Stuntmutt’s made a name for himself foisting bad puns on the Halo community. Today’s One One Se7en shows that there may not be limits to the lengths he’ll go…

There’s a great piece over at Gamasutra, discussing the concept of Story in the context of video games – why the story is important, how games differ from the media that came before, what the developer can do to improve the experience for the player. Halo is held up as an example of Story Done Right (though I was amused to see a Bungie employee quote – about Halo, no less – used derisively as an example of how the industry has done things wrong up to now). Give this a read, and see if you agree! (Seems silly to point it out at this stage – but there are Halo-related spoilers in this one.) Thanks to 3Suns for the heads-up.

Sixteen new pieces available in the Fan Fiction section today – get to reading!

corpseguy posted a few shots of a helmet he’s made for Halloween this year – looking pretty nice!

Generally, we stay away from net polls nowadays – they don’t really tell you anything except which game has a fan community more willing to vote in polls. Sometimes, though… they’re fun. In an article about the top 100 all time classic computer games, Yahoo Games UK is asking for your favorite game of all time – Halo is up against contenders like Tetris and Pong (and a bunch of newer classics, too). At the moment, it’s hanging out in 5th place… but maybe, if you think it deserves it, you can toss a vote its way. Thanks to MaVeRiCK XS for the heads-up. (For what it’s worth – Halo shows up on the 41-50 page of the article.)

Newfive has posted a short guide to Halo 2 Custom Edition, the recently released (and these days almost-daily-augmented) HaloCE project. The guide comes with nice pics, links to all relevant material, and answers to basic questions – check it out!

Dennis Powers writes to point out that GearboxGameZone has mirrored The Squadron videos, and has added over 20 new Halo vids in the past two days, including most of the videos available on the “This Spartan Life” website (and a bunch that aren’t – there are now WMP9-encoded versions of the first 5 episodes). Go see what you can find!

Looks like the Halo Babies team has taken a page from the Bungie playbook and is challenging other Halo community teams to Xbox Live duels. There’s a writeup from Dark Halo posted over at the Halo Babies website, detailing a recent match between the HBN crew and the Marty Army – looks like this series was a blowout. Details and gamelinks available in the writeup!

Last fall, we mentioned ‘There’s Something about Halo’, a Flash vid over at Newgrounds – now, the team behind it has a preview of TSAH2 online (click the floating ‘TSAH2’ thing). That’s some weird dancing… thanks, Tactic.

The MPRRS continues to process submitted movies – The Squadron is a machinima series from the folks at Broken Console. Episode One is nearly 12 minutes long, and introduces the main characters and the storyline. Reviewers liked the humor and the flow. Check it out! WMP9 format (26.4 mb) or QuickTime format (26.7 mb).

Conner Reeves is selling a Frankie-signed Halo 2 poster on eBay – starting bid is just under $15, and there are 4 days left in the auction. Here’s your chance for a personal Mister Chief on your wall!

WHAM! Gaming (a subsection of the CANOE network) reviewed the Multiplayer Map Pack last week – they liked most of the maps, but had problems with Gemini, Terminal, and Warlock. Issues aside, the collection earned a 9.5/10 from them. Thanks, Anton P. Nym.

Okay, this isn’t Halo-related in the slightest, I don’t think – but it DOES hold some interest for those of you who follow Bungie, the company, and the people that (used to) work for it. According to USA Today, there’s a new reality TV show coming soon – Xquest will be brought to you by Ron Howard (who looks NOTHING like Ritchie – or Opie, for that matter – any more) and Brian Grazer, and will take contestants into space – well, simulated space. Simulated space? Yeah – “the travelers and viewers will be transported to space virtual-reality style, thanks to high-tech graphics and the help of co-producer Alex Seropian, a creator of the popular Halo game.” Wonga! Is this what Wideload is doing after Stubbs ships? Thanks, x amount. Update: Thanks to a story in Variety (which isn’t reachable without a subscription, unfortunately), I now understand this has nothing to do with Wideload; Seropian is also a principal of Spectrum MediaWorks, a company looking to tie together television, videogames, and ‘networked media’ – and it’s under this umbrella that he’s working with the Xquest project. (The Variety article specifically discusses the lack of connection between this project and Halo, in any form.)

The Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences (AMAS) issued a press release and call for entries for this year’s Machinima Film Festival – submissions began to be accepted a week ago, with a final deadline of October 6. Get cracking! (This press release was originally posted on their website on July 11, but we just got a copy today. Sorry for the delay!)

In an effort to help the free-market economy keep the money flowing, Bungie has updated their Store with some new merchandise. A carabiner keychain, and four new shirts. Of particular note is a very old-school Marathon shirt, faithfully re-created by Shishka. Nice. Check it all out!

The ‘Video Games are Evil’ concept has blown up again in recent weeks, spurred primarily by the release of the Hot Coffee mod for Grand Theft Auto (google it if you don’t know what it is) – and the whole ‘Violence in Video Games’ controversy has been reopened because of it. I haven’t written much on the subject (though I’ve been toying with some blog posts, if life ever slows down enough to think coherently about them), but that hasn’t stopped people from sending in links. One came in this morning that I found to be a great read, and a summary of most of the arguments I’ve been making for a while now. (I’m not claiming ownership on these arguments – LOTS of rational people have been arguing these points – I’m just saying that this one sums up my views pretty well.) Steven Johnson (we mentioned him a couple of months ago) has written an opinion piece in today’s LA Times; it’s an open letter to Hillary Clinton, discussing the Senator’s recent call for a study on the effects of video games on our youth. He makes some solid points – and mentions Halo 2 a couple of times, which gets him on the front page here. Go read! (Thanks, Christopher Lyons.)

A couple of days ago, we mentioned that the Halogen website would be posting lots of new info over the next couple of weeks – the updates started today; there’s a new website online, Flash-based, and though it’s not finished yet, I guess they’ll be adding to it as time goes on. (It’s actually quite buggy if you’re not on a PC running IE – or at least that’s my experience. But hey – when one browser on one platform has 75% of the marketshare, why bother designing for anyone else?) Thanks to Logical2u, via email, and MatX, on our forum, for noticing.

Z, from Halo2Forum.com, dropped us a note about a couple of montages they’re hosting – Hellzfire’s First Montage is 56 mb, WMP9 format, and full of sticks and noscope snipes. Titan VIII’s 3rd Montage is 95.7 mb, WMP9 format, and of course has its share of sticks and snipes, but seems to focus on the Battle Rifle. There is plenty of room for comments in the above-linked threads.

jezek, of Haloz Productions, submitted a video called ‘Fire Coming out of a Monkey’s Head’, which tells the story of the Gorillaz song using the Halo engine. The MPRRS reviewers liked it (though a few thought it didn’t have enough action in it – I think we’re getting jaded) – it’s nicely laid out. Give it a watch! WMP9 format (26.3 mb) or QuickTime format (26.6 mb).

Wow. As we mentioned a couple of weeks ago, Bungie was up for 7 honors this year in G4TV’s G-Phoria awards – the ceremony took place last night (though it won’t be aired for another couple of weeks), and Bungie swept all 7 of those categories! Nice! Gamespot’s got an article with more details – thanks to altodarknight, who was beaten for the heads-up by Google News Alerts by only a couple of hours.