Halo Babies was almost short a comic this week… but not quite. Thanks, mrsmiley!

Stuff Entertainment, in New Zealand, has published a review of the Halo PC 1.5 beta. Crashed a lot for them. They still sorta liked it. Sorta. Thanks to… um, a guy with a really long handle.

Sniperman27 has created the HBO News Messenger; a small Windows program that will let you know the most recent news post on HBO. I was a iittle hesitant about the color scheme (as shown in that forum post) – but I needn’t have worried; on a PC running XP Pro and .Net Framework 1.1, I saw something different. If you’re not interested in an entire RSS reader, but just want the latest post, this might be worth checking out! Update: please don’t download this yet. It seems that Sniperman has it configured to poll the server every 10 seconds – if a thousand people download this, that’s an extra 100 connections every second of every day. 10,000 downloads, and we’re talking 1000 extra connections per second. HBO doesn’t need that. (Likely, HBO can’t HANDLE that.)

Carmack… unoriginal? Never. Well, Stuntmutt considers it, anyway, in today’s One One Se7en.

Gamespy has put up their review of the final version of Halo… and they loved it. Simply loved it. They’re still not thrilled with the level design, and they’re grumpy about the system requirements… but (by their own reckoning) those are niggles. Halo… as it was meant to be played. (Their words.) Comes with 24 screenies, too (12 campaign shots from Halo, T&R and Silent Cartographer, and 12 multiplayer shots, mostly from Blood Gulch, Timberland, and Gephyrophobia, though there is one Ice Fields shot). Thanks to LaMuerte for the heads-up.

Forum regular Wado has pieced together the clues dropped by Bungie, and laid out the actual Halo storyline. They jazzed it up a little bit for the final product… but the basics are all there.

I was watching the boob tube and figured I’d give the premiere of that new NBC comedy, Coupling, a look-see. Guess what opens the third act? Two guys playing Halo and chatting about sex. 🙂 It was only for a few seconds, but there ya go. Nice.

For anyone going to the CPL Halo Winter Championship this December, the official rules have been posted. Read ’em through, soldier!

Mini-update at the Halo Story page – these guys haven’t figured out what sleep means.

Grenadiac points out that SparkEdit, his Halo map viewer (Xbox only at the moment) will be available to the public as of tomorrow. Check out more details at HaloMods.com! (Note: this is useless to you without a modded Xbox. Please don’t mail us asking how to mod your Xbox. Thanks.)

Today’s Guest One One Se7en comes from Adrenaline… another warning about modded netplay. I hate it when that happens…

Gamers Pulse has put up a Halo PC preview – they, like most reviewers, are looking forward to it. Thanks to Blue’s news, by way of Narcogen at Rampancy.net.

TARS writes to point out Halo2World, a new Halo 2 site. It’s mostly a forum… but there are a few other sections, and room for growth. Check it out!

8 Fan Fiction pieces? 8? Somone submitted an extra without permission!

• Halo: The MCconto Chronicles Part 9 and 10, by JCDenton
• Halo’s Ballad, by Gasmask
• The Gunback’s Part 1, by Anrew Harrison
• Retaliation: Chapter Three, by Blue Jaguar
• A Series of Wierd Events, Part Nine, by Hunter_Killer
• The Death of Earth:Guilt of a Spartan, by Sim McGaulkin
• CORRUPT: EndgamE, by GLADIATRRR3000
• Survival, Chapter Five: Chaos, by Agent Shade

Read, read…

Not to be outdone by a Canadian mountain man connected to the internet via baggie twist-ties and a 9600 baud modem, mnemesis has gone through the Halo Story mailbag and picked a few gems out. (It took him a bit longer than expected, because he had to wash the grit and cobwebs off his arms when he was finished…) Check out the results on the HSP News page!

The Shadow Clan (or, specifically, member ShadowOryan) has submitted a new movie called ‘Tactics 101’ – it’s available in WMP7 (13.2 mb) and QuickTime 5 (11.8 mb) formats. It’s 320×240, just over 3 minutes long, and shows some sneaky tricks that can be used in multiplay. Some have been seen before, some haven’t – but as a whole, it’s a nice collection. Visit Tekkomix for more details on The Shadow Clan.

Massive infusion of new snippets for the Dialogue Databank – 85 in total. Some real classics; ‘We are the Champions’ from a victorious grunt, and ‘Next one who dies gets it in the rear from ME!’ from Sergeant Stacker are a couple of my favorites. (That last was in the Outtakes section of Bungie’s Tru7h and Reconciliation site, so we checked; Marty tells me he’s surprised it was left in the game… but it was. It’s pretty rare, though.) Thanks to Captain Spark and Electric Monk for the submissions this time around!

What do you do when the voice in your head starts telling really bad jokes? Well, obviously, you start drinking to drown out the noise… unless that voice belongs to a holographic representation of an AI. One One Se7en peeks at this nightmare.

Ten Fan Fiction pieces for you today…

• The UNSC Sigma Octanus-part-2, by Alexander_Valient
• The Cortana Run [H&R 10], by Jillybean
• Halo 001, Part One, by Hunter_Killer
• A Series of Wierd Events, Part Eight, by Hunter_Killer
• Sons of Sparta, by SOS.Odin
• The Final Conflict: Chapter 1, by Blade
• CORRUPT [4], by GLADIATRRR3000
• Homeworlds XIV, by Mainevent
• Forerunners, by Alpha Lance
• Halo Trilogy: European Road Trip ( Chapter V ), by Alpha Lance

Wow, that’s fewer than usual.

Shishka points out that The Silent Cartographers website is now online. (TSC are a mapmaking group formed recently to create killer content for Halo PC.) Go take a look!