It took a bit longer than expected, but the January Matchmaking Update is now live (it has been since late last night). Swing by Bungie.net for full details on the changes (they were posted before, but it’s nice to have everything in one place).(Louis Wu 16:33:00 UTC)

Over at Ascendant Justice, Vociferous has added another masterful article – this one is called ‘Unworlding’, and it looks at the Great Journey. It begins with a decent piece of fan fiction… and continues on to an exhaustive look at all the information currently available about the birth of the IDEA of the Great Journey. Plenty of solid investigative work, coupled with some deft speculation, leads to a well-written, intriguing article that certainly raises additional questions. Go check it out! Thanks to Chris Sauer for the heads-up.(Louis Wu 16:15:09 UTC)

Narcogen’s posted the second half of Anger, Sadness and Envy Episode 6 – the Rampancy.net podcast looking at Floodgate. He and Blackstar discuss game details and motivations – an interesting conversation! 59 minutes, 41 mb. This is the AAC-encoded version… MP3 coming soon. (Louis Wu 16:11:11 UTC)

onebitrocket noticed that Amazon has posted a placeholder for Halo 3: ODST… and while you shouldn’t trust any release dates that don’t come from the company, it IS the first time we’ve seen anyone even GUESS at a date. (Amazon is listing October 6 as the release.) As things change, we’ll keep you informed.(Louis Wu 15:42:15 UTC)

TTL Demag0gue let us know that Reclaimer 139 is now online – and the Reclaimer learns more about a new player.(Louis Wu 15:25:22 UTC)

Morpheus announced that his ‘Communitage 2’ is now available for download – it’s 10 minutes long, and available in both standard and HD formats. (It’s pretty big; 219 mb in SD, 413 mb in HD.) YouTube is coming soon. It’s full of clips from folks who sent him their best stuff. Check it out!(Louis Wu 15:20:39 UTC)

Andrew Kleiner let us know that two new chapters of his Halo 3 screenshot comic, ‘Outbreak’, are now up – swing by his website for downloads. Volume 2, Chapter 4 (‘Recall’) is here, and Volume 2, Chapter 5 (‘The Calm Before the Storm’) is here.(Louis Wu 15:01:25 UTC)

Brad McMullen let us know that Stephen Loftus isn’t the only Halo fan obsessed with the Pillar of Autumn – his buddy AlmightyNabeshin, over at DeviantArt, has been posting his own cool PoA pieces. Check out a structural study, a cross-section of the ship (color-coded for functionality), and a pretty cool front-end view (not quite finished). Nice work! (Louis Wu 14:57:50 UTC)

Ryan Hamilton stopped by to announce a Halo song he created – it’s called ‘Playing Halo (ODST Remix)’, and it’s available on his MySpace page. Unfortunately, the page doesn’t display correctly unless you’re using IE on a Windows box – which leaves a lot of users (Mac users, Firefox users, etc) out in the cold. We’ve grabbed a local copy of the MP3 – you can download it from our server (2.5 mb). (If Ryan has a problem with this, we’ll certainly take it back down.) (Louis Wu 14:46:56 UTC)

Two new vids were highlighted yesterday afternoon on the Bungie Blog – Inside Halo Episode 29 is up at YouTube (typical Dead Pixel wackiness), and one of the ‘top 5 kills’ in that vid has its OWN vid – a father-and-son team rack up a pair of Killionaires in a Gauss hog on Standoff… great show.(Louis Wu 14:42:39 UTC)

Monochron noticed yet another GameDaily article that mentions Halo – this one picks the top 25 game logos of all time (based on their potential for tattoos, apparently) – and the Halo 3 logo comes in second. (Quake takes the top spot.)(Louis Wu 14:41:34 UTC)

Hawty McBloggy found a plasma pistol montage – it’s all kills with the plasma pistol. No, not an overcharge and then a beatdown/headshot/whatever… but actual kills by being hit with plasma shots. Some of these you have to wonder about – they take him many, many seconds to finish off his opponents, who totally fail at returning the favor. Quality’s borderline, but still fun. (You should watch the HQ version at YouTube.) (Louis Wu 14:39:52 UTC)