You say you’re itchin’ for another contest? You say the last few didn’t challenge you? You say you want a REAL puzzle? Well, pardner, we got some forum regulars that would like to talk to you. c0ld vengeance, BOLL, MorningStar, and Skavenger have put their heads together to come up with the HBO Xmas Puzzle Carnage quiz. It involves many mini-puzzles, spread out over 7 pages, with the navigation between pages a puzzle in itself! There are some cool prizes to be won, so check out the forum post; make sure you understand the rules, and get cracking!

Inside Mac Games has posted a new Halo desktop, created by Brad Custer, in honor of Mac Halo’s release. It comes in an ASTOUNDING variety of sizes. Check it out! (Credit goes to Gossip for noticing it.)

ActionTrip is running a PC Game of the Year poll on their front page; Halo currently has 5% of the vote (putting it in 10th place). Methinks it might be hard to get a lot of votes at the moment… but if you think they’ll work through the 1.03 glitches, go bump up the numbers!

There’s a new EchoFourNineteen comic over at 343GS.com (downloads section) – I’d tell you about it, but I forgot. Thanks to Zergling_minor for the heads-up.

We received word from a few people last night that they’d gotten confirmation that their copies of Mac Halo were en route… and this morning, we received a press release confirming this from MacSoft. Woohoo!

Today’s One One Se7en wraps up the three-parter on the Old MC this week. No Grunts in this one… but you should still sign that petition.

You know, if you had a Grunt Plushy, you could ACT OUT today’s Halo: Resolution. Whoa.

Okay, in general, I think online petitions are silly. However, I’m willing to make an exception this time… because of the subject, and because of who’s putting it forth. SketchFactor jumped on our forum yesterday to suggest that the reason there’s never been a Grunt Plushy is because the marketing folks don’t believe there’s a demand… and he offered an online petition for interested parties to sign. If you, like me, would love to get your hands on a soft Grunt Plushy collectible… sign this now! (There are 155 signatures as of this writing. Let’s crank that up a notch.)

Back in September, we pointed out a pretty cool film over at Video CD Productions; it was the final round of the Halo50K tournament, TDT vs DM, 3-cap CTF on Battle Creek. It showed the entire match from the Dream Team’s screen, complete with audio commentary by the players. The only problem was… it was streaming, and it was in WMV format. Well, thanks to the kind folks over at Video CD Productions, we’re happy to be able to bring you this video in downloadable form; there are two flavors. Both are 400×300 (larger than the original), and both weigh in at a bit over 30 mb. There’s a 33.5 mb QuickTime, and a 31 mb WMP7 version, with downloads at both files.bungie.org and mythica.org. If you want to watch truly coordinated team play (a seven second flag capture, start to finish, for example), check this movie out.

QuickTime:	mythica | files.bungie.org
WMV:	mythica | files.bungie.org

SketchFactor spread a little love on the fans, in the form of three HUGE (1920×1440) screenshots, in tif format; you can find ’em in this forum post. The first two are 6 and 8 mb, respectively, and uncompressed; the last one is a bit banded, but only 1.4 mb. All three are worth grabbing, if you want some gorgeous screenshots to turn into Wallpaper, or something.

Rams, head muckety-muck over at Battleground: Halo, has written what he calls a ‘bi-monthly staple of BGH’ – another edition of the ‘Rams Report‘. In this one, he looks at Dave Mertz’s resignation, Mac Halo, Sapien’s release status, and One One Se7en, a strip he likens to ‘two rabbits left unattended over Christmas break.’ Read it all with a grain (or 12) of salt.

Jamirus99 points out (well, sort of) that Gamespy is hosting the second of three parts of a Halo tournament to win an Alienware Aurora PC. The top scorer in today’s matchup goes on to the finals on December 18. You need GameSpy Arcade to connect, and Halo PC (obviously). Stop by and see if there’s still space!

I can’t say I’m thrilled with the subtitle, but the event itself has me all aflutter. Blackstar has put up a news post (and a trailer) for Are You Big Enough II, a lanfest planned for Summer 2004 in Andover, MA. Are You Big Enough (the original) was held LAST summer, and featured an enormous 40 foot projection screen for playing Halo on. The trailer is 22.4 mb, in mpeg-4 format (divx-encoded), and shows off Blackstar’s mad moviemaking skillz… Thanks to Alexis for the heads-up.

Mac Halo is shipping today. (It should be in stores by Monday, at the latest.) randompro42’s Guest One One Se7en, then, is airing at an appropriate time. (We aren’t condoning platform bigotry – and neither is randompro, from what we can see. notice that large bite mark…)

12 pieces for you today in the Fan Fiction section:

• IONCLAD: First Prelude, by Capo Rip
• A Spartan’s Path – chapter 5, by Myth
• Earth vs Covenant part 1, by Packer7834
• Battle for the Norah: Part Eleven, by Sterfrye36
• Over The Line; Part 1, by AmokTheClown
• Over The Line; Part 2, by AmokTheClown
• The ONI Chronicals Part 1, by Jaywhit and JediKnight114
• Earth’s Destruction Chapter 5: The Covenant Homeworld, by Sentinel
• Shadow Ops II: Chapter One, by Agent Shade
• Halo 2 Rise of a Hero Finale, by CovieKilla
• No Way Out: Part 2, by Arthur Wellesly
• Long Time Gone Part 6, by grylsy

Database is nearing 3000 entries…

There’s a review for Halo PC at IceTeks, as mentioned by Blue’s News. (Thanks, Ash.) Notable for the pretty low-res screenshots…

Whoa. I want one. It’s not plushy… but I want one. SketchFactor posted a note to Bungie.net about some preliminary work being done on Grunt action figures. They’ll be part of Wave 4, due out next spring. Theres an uncolored closeup… and some early color ideas. Gimme Gimme Gimme!

One of the ‘under the hood’ changes in the 1.03 Halo PC patch is that Anisotropic filtering is enabled by default. This is a function of higher-end video cards, and it makes the graphics crisper… at a pretty big price, performance-wise. If you’ve got a good graphics card, and saw a huge framerate drop when you started playing 1.03, you might want to check out this post by Gearbox programmer vatoloco, over on the Gearbox forums. It’ll walk you through disabling the feature.

Almost 3 weeks ago, we posted a Flash animation created by GLADIATRRR3000, called 343 Guilty Stick. Well, he submitted 3 new chapters for this very soon afterwards… but we lost ’em in the archives. 🙁 They’ve been resurrected, finally, and added to the original page; they’re quite a bit smaller than the first one was. Sorry for the delay!

XLNC posted three spectacular screenshots today – 1600×1200, no HUD, no weapons. (He explained how he did it in this post, if you want to make your own.) Wow.