The Weekly What’s Update is up over at Bungie.net – info about the upcoming maps, info about why you got banned from XBL this week, info about the leaderboards reset. And oh, yeah, a Mister Chief drawing that makes Leonardo cry. (And I don’t mean the ninja turtle.)

Ooh… cool. Promotheus just pointed out that the new maps are visible on Bungie.net’s stats page, in all their multi-view splendor; you just need to find someone who’s been playing them. Like, say… Shishka. Visit his stats page, click on any game tied to a new map, and bring up the Game Viewer… you’ll see the maps laid out in full. W00T!

{SS}Zag1 attended Luke Timmins’ talk at the University of Utah last night – and posted a brief summary on our forum. Sounds like it would have been a nice thing to see!

Last month’s OXM cover disc contained a pretty entertaining Mockumentary about Conker, the squirrel star of Conker’s Bad Fur Day and and the new Conker, Live and Reloaded. There’s a cameo by Marty O’Donnell, and some other Halo-related content. If you don’t get the magazine, though, you can still watch the movie – it’s up over at Gametrailers.com. Thanks to I)aemonicus for the heads-up.

Shishka has posted yet another 3D screenshot over at Bungie.net – this one is on Turf. Shishka manages to win a Pyrrhic victory by nuking EVERYONE – but oh, it’s so beautiful. (He also made a new forum avatar that would drive me out of my mind, if I read the bungie.net forums for any length of time.)

The Stryke Force team has put up Episode 5: “Guerillas in the Midst”. Twists, turns, and an executioner I’d love to hire. They’ve got the original WMP9 up on their Videos page, and it’s been mirrored at HaloMachinima.com (thanks, trigger119). I’ve also converted it to QuickTime, and made both versions available here: WMP9 (25.9 mb, mythica.org | bungie.org), QuickTime (22.9 mb, bungie.org | mythica.org). Go watch!

Today’s One One Se7en shows why mixing games can be a hassle.

Whee! Once I deleted 19 of the 20 submitted copies of maxx’s Warrior’s Fate chapter, the Fan Fiction queue had just 14 entries in it – which have now been processed. Go read (and be happy you don’t need to read Warrior’s Fate 20 times).

neXtournaments is hosting another Halo 2 online tourney – 2v2, May 7 and 8, $5/person to enter, with cash prizes to the top teams. More details at neXtournaments.

Stubbs the Zombie, Wideload’s Halo-engined brainfest, has a new website – flashy, and full of nice pictures (and downloads). Go look!

Remember that crazy Elite driver yesterday? Captain Spark followed the guy some more – he gets some mad air in this one. 7.6 mb or so (depending on flavor). He makes me laugh.

Halo mentions a Halo-related roller coaster in development for Roller Coaster Tycoon 3. Details (and a link) are in the forum post. Halo – it’s everywhere!

There’ve been a couple of small updates to the Halo Story page in the last day or two – and Jilly suggests that there’s more to come. Should we trust her, or is she just stalling?

Dennis Powers writes to point out that Halomaps.org has moved, and split, and grown, and all sorts of things. The old address works – but it now brings you to the Halo CE website, haloce.gearboxgamezone.com. All movies have been split off (except for map demo movies) and are hosted at movies.gearboxgamezone.com. This covers not only Halo machinima, but Brothers In Arms material, as well. If you have content you’d like them to host, there’s an upload link in the navbar. Keep an eye on this growing family of sites!

Poor Master Chief… he NEVER gets no respect. Go check out Halo Babies today.

The Containment video we mentioned earlier is now available, in both high and low resolution, to everyone (not just sponsors) over at Red vs Blue – in WMP9 format. To ease the pain for folks looking for QuickTime, we’re hosting both high res (30.6 mb) and low res (10.8 mb) versions – if you need Windows Media Player format, go to RvB, if you need QT, come here. (Also, the low-res Humpday Challenge vid is also available at RvB, for non-sponsors. Grab the popcorn – it’s Movie Night!

There are two new videos up at Red vs Blue – both are for sponsors right now, but at least SOME of the versions will be available to the general public later this evening. There’s a second new map walkthrough – this one covers Containment. Hi and lo-res WMP9s again (we’ll be posting QT versions later this evening, as well). The second is RvB’s take on the Halo Humpday Challenge… it’s pretty funny. Well, if you’re not them. If you’re a sponsor – go watch now! If you’re not… wait a few hours, THEN go watch.

This week’s Halo Humpday Challenge, against the Red vs Blue boys, is up at Bungie.net – it shows off Bungie’s latest winning technique; invite in a group of people and make them play you on maps they’ve never seen before, but that you’ve been testing for 5 months! The results are pretty predictable. Thanks, Eric.

A couple of tournaments have been brought to our attention in the last few days – sorry for the timelag in posting them. The UGA Halo Club is hosting a Halo 2 tourney Athens, GA on April 24 – admission is free, top prize is $100. More details can be found in this news post on the Club’s Bungie.net group site. (Thanks, AngelicLionheart.) And Game Junkie is hosting a multigametype tourney on April 30, in West Chester, OH – details can be found on this page. Entrance is $40 by the 27th, $60 after that (per 4-man team), $300 in cash and prizes guaranteed. Thanks, AeroJonesy.

Overswarm has added an ‘Aiming and Maneuvering‘ page to his Not So Common Sense Strategy Guide – go read it for some tips that will make your shots more accurate!