Gah. I meant to post this yesterday, but forgot. We mentioned a movie from High Impact Halo – a montage of Warthog launches put together by Dark Helmet – and I said that if there was any demand, we’d put up QuickTime versions, as well. There was demand – so I posted a high-res QT (40.9 mb) and a low-res QT (18.7 mb). Grab the one that suits your needs!

[HC] D-Man posted a direct download linkto the WMP9 version of Halo 2: Road to Glory; it’s still available via BitTorrent (see the original news post for details), but if you can’t (or won’t) use BT, check this out. It’s hosted on FileFront, which means you have a pretty good chance of getting the entire 421 mb file without the server dying. The QuickTime version should be posted soon.

Another thing that went up while I was wasting my evening away on Xbox Live was the writeup of the most recent Halo 2 Humpday Challenge – it wasn’t really on Humpday this time, it was Friday night/Saturday morning (depending on which team’s frame of reference you’re using), but it was a solid matchup between Bungie and Team Korea. (It was a big enough deal on the Korean end that there was an audience.) Go read the writeup – and for once, SketchFactor didn’t need to make up excuses as to why Bungie lost… because they didn’t lose. Good writeup – nice games!

Bungie’s updated the XBL Halo 2 playlists – you can find the latest lists on the Playlists page at Bungie.net. Some good choices, some… not so good choices. Go play!

The weekly Tied the Leader forum update was posted today by XerxdeeJ – you’ll find a summary of the half dozen or so new articles put up since the last update. (There’s also a pretty new interface for the blog.) Just a quick note – it’s interesting how much mail we received about this article mentioning the Jeep Hurricane, a concept car that looks an awful lot like a warthog. The thing is… it got a TON of coverage in our forum last January, when it was unveiled at the 2005 Auto Show. (The earliest post I could find was this one, by KaworuNagisa.) It’s interesting to me how things seem to go in cycles.

Matt Cox (known around here as Mothergoat) has written a review of the Multiplayer Map Pack for Lawrence.com – go give it a read! (It’s very well written, and comes up with some conclusions that aren’t the same as all the other reviews you might have read – worth listening to.)

Final Supremacy has released the first two episodes of a machinima project called ‘Black and White’ – this is the story of a team of SpecOps Spartans who need to hold back a rebel uprising. Vids are in DIvX or MPEG format, and run about 40-60 mb each. Grab them from their media page!

You may have noticed the ‘Seeker’ link on the right side of this news page. This is a new service being offered by Subnova – several major Halo sites (HBO included) have been indexed, and are available for searching all at once. Even for HBO, which has a variety of search options, this is pretty useful, because it searches all sections together, and includes sections that DON’T have search functions. On top of that, though, it searches other sites, like Rampancy.net, High Impact Halo, and Bungie.net (what can be gotten to without a Passport login, anyway). If you’ve got a Halo site you’d like added to this meta-index, simply send email to seeker@subnova.com – Deimos will set you up. Be aware – this is running on development hardware at the moment – it might be a little flakey. Be patient – and if you get a blank result, try again!

Halo 2 is a lot of fun – but it’s not quite as technical as some other games. To wit (well, maybe a bad choice of phrases) – today’s One One Se7en.

There was a montage mentioned over at High Impact Halo, as well – Dark Helmet put together a single player Hog Launching montage from Halo footage. Halo, Silent Cartographer, AotCR – some classic jumps, some stuff you may never have seen before, he makes it ALL look easy. (I watched him pull out a controller and demonstrate some of this stuff to Randy Pitchford, of Gearbox, a couple of years ago – watch this vid and you might feel the same enthusiasm to go and hog-jump yourself that Randy felt.) The forum thread has both high-res (50 mb) and low-res (20 mb) WMP versions, hosted on DH’s mythica space – if there’s a demand for QuickTime (send email), I’ll add them.

Another montage, this time from the original Halo. MPRRS reviewers loved the audio/video synching, which is very impressive. Check out YourDogM1H1, from RHSSE89 – 15.3 mb in QuickTime, 14.9 mb in WMP9.

