TheGameReviews.com has five features they want to see in Halo 3: Recon. See how many you agree with.(Louis Wu 17:22:25 UTC)

Funky – over in the Bungie Blog, urk pointed out a tribute vid created by a pair of fans who built a Rube Goldberg-like structure in Foundry. (Louis Wu 16:57:47 UTC)

There’s a pretty interesting read over at Gamasutra – Keith Boesky, a game agent and attorney, former president of Eidos, talks about the disconnect between reviewers and consumers. The interesting thing to me was his point that in most fields of entertainment, stuff with mass appeal is simplistic, while the critics love the quirky, the obscure, the deep… whereas in games it’s the opposite. Halo gets a couple of mentions, though it’s nowhere near the center of his article. Go read – and then stop by our forum to discuss!(Louis Wu 15:50:49 UTC)

Ran across a website called ‘The Ten Word Review’ – it collects just that; ten-word reviews of stuff. There are five entries for Halo 3. (They range from insightful to… well, stupid.)(Louis Wu 15:20:32 UTC)

FriendlyFire noticed a new interview with Stuart Beattie over at Tom’s Games – Beattie is the screenwriter who’s trying to drum up interest for his Halo spec script. He talks about why he jumped on this project, and why he thinks someone should take him up on his offer. Go read!(Louis Wu 15:17:43 UTC)

Wow, this is one of the most useless glitches I’ve seen – but the fact that someone stumbled on it makes it newsworthy. ADD for the win! Apparently, if you jump back and forth between the main Halo 3 menu and a lobby menu, quickly and for a really long time, eventually the background that shows in the individual lobby will ‘stick’ – and that will be the background for ALL menus (until you start a game up). You can even see the image without the blue filter (well, part of it, anyway) if you go into Forge. As to WHY you’d want to do this… sorry, all out of ideas.(Louis Wu 14:32:59 UTC)

I’d post the permalink for this, but it doesn’t include any useful information – because the link is in the summary. Bungie has put up a new presentation – this one was done by Effects Art Lead Steve Scott, and it talks about effects and how they evolved in Halo 3. Interesting stuff! The download is 88 mb, zipped – it’s mostly videos. Swing by the Bungie Publications page to download it. (Louis Wu 14:03:22 UTC)

The Orange Hayabusa Spartan auction ended yesterday – final bid was $255, proceeds going to the Fight Like a Girl tourney. Awesome! If you’re sorry you missed out, though, it looks like there’s a SECOND one! This one ends in a little less than three days, and current bid is just over $180. What are you waiting for?(Louis Wu 14:02:18 UTC)

It’s been a few months – but Hawty McBloggy’s Rorschach Inkblot Test is back, this time looking at the global heatmap of Cold Storage. (The last one was from Avalanche – the article contains a summary of results from there, as well.) What do you see? (Louis Wu 14:00:48 UTC)

With all the strides we’ve made recently in terms of accepting women into the ranks of hardcore Halo lovers, it’s disappointing when an example of blatant chauvinism rears its ugly head. It’s our duty, however, to shine light on these things, because awareness is the first step towards enlightenment. Thanks to Matt Soell for the heads-up.(Louis Wu 13:59:06 UTC)

ZZoMBiE13 continues his study of RvB: Reconstruction – he recently posted a closeup of the Meta. Love the chin horns!(Louis Wu 13:57:26 UTC)

Ten new submissions for the Fan Fiction section this week – and a number of them are flagged for the ‘You’re Doing It Write‘ contest, as well. Go read!(Louis Wu 13:55:18 UTC)

The Reclaimer 103 is now online (thanks, SonofMacPhisto) – Viper’s danger is becoming apparent, and it looks like things are about to heat up. (Louis Wu 13:47:30 UTC)

xen eldridge let us know that HaloRPG.com has a plasma-pistol-only Double XP weekend. Hmm… (Louis Wu 13:46:45 UTC)