ZZoMBiE13’s got a new take on an old saying in today’s Another Halo Comic Strip. I gotta say… that bouncing thing happens to me all the time.(Louis Wu 13:48:50 UTC)

I don’t think I’d normally even post this as news – but it sort of blows me away. oriol pointed out a newspost on Grunts R Us that purports to find the first Five-Star General in Bungie’s ranking system. I went to look, just because I couldn’t imagine how good the guy had to be… and I found page after page after page after page of boosting games. In fact, I had to go back 60 screens (of 25 games per screen) before I found my first non-cheating game! (I didn’t look at EVERY screen, so I might have missed one or two – but the VAST majority of those first 60 pages are filled with boosting matches in Social Doubles.) This continues until about the 190th screen (of 218) – that’s well over 4500 cheating games out of a total of 5400. THAT’S what it takes to get to 5 Star General? No thanks. (This, folks, is the sort of attitude that made Bungie turn off Leaderboards in Halo 2.)(Louis Wu 13:42:04 UTC)

bs angel found a pretty interesting female Spartan sculpture on eBay – she thought it was a bit too anorexic to blog about, but hey, we’ve got no such qualms. I’m not really sure what’s going on with that energy sword, though…(Louis Wu 13:04:37 UTC)

Bah. Michael Smith let us know several days ago that the Halo Wars crew had posted a new Update on Halloween. It even included a link to a video at a local TV station, where they were featured. Unfortunately, I totally spaced on posting it… and when Trindacut reminded me of it this morning, it was already too late for the video – the station has moved on, and is no longer serving it. Go read the update anyway, though; you can see what Ensemble’s latest ideas are for improving the gameplay of the upcoming release.(Louis Wu 12:56:15 UTC)

Stuntmutt’s been playing a lot of… another game. Go read about it in today’s One One Se7en. (There’s music involved; check your speakers. And there are spoilers for a non-Halo game. Sort of.) Some things never change.(Louis Wu 18:17:59 UTC)

MatchBox360 is hosting the MatchBox360 XL Tournament in Birmingham, England, on November 17 and 18 – and it looks like XLEAGUE.TV has just signed on as a sponsor. (I can’t link to the actual article, because the whole front page of MatchBox360 is javascript-driven, but it’s currently the top article.) The event will be filmed, and they’ve tossed in £1000 for a Halo 3 FFA tourney, as well. Go read more at MatchBox360(Louis Wu 18:07:53 UTC)

Rooster Teeth’s newest Red vs Blue series, Recovery One, has had its second episode posted for sponsors on their website, and available for download in HD (80 points) on Xbox Live Marketplace. This one’s WAY darker than Red vs Blue. WAY darker.(Louis Wu 16:29:28 UTC)

Charley117 poked around the WETA website and found this page… I can’t wait to see what they are selling!(Louis Wu 16:01:23 UTC)

TTL Demag0gue has decided to update his Reclaimer comic on a more regular schedule – Monday, Wednesday, Friday this week. Monday’s is live; Chapter One, Part Four delves into the origins of the Reclaimer project. (Louis Wu 15:59:05 UTC)

Onebitrocket noticed an article on the WETA website which looks at Peter Osborne, the man responsible for the creation of the functioning Halo Warthog WETA built for Neill Blomkamp. I gotta buy that guy a beer!(Louis Wu 15:06:04 UTC)

This was posted yesterday, but yesterday was a very, very bad day: c0ld vengeance has followed up with a second Puzzleball map. (We mentioned the first one here.) Early feedback suggests this one might be a little frustrating… give it a try! (Louis Wu 15:03:17 UTC)

V10L3N7 JAY continues his Section 3 comic series – Issue #9 is now up. Looks like it’s gonna get hot… (Louis Wu 15:01:11 UTC)

Hawty McBloggy points out a series of gaming prints available from Pavel Dolgov – all are pretty impressive, two are specifically Halo-related (and therefore newsworthy). You can buy ’em in a bunch of sizes, with or without frames – go see what there is! (Louis Wu 14:58:47 UTC)

Grunts R Us has done some work on Construct, and turned it into a ‘Boarding Action’-like map. They use the external pieces to great advantage; it works pretty nicely! (You can download it here.) Thanks, Fires7orm.(Louis Wu 14:55:46 UTC)

A week or two ago, CROSSFIRE released a teaser for his next machinima project. Yesterday, trigger119 stopped by to let us know that a second teaser is now up at Gaming TV – again, it’s very difficult to tell what the film’s about, but at least we know what it’ll be called now. Cinematography looks fantastic.(Louis Wu 14:42:38 UTC)

Melfina accompanied kornman00 on his tour of Bungie last week (she’d won the tour auction he held a couple of months ago), and she’s written up her own summary of the event. Go read it, with pics, in her forum post! (Louis Wu 14:37:33 UTC)

We’re still working on our local Terminal Guide, but that doesn’t mean the rest of the web is waiting for us. Anthony stopped by yesterday to announce a nicely formatted skull/terminal guide he’s put up at The Final Fight (it’s in two parts, links are both in his forum post), and altfan113 let us know that Halopedia has transcribed all versions of all terminals in their Terminals section. It’s out there!(Louis Wu 14:36:31 UTC)

We have a pretty strict rule on our forum – there’s no discussion of politics. This is because we are, at heart, a gaming community – and political discussions tend to be fractious. Barring discussion is simply an easy way to keep the peace. Sometimes, though, gaming and politics mix in our news – and we mention it here, because it can be of interest to the community. There were two separate articles I ran across this morning that caught my eye – one is about a child in trouble, the other about an adult making connections. GameRush has a story of a boy in Pennsylvania who was suspended from school for drawing Halo weapons (the school says they’re part of a larger body of evidence that the boy might have been planning to hurt someone, his mother says he’s just obsessed with the game). And Wired’s Clive Thompson draws parallels between Halo and the real-world politics that give rise to suicide bombers. On the surface, they’re both WTF articles, making you wonder if Jack Thompson is going to be able to find a way to use them to stir up trouble. They both can give you something to think about, though, and (assuming you can stay away from inflammatory rhetoric) can provide interesting conversation fodder for our forum. (A quick warning: as soon as the conversation veers away from the immediate topic, and strays into nationalistic namecalling, it’ll be closed down. We are, after all is said and done, a gaming community. If you want to discuss world politics in general, there are thousands of forums to do it in – please don’t use ours.)(Louis Wu 12:03:41 UTC)