Cryptoflix and the Pod TV crew show us how to get the first 2 skulls in Halo 3: Blind and Iron. Special thanks to CrimsonViper 911 and PoD H3x woof for their participation in this episode. You can also check out this video in high resolution!

Inari Vaissi Nagy at the University of Ottawa’s Fulcrum wonders if Master Chief isn’t a good modern equivalent of ancient epic heroes:

The violence, the big, nasty guns and speeding vehicles, and the brutal competitiveness, are all undoubtedly major attractions to the gaming world–much to the alarm of many from the pre-gamer generation. But is it such a stretch to trace the genealogy of the protagonists of today’s “epic” video games to warrior-heroes like Aeneas or the Old English Beowulf, who were revered for carnage and bloodshed? The ancient heroes’ ceremonial boasting has been replaced with language that would make a trucker blush, but maybe today’s young men (and some women, too) are just taking advantage of new technologies to imagine themselves in another world, accomplishing daring feats in the face of impossible odds.

Here’s my reaction: the only ones who don’t think that there’s a parallel there, who still think that all videogame plots are “shitty” and all videogame characterizations “feeble” to use Nagy’s words, are either those who look at these games with preconceived notions of what they are, or those who are simply not paying attention.

Frag The Cullen forwarded to me a film clip made by Jihaku of a Team Slayer game played a few days ago. In that game, player Geo Stelar seems to have an infinite bag of bubble shields. No matter how many times he deploys it, he always has another, a fact he uses to his advantage in this film. There’s also a thread about the alleged exploit at Bungie.net.

It’s quite definitely identified as a team slayer game and not a Forge or a Custom film, so that would seem to rule out those ways of altering the behavior of the bubble shield.

Have hackers already been able to modify Halo 3 maps and use those modified maps in matchmaking? Is this a bug in the game? An artifact of extreme lag? The last theory might be the best; the clip author Jihaku seems to die after deploying a bubble shield, but then drops one when he shouldn’t have had one. Geo Stelar picks up that bubbleshield, and shortly after realizes that it doesn’t disappear from his inventory when deployed.

deadox1138 has created a site for Halo motivational posters. It’s fantastic, check it out right now.

Amazon.com has a page up for the two-disc Halo 3 Original Soundtrack, due out on November 20, 2007. It will include the music created by Marty O’Donnell and Michael Salvatori for Halo 3 and be published by Sumthing Else Records. However, it will also include a track by the lucky winners of a contest being run at Halo 3’s Myspace page. Submissions will be accepted until midnight on October 22. For contest details see the myspace page.

Today’s entry into the Halo 3 Weapons Guide is the SMG.

 Click here for the complete text.

Congratulations to Goozex member sLiM2269 from TX. He was randomly chosen as the winner of Xbox 360 HD-DVD Player! We have already contacted him and confirmed his shipping address.

Thanks to everyone that entered and to Podtacular for letting us interact with everyone here!

Remember, the coupon code you used, Pod-HD-DVD, is valid and will give 5 FREE trades and 100 Bonus points after your first trade. That’s a free game on us!

And in case you’re interested, you can still win a Halo 3 Xbox 360 Console through our Facebook promotion. Just download and share the app with your friends on Facebook.

Thanks again for a great contest!

A few items of note that slipped through the cracks lately:

ForgeHub is a site featuring descriptions and links to custom maps and gametypes people have created in Forge. Some very interesting stuff up there now, with more sure to follow.

High Speed Halo is still getting up to speed on Halo 3 speedruns, but for a taste of coming attractions visit goatrope’s file share for some runs on Cortana, Floodgate and Halo.

Stuff.co.nz has a nice biography of Bungie’s kiwi wunderkind Chris Butcher up.