Episode 20 of the Codex, the final of the series, was released a few hours ago. It’s currently only available in QuickTime, but WMP9 should be coming later today. Thirteen and a half minutes long, this is a fitting end to a spectacular series – plenty of action, drama, suspense… great filming, great overall production values. Check it out! While you’re there, look around the site – it’s been overhauled. Each video has its own page now (with much more info than before), and there’s a new online store, selling t-shirts, and the Codex Soundtrack.

The folks at Broken Console have posted Episode 2 of their machinima series, The Squadron. You can grab it in either WMP9 or QuickTime formats at their website – roughly 15 mb, depending on the format. Continues the humor-with-a-storyline they started with episode one – go watch!

The most recent Weekly What’s Update over at Bungie.net is pretty short… but it looks at changes to be made in the next month or so to the XBL playlists. Some good stuff coming up – multiball, baby! Go read.

Today’s One One Se7en takes a poke (geddit? Poke?… eh.) at the whole Hot Coffee controversy swirling around the videogame industry at the moment. I’m so embarrassed.

Eep – been a little while since the Fan Fiction section was updated – there are 11 new pieces for you there (including the latest chapter in what I think is the longest-running serial fanfic on our site – the first installment was posted more than 31 months ago). Go read!

Arcadian Flame, of Chairleg Productions, has put together A Tale of Two Countries – an attempt to highlight some of the differences between the UK and the US. Chairleg uses (appropriately for this site) the Halo engine in this display. The Movie Peer Review Rating System passed this by a wide margin. You can grab a copy in WMP9 format (29.8 mb) or QuickTime format (27.1 mb) – and laugh all the way to the pub… er, I mean, the bar.

Another Games.net article – Ten Hugely Over-rated Games. (Neither this one, nor the FPS Weapons article we mentioned earlier, are new – this one was posted in late May, and the weapon article was posted in June. They’re simply new to this site.) Halo is rated #8 – ironic, since the same author believes its primary multiplayer weapon is the most kickass FPS weapon out there… Thanks once again, 3Suns (who also points out some well-thought-out comments on this article at GameTab).

MLGPro.com has posted an interview with Team 3D, the dominant force in professional Halo this year (well, up until MLG Philly, where they were taken down by Str8 Rippin). They talk about their loss in Philly, and why it happened. It’s an interesting read – 3D never comes out and says ‘yep, they played better than us’, there’s a lot of talk of ‘they set the pace of the game, which is different than what we’re used to, we should have stepped it up’ and ‘the gametypes were flawed, because they got the power weapon and we were stuck’. It’ll be interesting to see if Str8 Rippin can stay on top – if they do, 3D is going to have to come up with new reasons why. Thanks again, 3Suns.

Jason writes to point out the Eastview Halofest IV, a 4v4 Halo 2 tourney to be held at hte Eastview Christian Church, in Bloomington/Normal, IL on September 23rd. Registraiton is $10 per person, prizes to be awarded to the top team and the top FFA players. You must be 18 to enter. More details (and a signup sheet) can be found on the website.

Games.net has written up a piece on ‘The Most Kickass FPS Guns Ever‘ – and Halo showed pretty well. Halo 2’s Energy Sword made #8… and Halo’s original M6D pistol received the top honors – #1! Intriguing reasoning. Thanks, 3Suns.

BattleAngel points out a Halo skin for CounterStrike for… plumper Master Chiefs. The guy could definitely use some thigh reductions.

New strip over at Halo Babies today… you’d think a soldier would have better control of his weapons. Then again, maybe that’s just because he’s the BABY MC…

Hawaiian Pig is back in the RvB Movie Poster business – he’s made a few different versions in honor of the upcoming start of Season 4. His first try was in this post – then he messed with fonts to get the image in this post… and finally offered up the image in this post. I’ve added local alternate links to all three posts; if his bandwidth gets out of control, and he pulls the originals, the alternates will continue to work.

Father Hartley writes with news of another Lightbearers Tournament – the tourney will take place on Xbox Live on the 13th (that’s this Saturday), and will be a 2v2 skirmish event (CTF, Assault, Oddball, KOTH, the works). They’re only accepting 2 man teams, but there’s a place on their forum to find a partner if you don’t have one. Go sign up!

Must be the day of women Halo artists, or something. I was digging around DeviantART, and I found a great image of an elite, colored by Tina Leyk. The original artwork, with a gorgeous double energy sword, was drawn by her friend callyfin – and callyfin did her own colored version… but then offered the inked (black and white) version to anyone who wanted to color it. Tina’s interpretation is stunning. We’ve added this image (in both flavors, the original and Tina’s recolored version) to her local Halo art page. Check it out!

A few days ago, we mentioned a video available at halo2forum – it was created by Xpl0d3r, of Clan HollywoodHalo, and it looked at some lessons than can be gleaned from playing Halo 2. (Well… sort of.) He submitted it to the MPRRS, and the reviewing crew liked it – so we’re making it available here, as well. You can grab a QuickTime version (32.3 mb), or a WMP9 version (34.6 mb). Remember: When you can’t find a deal – make one.

Over the past few months, a community member named Kelli Washburn (but better known as Pinkuh) has released various bits of Halo-related fan art, generally to thunderous applause. There’s enough of it these days that it deserves its own page… so that’s what it’s got, now. If you haven’t seen this stuff before, take a good look; she’s great at what she does, and she loves Halo.

Thanks to Deimos, the Seeker is back – sort of. Its spidering capabilities are offline, so new content can’t be added… but the existing database is pretty substantial, and searching is fine. (In a couple of weeks, spidering will come back, too.) We’ve re-added the link to the sidebar. Enjoy!

CNN has an article about video game music – it uses Video Games Live (the live concert tour) as a jumping-off place, but touches on the advances video game music has made over the years. Halo gets a mention, of course, since the Halo 2 soundtrack has sold 100,000 copies. Thanks, ICDedPpl.