daremo and Bullet walked into my office today asking if I noticed that hushedcasket.com was mentioned in a HALO 3 article at USAToday.com. Sure enough, we are listed under “Gamer Opinions” on the HALO 3 beta article. Pretty cool. Thanks to Mike Snider at USAToday.com for picking up our feed. Thanks to daremo for being an uber geek that reads USAToday’s Tech section every day.

Over the past year we’ve seen more and more mainstream websites pick up hushedcasket.com stories. Of course, Midnight has gotten a lot of attention from the NY Times, Wired, Boing Boing, and more for his military efforts. Our gaming content has been picked up by some top gaming-related website likes Kotaku, Digg, XBOX360fanboy, EvilAvatar, and more. Just last week, (the back of the head of some) THX’ers were seen on a story on Joystiq.com.

Good work to those of you that are creators of original copy and content. Thanks for your words and creativity.

Shoutout to THX.com on USAToday.com: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/gaming/2007-05-14-halo3-beta_N.htm

By the way, the Evil Avatar story is causing a bit of controversy in the media right now. What he said got printed in newspapers around the globe. Gamerscore blog has coverage.
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currently playing: Catan, HALO 3 beta, Guitar Hero II
anticipating: Shadowrun, HALO 2 (PC), HALO 3, Quake Wars (in that order)
rest in peace: GoW, CoD3
Shadowrun rocks!

The Saved Film feature of Halo 3, as implemented in the beta, looks more like a framework than a finished piece of work, but even as such there are some quirks worth noting.

Currently you can “share” up to six of your saved films; essentially, Xbox Live hosts them for you, and friends and other players can access them. To help those film browsers out, you can retitle the films and give them descriptions. By default, Halo 3 names them by game type and number (SLAYER003) and the description includes the map, game type, date and time.

You can override these, and for entering the new title or description you can use the onscreen keyboard or a USB keyboard if one is attached.

However, doing so is a bit awkward. After you’ve selected the film you want to edit, you have to choose whether to override the title or the description; you can’t do both at once. After you’ve changed one or the other, you have to go back to the master saved films list, choose the film again, and then select the other item to change and change it.

Also, while nearly all of the Dashboard interface accepts controller or keyboard interface (the arrow keys double for the navigation functions of the controller) in Halo 3, the keyboard stops functioning when you’re not in a text edit field, so you can’t move up or down the list of saved films with the arrow or page up/down keys.

That would be a real convenience.

XerxdeeJ writes that Tied The Leader has a live audio report from the Halo 3 press event in New York. Check the blog for photos and other pre-beta coverage.

Sorahn put up a page of all the H3 beta medals he’s found so far; we also put up a special H3 Beta Medals page where you can search and sort them. Work is underway on better quality images and a more complete collection, word is there are still a few missing.

Kudos to Stuntmutt via HBO for pointing out that Gabe and Tycho now like Halo. Are you a dirty little jeep? Yeah… I thought so.

Other news:

• Halo 2 for Vista sucks, says CVG. Even the music. And the gameplay. And the enemies. And the pacing. This is just a case of someone reviewing Halo 2 as if it were a new game, not a port, and finding it easier to sound cool by trashing something than by putting it in context. To criticize Halo 2 for not having puzzles is really to miss the point. Halo 1 didn’t either. It wasn’t supposed to. Also via HBO.
• UGO also has a Halo 3 Beta Impressions article by Adam Rosenberg.
• Kotaku has a second Halo 3 Beta article, this one from the press event in Sydney, Australia by Luke Plunkett.
• Major Nelson offers tips for those preparing to enter the Public Beta on the 16th.