Hellhawk sent us a bunch of Brute sounds for the Halo 2 Dialogue Databank; I can’t GUARANTEE none of them are repeats, but I’m pretty sure most aren’t, at least. Find an audio editor that lets you layer multiple sounds, and play ’em all at once – sounds like the monkey house at the Bronx Zoo!(Louis Wu 14:43:52 UTC)

On July 16, we put up an odd picture. Two days later, we did it again. (Different picture.) Well, they were both teasers for Fathom, a new Machinima project from some heavy hitters in the machinima community – SodaGod, BlackouTT, Jamie98s, FantasyCubed. You can find a variety of download links in the HaloGrid announce thread. I’ve also encoded a local QT version, 30 mb, that’s not on that page (yet). BlackouTT says this isn’t a trailer – but I’m not sure what else you’d call it; it sets up the series. Maybe a prologue? Mysterious, with great filming, great audio, great effects – very well done piece of work. Go watch it.(Louis Wu 14:22:46 UTC)

Heh – Devin Olsen almost got away with a Halo 3 Legendary Helmet for cheap yesterday. I HATE it when store managers foil my plots!(Louis Wu 14:11:39 UTC)

Velez noticed a summary of the McFarlane pieces scheduled for the next year, over at Spawn.com; the Halo Series 2 data (near the bottom of the page, due June 2008) is new. (Louis Wu 14:09:02 UTC)

Australia’s Gameplayer has put up a review of Halo 3 Multiplayer – they say it goes ‘Beyond the Beta’, but there’s not a lot in there that wasn’t already known, and it’s missing some of the newest info out there. Thanks, MasterChief2829.(Louis Wu 14:06:34 UTC)

Ducain pointed this out yesterday – but it wasn’t until today that I had a chance to actually look at it. Juggertrout and Big Grunty Thirst have released a new Halo 1 trick vid – one that is pretty darned clever. They noticed that a particular Shade spawns a grunt when a door opens (no matter where that Shade is)… so that Shade went EVERYWHERE. And I mean EVERYWHERE. Fun.(Louis Wu 13:59:59 UTC)

Outback Heh – deadguy71 stopped by with word of a heretofore unseen level in Halo 2 – ‘Outback’. The grass is AMAZING.(Louis Wu 13:51:24 UTC)

NovusVir let us know that he’s created a Halo-themed iGoogle skin; if you want your customized iGoogle page to reflect your favorite video game, check it out! (He says the gadget is safe; I have no way of confirming that, so use at your own risk. Google says that malicious gadgets can steal cookies and such.)(Louis Wu 12:15:58 UTC)

Littlebigman noticed a gallery of new shots of the McFarlane action figures coming soon. (They’re mixed in with other McFarlane stuff; you’ll have to hunt.) Pretty! (Louis Wu 12:13:23 UTC)

Seven new stories in the Fan Fiction section this week – check ’em out!(Louis Wu 12:12:35 UTC)

Bungie has a full list of Halo-related stuff at ComicCon in the next couple of days – if you’re there, or going there, make sure you check out the list.(Louis Wu 12:06:26 UTC)

Remember last week, when we mentioned that EGM had 3 covers coming out for their September issue? Well, Kotaku has posted much larger pics of them – very, very nice.(Louis Wu 12:04:20 UTC)

Games Digest has a list of academic subjects that could benefit from the study of video games; Halo pops up for Etiquette. Um… yeah.(Louis Wu 11:58:28 UTC)

Bungie posted an article showing off the huge Scarab that WizKids is selling, in very limited quantites, at ComicCon this week. (There are 500 of ’em, and they’re going for $250 each.) There are stories about this piece at Gizmodo and TeamXbox, as well, with a photo that shows how truly huge this scarab is, and with extra info about the upcoming games. (Louis Wu 11:54:04 UTC)

I’m leaving tomorrow; the last week has been a blur. Downside for you – Halo news lags, sometimes. I took off midday yesterday; let’s see what’s popped up since then. There’s an in-depth story about upcoming features in Halo 3 (including some that could definitely be considered campaign spoilers – be warned) at Yahoo! Canada (thanks to GhaleonEB for the heads-up, and ACEfanatic02 for the link). Audio stats: as of the time of the reporter’s visit, Halo 3 “included almost 54,000 pieces of audio: 1,000 pieces of music, 13,000 sound effects and 39,368 pieces of dialogue.” (Louis Wu 11:52:51 UTC)

Eurogamer has good things to say about Halo 3, in their summary of E3; interesting change of heart over recent articles. Thanks, Walshicus.(Louis Wu 17:30:46 UTC)

There are some interesting stats in this report from Nielson, about video game play; I’m not sure I understand them. It breaks out time spent playing video games on consoles (by console), and on PCs. On the Console side, Xbox + Xbox360 take up 25% of the minutes spent playing… crushed by the Playstation 2, which runs above 40%. (The Wii only has 4% of total minutes spent, which makes very little sense; average session time is about the same as that for the Xbox(es), and there certainly aren’t 60 million Xboxes out there.) On the PC side, Halo 2 is the second most-played game, following WoW (following it by a LOT) – with Halo 2 not far behind, in 4th place.(Louis Wu 17:05:12 UTC)