Month: September 2004

Okay… so if you could think of the most degrading position possible to put the Master Chief in… would it match this? (1.2 mb, QuickTime format, don’t watch this if you don’t want nightmares. Please don’t send Roger Wilco hatemail. Yell at him in this forum thread, instead.) Realize, too, that the entire ugly situation…

Bungie.net has put up their own copies of the 10 new screenshots – you can find them in the Halo 2 Screenshot Gallery. Well, some of you can. I’m having trouble right now; some machines here can see the thumbnails, but get errors trying to load the full images, while others can’t even get to…

Games Domain has put up its own Multiplayer Hands-On article – one piece of info that hasn’t shown up a lot is a comment about the matching process, with respect to connection speed: “As far as the connection quality goes, when you’re being matched to join a game,” Jarrard explained, “you’re not just being checked…

That Weasel writes to let us know that Episode 10, Chuckzilla, and Episode 11, Green, are both available at the Grunts are People Too!!! website. Chuckzilla chronicles the rampage (and downfall) of the infamous monster grunt, while Green requires some serious work to translate, but checks out Halo from the other side. Modding to the…

GameDaily has put up another In-Depth look at Halo 2, this time focusing on Gameplay. Does a nice job of looking at the new features as they’re known today. Give it a read!

Dolbex points out an article, written by Liquid and Fuzz, on the MLGPro.com website that summarizes what’s known and unknown about Halo 2 multiplayer at this stage. If you’ve been feeling overwhelmed, this might be a good overview to read.

Another day, another 10 pieces of art gone from the queue. (You’d think that one of these days, we’d actually get to the bottom, wouldn’t you?) This batch is in the Wallpaper Section, and includes spectacular pieces from notables like Tina Leyk and Adam ‘Vegasmike’ Vehige, as well as beautiful constructions from lesser-known (for now)…

Pico is celebrating his 20th birthday today… and as a present to the Halo community, he’s released Lethal Rage 4, not so much a sequel as another in a series of nicely filmed battle pieces. Cinematics are great (and the bloopers at the end give you some idea of how much work went into them).…

National Public Radio’s Morning Edition did a piece this morning on Madden Football, which has sold over 35 million copies over the life of the franchise. About 4 minutes into the 7 minute segment, the interviewer asks Gamespot’s Brian Ekberg if there are any games that approach the popularity of games like Madden. Ekberg points…

Looks like Finland is actively searching for the Master Chief. This news post on a Finnish gaming site explains how Microsoft Finland is looking for someone to fill the MC’s shoes – and the rest of his armor. Details thanks to Scanner Darkly on our forum. Do YOU make the cut?

Computer and Video Games has put up a pair of articles discussing their trip to Bungie Studios last month and their hands-on experience with Halo 2. Part 1 covers the basics of what they saw, part 2 looks closely at the 5 multiplayer maps they played. (Similar, but not identical, to the dozen other hands-on…

Gamespy has added another 3 pages to their Halo 2 Reader Feedback Followup #2 (whew! Get that?). There’s some solid (if not always entirely welcome) info in there from Frankie; Halo 2 will not have bot support, and there will be no low-gravity levels in the game. There’s more – go read it for yourself.…

Ducain has finished the Three Towers highlight video (he says ‘finally’ – making me feel even WORSE that the Going Nowhere Fast vid isn’t done yet, thanks, Ducain), showing the best stunts of the entries for this contest. WMP9 format, 9 minutes long, 23.2 mb. If there’s demand, I’ll toss up a QuickTime version. Update:…

Well, I’ll say that last night was pretty fun. I logged onto the HBO Coerce server – one of the few 16-players-full CE servers running last night – and saw a HOST of names I never see any more, including one I haven’t seen on Halo CE or PC… EVER. It was a blast. But…

CreepHunter pointed out yet ANOTHER guitar tab of the Halo theme he found at Video Game Jam – he liked this one better than the last one we mentioned. Again – I can’t read these, so I’m not passing any judgement at all… but they’re out there, if you want to use them.

Guess who’s back? We missed you man.

Finn, the more productive half of the HSP duo, has gone and updated the Story Page again. Kings and angels, maps and timelines, there’s some good stuff there. Check it out!

Wow. Got mail from AEG, a PR firm that handles a lot of Microsoft’s promotions; there’s a BIG contest launching Wednesday, September 15, at 9 am PDT. We don’t have a lot of details yet… but I do know it involves Halo 2, and Xbox Live, and as soon as the full contest announcement has…

Another day, another Miscellaneous Art batch. Again, 10 items, ranging from sketches to animated gifs. See what you can find!

Last night was the first attempt of a weeklong push to get over 1000 people playing Halo CE simultaneously. It was a failure; total players never climbed above 400. Captain Spark suggested that the problem might be that there aren’t enough non-passworded servers to even SUPPORT 1000 players… but I don’t think that’s the case.…