Author: Louis Wu

Thanks a million to HymnToNinkasi, of the PraetoriaGuard – she went through our Links page, site by site, and culled the chaff, the sites that were no longer in existence. w00t! To thank her, you should go visit their website, download their movies, and give ’em feedback. They love that stuff.

Interesting article about game soundtracks over at the Hollywood Reporter; the focus is on the Hitman series, and its composer… but Halo 2, with sales of 120,000 copies for its first volume (12 times the average sales of a game soundtrack), is used as a benchmark. Thanks to Greg O’Connor-Read, of Music 4 Games, for…

A tad late, because of family obligations, but it’s time to let you know about another Bungie Weekly What’s Update, posted over at Bungie.net. It’s a pretty big one – it contains information about the new maps to be released in June (including two new teaser screens, of Relic and Backwash), as well as plenty…

A couple of days ago, Mukelo posted a trailer on our forum. I let him know that if we pointed people to a 58 mb video with a positive review, he could expect a couple of thousand downloads, as a minimum, but that if he were willing to submit it to our Movie Peer Review…

Today’s One One Se7en looks at the hazards of multitasking. I think some credit for the concept goes to Patroclus, but I’m not positive.

Today’s w00tness focuses on Halo’s Hunter – nice pic! (Thanks, Endbringer)

VGman17 posted a countdown to the new maps coming out in June – if you simply MUST know how long it’ll be before you can play Backwash, go visit! Update: you might experience a freeze due to faulty Flash programming if you visit this page. Works fine in Firefox on OSX and XP, and on…

A few days ago, LightingXCE dropped by our forum to mention that he’d been working on recreating LibraryMP for Halo Custom Edition. (LibraryMP was an early modding effort by Monoxide which allowed multiplayer gameplay in Halo’s Library. We mentioned it in January 2004, though the vid in the linked forum post no longer exists.) Well,…

Garry Webber points out a Halo mention in today’s Exerminatus Now.

Evil_Kefka points out a Flash movie he’s got at Newgrounds; it’s a look at how powerful the plasma grenade has become since the AutoUpdate. Nice graphics.

Leave it to Halo Babies to come up with new, less-violent uses for some of the weapons in Halo 2.

Until recently, the scoring algorithm at the Movie Peer Review Rating System gave extra weight to smaller movies, on the principle that if it wasn’t a hassle to download (or serve), it didn’t have to be QUITE as good. We’ve rethought that rule… but tonight, there are two short films that made the cut with…

Bungie’s side of the story for last night’s Halo Humpday Challenge has been posted – it’s an entertaining read. It’s okay to have awful stats if your team wins anyway. I’m not sure I like the title ‘Anti-MLG’ that was tossed at HBO… but I can’t deny we like chaotic gametypes (monosnipe CTF is positively…

Chris Bryan continues to work on Halo-related pieces – if you check his wearable Master Chief suit page, you’ll find a new picture; he’s put together a pair of M7/Caseless SMGs that look pretty nice! (He wonders whether he should make ’em shiny, or leave ’em matte… personally, I like ’em the way they are.)

Last week, Stryke Force released hi-res versions of their first couple of episodes. People liked them – so they’ve released hi-res versions of episodes 3, 4, and 5. WMP9 versions are up on their downloads page right now – QuickTime links should be up soon. This is one of the more polished machinima series out…

BIGwooly, a name that will be familiar to long-time fans, is back with a new montage. He submitted this to our Movie Peer Review Rating System, and passed nicely; there’s some great audio sync going on here. Final credits are also a great example of how this can be done nicely, without too much time…

A week ago, we mentioned a fun little Flash game at Newgrounds, where you could play some CTF on Blood Gulch in your spare time. We were contacted by the author, and now there’s a copy hosted here, as well. Enjoy!

Congratulations to 4orty2wo Entertainment – they took home this year’s Games-Related Webby Award for their “I Love Bees” Halo 2 campaign. Seems likely that ARGs will take on a much greater role in marketing in the future, now that they’ve got a success like this under their belts! (Thanks, Ripp.)

The HBO Lekgolos played Bungie last night in the Halo Humpday Challenge – and prometheus got the jump on Frankie with a writeup on our forum. There’s no Mister Chief artwork, but otherwise, it’s a great post. (Hmm… come to think of it, the lack of Mister Chief artwork does it GOOD.) The Lekgolos lost…

Episode 10 of the Codex has been released; it had been delayed due to technical difficulties, necessitating some refilming, but I must say, it didn’t suffer from the delay. This episode is fantastic. Great cinematography, great battle scenes, wonderful plot advancement. A must-see. Available in Quicktime format now – coming soon in DivX and WMP9.…