up... but the trailer certainly leaves you wanting more! Visit their Videos page for download links for QuickTime and DivX formats. A thread was started up on our forum, as well... be sure to leave 'em some feedback! Update: As many, many of you have noticed, the Codex website is offline for going over their bandwidth limits. I'll see what we can do about getting local versions up here to help 'em out. (Louis Wu 02:15:43 UTC) (permalink)

February 2005

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