The Halo 3 Gophers are running a Summer Forge Contest – build a fun ‘mini game’ map, win kudos on their site. More details in the forum post.(Louis Wu 13:40:45 UTC)

Yesterday, Chapter 1 of The Chronicles of Lyle (‘Team Players’) went live on YouTube – and you should watch it, because it’s pretty funny. I heard about it on the Bungie Blog, so don’t forget to thank urk.(Louis Wu 13:38:17 UTC)

Halo Wars news today – a new Dev Blog (Leader Powers Part Three) is live… and “an Xbox LIVE technical issue” is the cause of a complete wipe of all Halo Wars Xbox LIVE Leaderboards yesterday (thanks, SonofMacPhisto). Bad news for folks who were playing for recognition…(Louis Wu 13:37:43 UTC)

Itching for new information about the Halo 3: ODST campaign? Bungie’s got your back – a new ViDoc went live last night, while most of us slept. 3:34 long, it tells the story of the ODST team you’ll be playing when the game drops on September 22. Told from the viewpoint of Gunnery Sergeant Eddie Buck, you’re introduced to the full team – and to their mission in this game. Get tactical, marines! (Video is available in a variety of sizes and resolutions… from 180p all the way up to 720p, in both QuickTime and WMP9.)(Louis Wu 10:09:50 UTC)

glowsoft stopped in to let us know about Halo-Galaxy, a German space-strategy game that’s recently been translated to English. Go try it out!(Louis Wu 21:28:53 UTC)

Anoj is back with Episode 36 of his Top 10 Halo 3 Series – this one is ‘Amazing Kills’. Some really fun kills in there… go watch. Thanks, urk.(Louis Wu 21:27:43 UTC)

It’s Wednesday, so it’s time for Bungie to update it’s Favorites page – this time around, it’s the second batch of files from Epic Pic. Go see what they’ve got for you!(Louis Wu 19:10:04 UTC)