Interesting – Xbox360Fanboy has a sighting of the Halo Wars Alpha being played on Xbox LIVE. Thanks to Spenser for the heads-up.(Louis Wu 16:56:41 UTC)

MLGPro.com has posted the winners (and runners-up) for the US Army Halo 3 Film Festival – some great movies in there! Go watch.(Louis Wu 16:24:10 UTC)

Aaron ‘Bigsauce’ Martin let us know that Spawn.com has pics of a pair of exclusive Halo 3 McFarlane Action Figures at the San Diego Comic Con this summer – an Active-Camo CQB and a very cool-looking EVA Spartan labeled ‘Hellspartan’. Go look! (Louis Wu 16:08:36 UTC)

GameTap looked at some of the fun stuff you can do with Forge and the new Legendary maps – go download!(Louis Wu 16:04:58 UTC)

GhettoMole sent along another pair of pictures of his in-progress Scout helmet – it now has resin on it. Next up – paint, and a visor!(Louis Wu 16:03:45 UTC)

Dennis Powers let us know that Shipwrecked, Episode 11 is now online. If I had to be alone with these two guys, I don’t know what I’d do.(Louis Wu 16:02:25 UTC)

Last night was Friday night – so Bungie, as is their custom, wrote up a Weekly Update (which, of course, is also available in our Weekly Update Archive). It contains information about a couple of glitches related to the Legendary Map Pack release, some very vague news about what’s going on in the Bungie headquarters, a recap of the MLG Meadowlands event from the standpoint of Bungie’s Luke Smith, and a section on how not to get Recon armor. (If you want Recon armor, read this. More than once.) When you’re done reading – go play some Halo!(Louis Wu 14:17:07 UTC)

Sain7 whipped up a little Blackout Jumps tutorial recently – it’s available in his Fileshare. However, if you don’t want to fire up Halo 3 just to watch this, there are 720p renders of the video in this post. Some nice jumps in there!(Louis Wu 16:17:27 UTC)

Mr Sark dropped us a note with details about X-Play’s Sarkathlon 2: Recon Challenge (it was on last night’s show). It takes place on Avalanche, and the object is to get through the course as quickly as possible and be holding eight grenades when you cross the finish line. The winning time will earn its submitter a set of Recon armor. The full instructions are in the video linked above, but to make things a little bit easier, here’s a link to Mr Sark’s Fileshare. Grab Sarkathlon2-VIP (the gametype), Sarkathlon2-Map (the map – duh), and Sarkathlon2-Tut (a tutorial showing you what you need to do). You’ve got two weeks – submissions must be in by Friday, May 2. Next week’s show will have a leaderboard, showing off the best times submitted to that point, and the winner will be announced on air on Friday, May 2. Get practicing!(Louis Wu 14:40:50 UTC)

Games Radar postd a DLC showdown between Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4 – it’s pretty hostile (as in, neither side will concede that the other actually has something of value) and doesn’t provide much more insight than that conversation you had with your roommate at 3 am about this very subject – but hey, it’s a big gaming website, so it must be important, right?(Louis Wu 14:11:47 UTC)

Straight gameplay montages have been done so often, and for so long, that it’s hard to get excited about new ones. Z sent word of a new one, over at Halo3Forum, from Kriptic – I actually enjoyed watching it. Lots of sticks and snipes – but the focus seemed to be on Exterminations, and a couple of them were really nice (no easy kills). Great situational awareness (using fusion cores to maximum advantage), great control. Give it a shot! 123 mb for 6 minutes of gameplay.(Louis Wu 14:05:16 UTC)

Five new pieces in the Fan Fiction section this week – get to reading!(Louis Wu 13:58:23 UTC)

S043 took a bunch of nice screenshots, and posted ’em on our forum. Normally, I’d let these go by – we see a LOT of screenshots on our forum – but I liked this batch. (He posted a second batch later in the evening.) And radiant penguin stopped by, as well, with some new (and really, really impressive) vertical panoramas taken on the Legendary maps. I LOVE ‘Boulevard of Broken Dreams’ – and ‘Cold Feet’ is a great composition, too. (Louis Wu 13:08:08 UTC)

Hawty McBloggy has part two of her ‘You Know You Play Too Much Halo When…’ quiz online right now – go see how bad your obsession really is.(Louis Wu 13:07:49 UTC)

Almost forgot to mention – yesterday, Bungie made the latest Double XP Weekend playlist live. This one is called ‘Legendary Brawl’, and it’s a 12-player free-for-all on the newest maps (both the Heroic and Legendary map packs are represented). You must have both sets of maps to play this. It’s a ranked list, so your chances to grab those last few multiplayer achievements are right there in front of you!(Louis Wu 13:07:32 UTC)

HaLo2FrEeEk let us know that the cutoff date for the Clan Infectionist Design Contest is coming up – April 30 is the last day to submit entries. Prizes include 1600 MS points, a 1-month LIVE code, and a custom title on their forum, with a runner-up getting an honorable mention on the front page and a dedicated forum thread displaying their work. More details can be found at the Clan Infectionist website.(Louis Wu 13:07:15 UTC)