Karri Scott, of Aspyr, wanted to make sure we noticed the interview with Matt Soell over at IGN – it’s a pretty in-depth look at Wideload’s upcoming Stubbs the Zombie game, including a discussion about what was added to the base Halo engine to make it work in this context, where the music is coming from (Mike Salvatori, Marty O’Donnell’s Total Audio partner, is doing it), and another look at the business model that Wideload is using (a small core team augmented by contractors to supply content). A good read – check it out!

A couple of interesting entries in Eric Trautmann’s weblog – thanks for notice goes to Rampancy.net. Trautmann’s ‘The Art of Halo’ made the Locus best-selling Gaming-Related Books list this month – it joins all three Halo novels on the top-5 list. (Locus is a big science fiction/fantasy mag.) And Ross Mills asked 5 questions which Eric answered – the first is an interesting discussion of game stories (and where Halo fits). Check ’em out!

Captain Spark did some character swapping with the original Halo – he wanted to see how well Elites could drive warthogs. The answer seems to be ‘about as well as a 16-year-old American Male’.

Rampancy.net has put up another in its series of Halo 2 Impressions – sistimatic takes a close look at Quarantine Zone. There are some things that bother him – but there are also things that bring him back to the high points of the first Halo. Go see if you agree.

Significant confusion has arisen about the Battle Rifle’s accuracy, following the release of Oranjoose’s video showing its new non-existent bullet spread. According to Achronos, over on the Bungie.net forums, it’s not so much that the Battle Rifle was changed by the Auto-Update – it’s that a bug that affected the accuracy of headshot weapons was fixed, and the BR benefitted more visibly than anything else.

Red vs Blue‘s Burnie Burns has put together walkthroughs for the four new maps coming out on Monday; they’ll be releasing 1 per day for the next four days. Tonight’s release is Warlock; you can find both high-res (19.9 mb) and low-res (5.9 mb) WMP9 versions in their video archive (the hi-res versions are for sponsors only). We’ve agreed to help out with low-res web mirrors (both WMP9 and QuickTime – 5.5 mb), as well as hi-res BitTorrent links (with hefty seed bandwidth) – WMP9 and QuickTime. If you want to see how the levels are put together – grab these video walkthroughs, starting with tonight’s entry of Warlock! Update: RT has posted the hi-res WMP9 for non-sponsors, as well, and HaloImpulse has put up both the low-res and the hi-res WMP9, with .rar compression.

Another dozen (well, almost) vids of the upcoming Halo 2 maps have been posted at Gamespy – these are the complementary files to IGN’s offerings a couple of nights ago. (If you look at filenames, IGN got the evens, Gamespy got the odds.) Go grab ’em in the flavor of your choice – unlike IGN’s, these are downloadable in hi-res by the general public. Thanks, John Rivas.

Got a movie, want it hosted by us, but can’t get past the MPRRS? Stuntmutt can help with today’s One One Se7en.

Looks like Brian Jarrard was pretty busy this past week – in addition to the interview vid at Gamespot we mentioned a couple of days ago, and the one at IGN that was findable (but not explicitly mentioned in our news), there’s a THIRD interview about the new material, this time over at 1UP.com. (This one’s text-based, not in video format.) There’s some intriguing info in there – check out the details on banning, the info on playlist changes to avoid obnoxious situations, the discussion about what happened to the needler (and the promised, but unrealized, changes). This interview is actually page 2 of 1UP’s article – page one is an intro to the maps themselves. Thanks (yet again), 3Suns.

Dyslexia, over at MLGPro.com, has posted an article evaluating the changes to online play due to the Auto-Update – it’s a pretty in-depth read, and while it’s slanted a bit to the viewpoint of the changes and how they affect MLG players, there’s plenty of general info for less competitive folks. A very nice overview. Thanks (again), 3Suns.

Looks like the Spectator Chasecam we mentioned a few days ago has been perfected, and released – if you want to play with it, go grab it off the Gearbox forum! Thanks, MasterGrief.

This raised goosebumps on my arms. Here’s hoping it wasn’t faked.

Bungie has posted very large versions of many of the new screenshots released recently – the smallest is 960×720, the largest 1920×1768. As SketchFactor put it, if you haven’t seen them or you want to see them in a larger format or with a less obtrusive watermark, they’ve got you covered. Go download!

A relatively abrasive summary of the new Auto-Update has been posted at Stage Select. Funny, unless you get annoyed with the unrelenting sarcasm.

David “Walshy” Walsh, a member of Team STK (maybe the best, if 6-year-olds can be believed), has been interviewed over at TeamXbox. Interesting read – guy has a solid head on his shoulders. Thanks, 3Suns.

Back in February, Lt Tuma sent along a montage – a trailer, really; campaign footage mixed with cutscenes, set to Breaking Benjamin’s Blow Me Away. It wasn’t that I didn’t like it – I never even got around to WATCHING it. Recently, he wrote to ask again about it – so I watched it. And liked it – quite a bit. We have a new Peer-Review system in place at this point, however… so I asked if he’d be willing to submit to it. He said sure – so I dropped it into the hopper. Two and a half hours later, it had received ratings from 12 volunteer reviewers, and the consensus was ‘thumbs-up’… now isn’t that better than languishing in a queue for two months? You can grab it in WMP9 format (17.4 mb, mythica.org | bungie.org) or QuickTime format (15 mb, bungie.org | mythica.org) – here’s hoping you like it!

boogey-woogie points out an article at The Nevada Sagebrush about one of the finalists in MTV’s Best Gamer on Campus contest. Sounds to me like the guy plays too much Halo 2… (Registration is required – Bugmenot.com can help.)

Sometimes, days just don’t go as you plan. Mike Miller got the materials for his latest Legendary Walkthrough chapter, Uprising, in on time… but events here have conspired to keep me from posting the link. Go look at it; the man CONTINUES to blow me away. Sometimes it’s because he’s just so dang accurate with his grenade throws… but sometimes, it’s because he comes up with a simple (yet to me, completely new) way of looking at a problem – and solving it. 13 videos, in either QuickTime or WMP9 formats, will get you through this beautiful but deadly level in multiple ways. Check it out!

There are 27 new pieces up in the Fan Fiction section today; busy weekend for the writers. Go read!

Strategy guides like Not So Common Sense are all well and good, but they can only take you so far. Sometimes you need to think outside the box to get that critical advantage. Now, Mr Kippling has revealed some of his most deadly secrets of clan match strategy. Go forth and dominate!