Month: May 2004

Wow. Swing by Bungie.net and grab four new wallpapers; there’s a simple but beautiful one involving the Halo 2 logo, and really nice versions of mehve’s Fall of Reach, The Flood, and First Strike book jacket artwork. All four desktops were done by Zoe. Thanks, Tempus Fugit.

The Junkyard has turned its spotlight on David ‘Narcogen’ Josselyn, head honcho over at Rampancy.net. He discusses life in the former USSR, drinking, and getting tooled in Halo (by his wife). Go read it – there’s lots more, he’s pretty verbose.

Eurogamer interviewed J Allard; the subject of the interview is XNA, but Allard focuses a LOT on Halo (as an example game), and then waxes enthusiastic about Halo 2’s presales.I just think Halo 2 is going to tip our world upside down. I think nobody will go to work on November 9th, I think there…

Frankie has written up a great piece on the Secrets of Zanzibar; as Frankie says, the map can change quite a lot before Halo 2 ships, so these secrets might not be in the final version, but just reading them will give you an idea of the depth of this new level (and, by implication,…

Juggertrout put up a vid recently, showing some nice shade jumping. The forum post is here, and a functional mirror for the movie is here (the original is busted). Check it out!

Looks like Bungie’s showing off one the Series 5 Flood action figure; there’s a Flood carrier (and his little popcorn friend) on the Bungie Webcam at the moment. (Pic saved here for posterity.) Thanks, 3.

Ian McConville has posted a new VG-Cats-tribute wallpaper at MacHall – and it’s got a great Master Chief in it. Grab the paper, visit MacHall, vist VG Cats… it’s all good. (Thanks, Andrew.)

The Halo 2 FAQ at Bungie.net has gotten a major overhaul – questions tweaked, many new questions added… a definite must-read. Thanks to Tempus Fugit for pointing it out.

Roger Wilco has created some pretty cool 3d stuff in the past. (Some of it has even been confused for Bungie concept art, it’s that good.) Today, he brings you Special Delivery, a new movie fully rendered in 3ds max. 24 mb, QuickTime format, graciously hosted by Mythica.org. Beautiful.

The Master Chief runs up against his worst enemy in today’s Calvin and Halo.

Halo 2 was the subject of today’s Dork Tower cartoon at Gamespy. IRC consensus is that it’s not funny. What do they know? Make up your own mind. Thanks, Brad.

Mothergoat (author of some cool Halo fan music) has been bitten by the mapmaking bug – and his first map is now available for download. It’s called Transfer, and it’s pretty bumpy. (Mothergoat calls it ‘jump-heavy’.) Some nice touches, like the overarching longsword beams. There’s a small promo movie (3.9 mb, WMP9) if you want…

When the Limited Edition box set was originally announced, Halo forums across the net were flooded with folks outside the US worrying anxiously about whether it would be available internationally, and whether it would be available in PAL format. There’s still been no official confirmation – but some investigation by fans would suggest that non-US…

Gamespy has put up its Annual E3 Awards – and Halo 2 took #7. (It was beaten by four games and two handheld gaming devices.) Thanks, MinM.

Another IGN article – this one is called ‘Halo 2: A Deeper Look’. It checks out the little things that add up to make Halo 2 stand head and shoulders above its competition. Nicely written.

In going over the E3 coverage out there, I found a Hands-On article we missed last week; it was put up at GamePro. It’s not long, but gives a nice recap of the play afforded press and lucky public last week.

IGN has posted a ‘Second Time Around’ article – the reviewer got a chance to think a bit more about Halo 2 and strategy. It’s a good read. Thanks, HaloMasterr.

MacSoft has released a patch to bring Mac Halo up to v1.05. This fixes a number of graphical glitches – a full list (and download links) can be found in the press release. The download is 3.4 mb. (This is NOT a Custom Edition patch; Westlake is still evaluating that situation.)

Not that it should surprise anyone at this point, but Halo 2 just took home another award from E3 – Game Informer voted it Game of Show. Nice one!

Xbox.com has put together their Halo 2 page; many recent articles have all been linked there for easy access. One you might have missed (because we never posted news about it – we missed it) is an article about the 1000-person-big, nationwide, Microsoft-employee-only Halo 2 alpha test that took place a few months ago. Thanks…