Rampancy.net has put up yet another music transcription – this one is ‘Covenant Dance’, from the original Halo soundtrack, transcribed by Devin Eastman. You must be logged in (free) to download – the archive contains a MIDI file, a PDF of the score, and a PrintMusic file. Go grab it!

Last week, we released a trailer for a full-length (80 minute) documentary, created by a pretty obsessed Halo fan. I posed a question on our forum – would folks be interested in downloading the entire thing (400+ mb)? The response was pretty positive – so here you go. We’re providing two BitTorrent links – one for a WMP9 version, one for a QuickTime version – both are 421 mb. We’re providing a pretty serious amount of seed bandwidth for these, as well (12000 KBit/sec each), so even early downloaders should be fine. In the next couple of days, we should have a dedicated page up for this movie, with information about how to order a DVD version direct from Noah, the creator. (He’s not looking to make money on this – the cost will cover the blank DVD media and the shipping, nothing more.) Again – this is the story of a group of Halo fanatics (and their families) as the excitement builds towards the release of Halo 2. It’s quite well-made, ultra-geeky (but how could it not be?), and pretty fun to watch – but there’s nothing blowing up, and no sex, so if you were weaned on MTV, you might find it slow. This is why you have high-speed bandwidth. Grab a copy!

A couple of days ago, we posted Jamie98s’ ‘Oh So Beautiful’, an ode to the gorgeous scenery in Halo 2 multiplayer maps. He’s done it again – ‘Oh So Beautiful II’ looks at the pretty stuff in the newest maps, again with Jack Johnson providing the soundtrack. WMP9 (9 mb) or QuickTime (10.3 mb) – thanks to the reviewers with the MPRRS for getting this through so fast! (The entire queue is cleared, in fact; we’ve got a few movies to release in the next couple of days.)

Reinsoft parodies Akon’s Lonely – poor 12-year-old XBL players! Go listen.

Mintz continues his Halo for PSP content series with a bunch of recent articles, formatted for reading on a PSP. Details are in this forum post.

Recently, the processing time for videos in our Movie Peer Review Rating System climbed to almost a week; right now, there’s a vid which has been in the queue for almost 11 days. (All the rest of the current crop are below 2 days, so that’s an anomaly, but the problem is still worth noting.) We recently pared down the number of reviewers by dropping people who hadn’t contributed much – but it’s likely that this will only to add to the problem. So – we’re finally accepting new applications for reviewers. (It’s taken a while to set up an automated system for this, which is why we haven’t accepted many before now.) One thing to be aware of – this is NOT just a chance to watch vids before anyone else; we’re asking for people who have a genuine desire to help the community. (A couple of reviewers left recently, complaining that the level of quality they were being asked to watch was too low, overall… to which Cybrfrk responded, “DUH!” That’s the whole point of the system – if the MPRRS wasn’t weeding out the dross, EVERYONE would have to watch those films. Do NOT volunteer unless you understand that the job requires that you watch a LOT of bad video.) If you read that and said ‘yeah, I can handle that’… go ahead and sign up! Update: Wow, that was quite a response! We got a couple of dozen volunteers in 20 minutes. I’ve approved 12 new people, and anyone who has filled out the form will be in the queue the next time we add a batch; it’s a simple matter of clicking an approve button for us, so as soon as the need arises, we’ll be contacting you! Thanks to all! (You’re welcome to add your name to the list, if you haven’t and want to be considered – we’ll just hold it until the next batch.)

trigger119 posted a montage he made on our forum – it’s hosted on his halomachinima.com website. 35 mb, WMP9 format, called ‘Definitely Luck’. retsamolah gets killed a lot.

Phan7om has created a PSP-friendly version of Biohazard, an extremely popular machinima project. (If you’ve never seen it, and don’t have a PSP, you can find download links in this news post, from March.) Now, if you want to see this vid, but need it on the go… you’ve got it!

The Mexican Pirate posted a link to a video showing the Slipspace drive, as realized in the Freelancer engine. 3 mb – check their progress!