Speaking of Master Chief costumes – Gustav Ljungdahl, a Swedish Halo fan, sent us some pictures of his homemade Master Chief outfit – total cost was $40. MC photographed by a semi-naked man | MC fighting Samus Aran | MC in bed with a cute girl Not a bad job!(Louis Wu 18:27:02 UTC)

Hawty McBloggy has been busy; she’s got an interview with Pavel Dolgov, who does a lot of Halo-related art (check our news for links), plus a couple of fun eBay items – a foam sheeting Master Chief costume, and a Master Chief sculpture made from real engine parts. Whee!(Louis Wu 18:20:49 UTC)

No, this has nothing to do with Rooster Teeth; this is an Australian fundraising effort for Mission Australia and Make a Wish Australia, with lots of cool goodies from Microsoft to make it fun. Filefront has done a nice job of describing what’s going on – or you can simply explore the official Red v Blue website.(Louis Wu 16:26:42 UTC)

Some new stuff at the Bungie Store – there’s a dual deco MC hoody (embroidered AND screened), a pair of mixer glasses (they look perfect for beer), and free with every purchase, a Halo 3 Video Calibration Filter (useful only to those with Halo 3 Essentials Disc One, which comes with the Limited and Legendary editions). Go shopping!(Louis Wu 16:15:44 UTC)

Joe Markert let us know that Gamehelper is giving away a Halo Zune… and some copies of Halo. Swing by their contest page for full details (registration required to enter). (Louis Wu 16:03:10 UTC)

Wow… if I don’t visit Rampancy.net for a couple of days, I miss a lot. (This is true for you, too – remember that.) Lessee what we got…

• Narc has posted his first impressions of Halo 3. Minor spoilers in the writeup, of the first few levels… but generally, he’s pretty happy so far.
  
  
• Meyeselph is creating a guide to Halo 3’s weapons; his first entry, the Assault Rifle, is up.
  
  
• Narc looks more closely at the ‘Bungie is leaving Microsoft’ rumor that slammed into the web on Tuesday. He comes to no conclusions, but it’s an interesting discussion. (For what it’s worth, 8Bit Joystick, the blog that broke the story is back with more analysis of the data.)
  
  
• A small post points out a writeup of OXM’s visit to Bungie in August; you can get a feel for what the press went through to write up their Halo 3 reviews.
  
  
• Finally, Narc takes umbrage at some of the material in Zero Punctuation’s Halo 3 review (he understood it was supposed to be funny, but he still looked at the claims it made seriously).

I guess that’ll teach me to stop by every day! (Louis Wu 15:39:06 UTC)

Small collection of Halo 3 reviews today:

• CordWeekly says it’s more of the same, but better.
• Animation World Magazine says there’s nothing new, but it’s fun anyway.
• The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review says its a fight worth finishing (they gave it an A-).
• GotFrag DPAD gave it a 4.5/5; they were a little disappointed with the current crop of multiplayer maps.

Is the flood slowing?(Louis Wu 15:16:13 UTC)

Frank O’Connor was a guest on this week’s Game Theory Podcast – the topic (surprise, surprise) was Halo 3. Thanks, Zeouterlimits.(Louis Wu 15:14:48 UTC)

Maybe I’m just a statistics junkie, but I found this fascinating. Sandvine Network Demographics saw a 100% to 200% increase (that’s a doubling or tripling, for those of you who failed 5th grade math) in peak bandwidth of Xbox Live traffic in the week following Halo 3’s release. However (and here’s the fun part), the number of gamers PRODUCING this traffic remained unchanged from before Halo 3’s release. This is in marked contrast to the situation after Gears of War was released; then, an 80% increase in new users was seen. So… most people buying Halo 3 already HAVE a 360? (Remember, there are 12 million of these puppies in the wild. Even if monthly sales double, as they’re expected to, that will only add another half a million to the total this month, and a fraction of that in the space of a week… so it’s possible that the additional boxes simply aren’t showing up in the noise.) And while we’re on the subject of statistics, a Microsoft press release announces that Halo 3 has earned $300 million dollars worldwide in its first week’s sales. Wonga.(Louis Wu 14:53:07 UTC)

It’s pretty big news when a first person shooter tops the Japanese sales charts. According to Jonnyram at NeoGAF, though, that’s exactly what Halo 3 did last week. (Avateur picked it up at Kotaku, if you want to discuss flying pigs or something on our forum.)(Louis Wu 14:19:25 UTC)

Remember this post? There wasn’t any speculation on our forum, but over at Rampancy.net, there were two guesses: ‘Loser’ and ‘Believe’. We got the next letter last night… and clearly, both of those guesses are wrong. And it seems like the MC and his opponent are pretty beaten-up… (Louis Wu 13:54:37 UTC)

Heh – almost missed this. N’Gai Croal, over at Newsweek, has posted a bunch of Halo 3 ‘first kill’ pics from notables in the gaming industry, along with their comments. He calls it ‘Postcards from the Edge’. Thanks, Anton P. Nym.(Louis Wu 13:37:58 UTC)

Frogblast has supplied a video walkthrough to get you (by yourself) to an easter egg on The Storm; yes, you could get there easily from any saved film of the level, but Frogblast has ALWAYS been about the ‘elegant’, rather than the easy. (This egg was revealed in [T]rickety Trick 6, released a week ago – if you have two players, you can try their method as well; it starts at around 3 minutes in.) If you’d rather find eggs on your own, don’t follow EITHER of these links.(Louis Wu 13:09:22 UTC)

Ezandora posted a full week’s timelapse of the world activity map you can see on Bungie’s Online page. (We already noted a couple of versions that included the first day or so – this is even better.) If you’d rather watch it in QuickTime, you can. (I tried to make a WMP9 version, but I couldn’t get it down to a reasonable size and still have the text readable – sorry.) (Louis Wu 12:57:04 UTC)

Elnea’s posted another pair of Halo Action Figure Theater episodes – you can read about them (and get a one-paragraph plot synopsis of the series) in this forum post. She says she doesn’t feel comfortable posting this stuff here any more – let her know if you enjoy it! (Louis Wu 12:52:07 UTC)

Over at MLGPro.com, a couple of regulars have picked their favorite Halo 3 launch maps (and provided rationale); one likes Epitaph, the other likes The Pit. Go see why! Thanks, 3Suns. (Louis Wu 12:50:48 UTC)

3Suns posted a link to an AWESOME stick by BlackShadowMist over at MLGPro.com – nobody’s saying it was planned, but because of Saved Films, you get the chance to WATCH it, which is pretty cool. For folks who don’t like streaming Flash, I dropped off a couple of downloadable versions – WMP9 (1.6 mb) and QuickTime (1.3 mb).(Louis Wu 12:48:22 UTC)