Word came from Bungie – those two posters you can buy on eBay, for potentially inflated prices… you’ll be able to buy them anywhere soon, at standard poster prices (the last batch at the Bungie store were $8.95, if that helps). Here are larger versions: Master Chief on Turf (577×894, 212k) | Arbiter (577×894, 140k)

Some not-so-standard promo vids of the new Maptacular levels have appeared recently – Containment was first, followed by Warlock,then Sanctuary and Turf last week. I’ve been a little unhappy with these releases – some have had encoding problems, others have watermarks or splash screens added by the sites releasing them. I did a little digging, and we’ve gotten permission to release high-quality, watermark-free versions of all of them. We’re starting with one you haven’t seen yet – Elongation. We’ll add Relic later today or tonight, fill out the existing releases in the next couple of days, and then start on the final 3 maps. Thanks to the Xbox.com team, Film Oasis (who made them), and Bungie (whose fantastic work is so beautifully shown off in them) for helping make this happen!

Wow, funky. 7he One found some posters on eBay – they’re listed as ‘fully licensed’, though I haven’t seen them for sale anywhere else yet. Nice looking images!

Overswarm wrote up his impressions of the MLG St. Louis tournament last weekend, complete with pics; you can find it in his Not So Common Sense strategy guide, in the Articles section.

We mentioned the Vertex Weight Injector, a tool created by rec0 to add new bipeds to HaloCE, a few weeks ago. Yesterday, he released a new, less buggy version of the app – you can find a download link and comments in this Gearbox forum thread. Thanks, MasterGrief.

Thanks to the seven thousand people who wrote to point out that the Red vs Blue Season 3 DVD is now on sale in their online store. Season sponsors will get a $10 discount via email (look for the code before you buy) – otherwise, the DVD is $20. (This is a preorder only; the DVD won’t ship until July 6.) While you’re at the store, be sure to hit the ‘New Items‘ link at the top left; there are a bunch of new shirts and some stickers for sale as well.

Wow – THIS is gonna cause problems, I can tell. Looks like EB Games Australia might have made a pretty big mistake; they’re selling the Halo 2 Maptacular Map Pack NOW – you can buy the DVD in stores. (It’s not supposed to be on sale before July 5.) However, they emailed customers with this info:

“…Customers will not be able to access live with this title before the 7th of July. If a customers tries to access live before the 7th of July there account will be disabled. We apologize for the late notice on this information but we have just been notified.”

Ouch – how many Australian accounts do you think will get disabled by folks who didn’t get (or didn’t read) this email? Thanks to BeardedFerret, who wrote to us with the DVD in his hot little hands – and who is looking forward to some lan play with these maps in the next week. Update: I misunderstood BeardedFerret’s first note; the email went only to EB Games stores in Australia, not to customers; it was information for store personnel only. (BeardedFerret works in an EB Games store, which is how he saw it.) His store won’t be displaying the Map Pack on shelves before the 5th, and only selling it to people who ask for it – but he’s guessing that this will NOT be the case in most stores. Buyer beware!

Guardians found an as-yet-unlinked-here image by Greg Horn, an artist who creates pieces for Toyfare magazine (among other places). We mentioned a couple of other pieces of his last year – but the BR shot is new to me, at least. Nice work!

Holy… Webshift just wrote to tip us off to Briar’s Armor, a website devoted to armor replicas of various sci-fi characters. The Halo stuff is amazing. Doesn’t look like it’s for sale (yet) – but keep an eye on it!

Very cool. Over at Red vs Blue, Burnie Burns, who created walkthroughs of the first four downloadable maps a couple of months ago, is repeating the effort with the newer maps. A walkthrough of Backwash (41 mb in hi-res WMP9 format, 19 mb in low-res WMP9) is now available for sponsors (thanks, Sharky) – should be on the main page (for everyone) in the not-too-distant future. And as soon as we can, we’ll have QuickTime versions up for you, as well. Good stuff! Update: The WMP9s are available for everyone now at RvB. Still working on the QTs. Update 2: QuickTimes are now available on our server – Hi-Res (43.3 mb) | Lo-Res (19.7 mb). Enjoy!

Ben Ritter (aka BitMaP) posted a spoof CNN article yesterday – pretty funny jabs at both EA and Bungie. (GameJunkieJim also reposted it over at Bungie.net.) Give it a read!

Aaron Beierle has written a review of Halo 2 for CurrentFilm.com – plot gets a 9/10, the DVD gets 9.5/10, Sound gets 10/10 (go, Marty and co!). Check it out.

Whoa. Very cool. For anyone who didn’t buy Sanctuary and Turf when they came out – it seems they’re available now, for free, in the Content Download section of XBL. Go get ’em! Thanks, Echohammer419.

Stuntmutt continues to take shots at his HBO Helljumper buddies (or maybe himself, hard to tell) in today’s One One Se7en.

Fifteen new stories in the Fan Fiction section today – looks like writers were also busy this weekend! (And I’m happy to see the page is now working correctly… story processing is much easier on the new system, so I’m a happy camper.)

Looks like someone’s been busy this weekend; many, many people who’ve been cheating using modded maps are now banned from Halo 2 Matchmaking. A recent example can be found in this forum post by pwn4ge, a member of the PraetoriaGuard clan – they were cheated in a Containment game (they even filmed it – I’m waiting to hear if I’m allowed to link to the film; I’ll update this news post if I am), and the cheater is now demonstrably gone from Matchmaking. Nice! Update: The movie, showing the cheating (33.5 mb, WMP9 format) can be found on the PraetoriaGuard website. That’s some fast running!

Another great writeup over at MLGPro.com – thanks to 3Suns for the heads-up. Sounds like a pretty amazing tourney!

Stephen Loftus brings us yet another analysis piece – this time by way of his connections with ONI. It’s a look at Covenant Weaponry, as found in Halo. It contains a wealth of information, including physical parameters, weapon strengths, and general mechanics. Check it out!

retsamolah has put together a fun montage – mostly it’s to show KP jumping off various walkways on Lockout, I think (after taking slight damage from rets, so that rets gets the kill), but it’s fun to watch. We’re not hosting it – KP is, over at spartans.bungie.org. 49.2 mb, QuickTime format, nice matching of snipes to Mark Knopfler’s awesome fingerwork near the end of the song. Do NOT watch this with the intention of rating skill, or because you like to denigrate folks who play in Team Training, or whatever – this is just for fun. Enjoy the construction – or don’t bother watching it.

There’s a fun article over at Yes Weekly, a Greensboro, NC news magazine – it looks at a local gaming center, and extrapolates to how gaming in general has evolved and grown over the years. Halo 2 plays a pretty prominent role in the writeup. Thanks to demus, who pointed this out in our forum.