Archive for December, 2001
More FF Bloating
December 31st, 2001
Gasmask turns in another couple of incredibly short Fan Fictions - one ends the Journey of the Doomed series, the other starts the Training Day series. (They're SO short, in fact, and they come so frequently, one wonders why he doesn't just send them in when the series is complete - each of his completed series make a nice little 2-page or less fanfic... but every author is different, I guess.) You'll find them in our Fan Fiction section, and if you'd like to read them all in one go, use this link.
Fun with the Flood
December 31st, 2001
How many places can you shoot a flood and knock parts off? Some thought it was just the arms and head... but Skeletor points out that the abdomen is another piece. (In fact, he took a picture.) We've made it local, to avoid loading problems with Geocities images...
Halo SETI Team 14 day stats posted
December 31st, 2001
Even with the additions of new members Donguido (3772 units) and beamanm (120 units), among others, the Halo SETI Marines can't catch a break from the Berkeley boys. Total units crunched these past two weeks: 3333. Total units brought in by new team members: 3918. Total new units registered by the SETI server: 3510. OUCH! The team's position at 62 remains constant (though less than 150 units separates the Marines from the next team up). Check all the ugly details on the 14 day stats page.
Ooh, my blood pressure…
December 31st, 2001
Whoa - a misstatement, or is something big coming? Jay Weinland (known on our forum as Jay the Younger) dropped off a clarification of what was recorded (and what was released - two different things, apparently) but what caught my eye was this sentence:
ow if you want to hear some classic s**t just wait until we can get some of the outakes onto the halo.net site. Have some nice ones already edited just 'a waitin for ya...
Halo.net? Last we checked, that was held by a mobile communications company - and it still is. Likely Jay means 'the Bungie.net Halo site'. :)
Low news means high carnage
December 31st, 2001
Apologies for the low number of updates yesterday - the HBO Junkies had a LAN party yesterday, at HBO headquarters (here), and at its height, we had 11 marines on 4 Xboxes battling it out to the death (and what a lot of death it was). There were, in fact, 6 Xboxes (and 5 TVs) present... but multiplayer was just too much fun to break up into smaller groups, or play other games. Anyway, things will be getting back to normal soon, and of course, a report (or three) will be forthcoming.
Halo wins the TXB Viewer’s Choice Award
December 31st, 2001
Halo won the Team Xbox Viewer's Choice Award for Best Game of the Year. Pax.
Halo-World link adjustments
December 30th, 2001
SpAder writes to say that Halo-World, which we'd listed as an English Halo page, is actually available in both English and German. (In fact, the English version isn't even there yet - but the German version is.) We've adjusted our Links page to reflect reality.
HQ Halo comes back
December 30th, 2001
Andreas den Hertog AKA Pacey Dré writes to say that his FTP problems are over, and HQ Halo is back up and running, with an entirely new design. Check it out - soothing and easy to look at!
Lots more reading material
December 30th, 2001
More fan fiction for the masses - another couple of stories from Gasmask, and another installment of Uriel's 'Beyond the Paradise' series. Check the lot out in our Fan Fiction section!
GS Readers scream HALO!
December 29th, 2001
A few days ago, GameSpy put up its Game of the Year Awards... and Halo was voted Xbox Best Action/Adventure Game. (We reported this last week.) It lost out to Madden NFL 2002 for Xbox Game of the Year, though... and was overlooked for a number of special achievement categories (Best In-Game Cutscenes, Best Sound, Best Artificial Intelligence... though it did receive a runner-up award for Best Force Feedback). Today, the people speak... in GameSpy's Gamer's Choice section, an astounding 59.2% of fans voted Halo the Xbox Game of the Year. Who's right, the GameSpy critics or the fans? You decide. (Thanks to RedFoxTX for the heads-up.)
Curse words, and Halo
December 29th, 2001
Though it will keep coming up, Marty O'Donnell, Halo's Audio Lead, makes a very clear statement about the existence of a certain curse word in Halo:
the "f" word is never used by anyone or anything in Halo. It is however used by players stuck in the grav lift room of the T&R on legendary...
I can vouch for that second part, for sure.
Sir Jason? Um…
December 29th, 2001
Inside Mac Games has put up their 2002 predictions, as part of a 2001 Year in Review article... and Bungie gets a pair of mentions. The first one is serious (and seems quite possible):
Destineer will ship Halo for the Mac. Period. (OMG, the BEST GAME EVER WILL SHIP! Wooohoo!)
The second... well, not so serious:
Bungie's Jason Jones will be knighted by the Queen. He'll now answer only to Sir Jason.
Thanks to Red Hot Ryan for pointing the article out.
The Spirit Awakens
December 29th, 2001
Heh - Mr Bill Jr V asks on our forum, 'Is there too much Fan Fiction?' Half an hour earlier, though, he submitted 'The Awakening', a sequel (of sorts) to his earlier 'The Spirit'. You can find these (and many many more - too many?) in our Fan Fiction section.
The Journals continue
December 28th, 2001
Gasmask has turned in not one, not two, but THREE more installments of his 'Journals of the Doomed' series. You'll probably find it easiest to simply read them in one shot - but you'll find the individual stories in our Fan Fiction section. Comments work again (I managed to break them for part 2). Warning: There are major Halo story spoilers in the last entry.
Older screenies added
December 28th, 2001
Two of the new reviews mentioned recently contained new screenshots - we've added them to the Screenshots database (now up to 538 shots!). The Xbox Hotgames pics are right at the beginning, where new shots usually are... but the GamerSquare shots are farther in (since we missed the review when it first came out). Enjoy!
MiscArt Wallpaper, even
December 28th, 2001
Thomas Barbee dropped off a very nice Bryce image, Halo-fied... we've added it to our Miscellaneous Art section, but it's a decent size for a desktop image, as well.
Massive Review Boost
December 27th, 2001
Wow. Dan Rudolph pointed out this page at Game Rankings, containing a list of 40 Halo reviews, a whopping 11 of which weren't on our Reviews page. We've added them now... and placed a running aggregate score at the top of the page. (Halo currently holds a 95.2% rating over those 55 reviews.) Later tonight we'll add some extra screenshots, and a pair of movies, found on the new pages.
December selling stats
December 27th, 2001
Reuters reports that Sony is dominating the video game market at the moment - after the rush of buying spurred by the release of the Xbox and the GameCube, people have gone back to buying for their existing products, it seems. 12 of the top 20 best-selling games for the first half of December were for Sony's Playstation and Playstation 2, 7 were for Nintendo products (4 Game Boy Advance, 2 GameCube, and 1 Game Boy Color), and one - Halo - represented the Xbox. Three of the four November Xbox best-selling titles, and both of the November GameCube best-sellers, disappeared off the charts. (The two GC titles for December were not on the list in November.) Halo, then, becomes the only game for the new consoles to hold on to its best-seller status through the middle of December - not bad! Thanks to Jeremy Roush for the heads-up.
GameSpot’s Best Of Awards
December 27th, 2001
Gamespot has put up their Best and Worst of 2001 awards... and Halo did pretty well. Best Shooter, Best Xbox Game, Number 3 in the Top 10 Video Games of 2001 (beaten by Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 and Grand Theft Auto III), and nominated for Best Sound. (Strangely, it wasn't even in the running for Best Story or Best Graphics.) You can vote for yourself in their Reader's Choice Ballot. Thanks to Razorback for the heads-up.
Frenetic Fan Fiction
December 27th, 2001
Doesn't usually happen quite this quickly... but Gasmask has submitted Part 2 of his Journals of the Doomed series (Part 1 was posted 12 hours ago). You'll find it in our Fan Fiction section...
