Ever since the term ‘Man Cannon’ was mentioned (as a new feature on the maps played by the journalists who visited Bungie last month), folks have been making snide comments about it. Stuntmutt decided to get ALL of this out of the way by simply hammering the sexual innuendo into the ground. Go read today’s One One Se7en, and then let’s move on to more mature ridicule, okay?(Louis Wu 19:28:35 UTC)

Lots of new features will make their first appearance in the Halo series in Halo 3. One of the most anticipated is films – the ability to replay the action from the last game, with camera control. To get a sense for where this particular feature stands, swing by KP’s Red vs Blue Journal – registration is required, but it’s free – and check out his description of a replay from a hotly contested game. I’m getting shivers just thinking about it!(Louis Wu 19:16:30 UTC)

The flood of Halo info from EGM has started – you can find blog entries from Dan Hsu, Mark MacDonald, and Luke Smith, chock full of personal observations (and in Dan’s case, pictures), now live on the 1Up website. There’s plenty more coming – we’ll keep you informed! Update: Crispin Boyer’s blog is now updated, as well. Thanks, DHalo.(Louis Wu 19:00:57 UTC)

QsK King submitted a montage compiling the best gameplay from GamingVidz.com to the MPRRS (before the shutdown) – it’s a pretty nice montage! Lots of fun kills, nice coordination with the songs. It’s nearly 8 minutes long, but it covers work from a large number of people. You can grab it in WMP9 format (103 mb) or QuickTime format (104 mb).(Louis Wu 18:44:49 UTC)

Interesting – we got mail from Evelynn, at The Cartoon Doll Emporium – they’ve created a dress up doll of Master Chief. Mjolnir armor… and a ballerina tutu? Go see what you can put on this poor guy!(Louis Wu 16:22:38 UTC)

This Spartan Life put together a fun little ‘Halo-Ween’ Travelogue; it’s a celebration of the holiday, more than a serious commentary on things. TSL regular Sgt. Hartsock uploaded a copy of it to YouTube, so you can watch it without using the TSL bandwidth – take a look!(Louis Wu 16:14:34 UTC)

A few days ago, GamingTV.org came online – it’s a new site devoted to hosting machinima, and though it’s not Halo-exclusive, it certainly focuses on Halo. It’s being run by trigger119, who’s been around the Halo machinima community for a few years now – if you haven’t checked it out yet, you should! (Louis Wu 16:03:59 UTC)

I didn’t think folks would notice so quickly, but I’m getting mail, so I might as well make this public. Several events this weekend have made it clear to me that the Movie Peer Review Rating System is no longer functional; a significant number of reviewers are members of machinima clans, and (contrary to the rules they agreed to when they signed up) do not always skip videos made by clan members. Similarly, machinima makers who have friends that happen to be reviewers are getting inflated scores from these friends whenever movies are submitted. Because of this, a number of movies which probably would not have been released had the system truly been impartial have made it through to the public. This weakens the entire foundation on which this system is built; if you can’t trust that the films coming out are the cream of the crop, what’s the point of the MPRRS in the first place? To be totally honest, I simply do not have a solution for this problem at the moment. I have no way of knowing who knows who behind the scenes – we worked on trust, and that’s been broken now. Because of this, I’ve shut the system down. If we can come up with a reasonable way of ensuring this problem doesn’t continue, we’ll reopen the doors. In the meantime – I apologize, you’ll need to find other hosting for your videos. (Louis Wu 03:10:41 UTC)

Took a little longer than I’d hoped – but voting is now open for the 2006 edition of the Guilt O’ Lantern pumpkin-carving contest! Swing by, check out the entries, and pick your favorite 5 – we’ll give the top rankers some cool schwag!(Louis Wu 22:54:19 UTC)

Laird points out that Alone Episode 8, ‘Welcome Back Ben’, is now available for download. Not a lot of Halo content in this episode, but it’s nice to see the series is going to be finished! WMP9 format, 55.4 mb.(Louis Wu 22:51:52 UTC)

Sigafoos writes to let us know that WikiRiot 23 is now online – 40 minutes, 16 mb, and the chatter covers the new Halo 3 pages on the wiki, clan challenges, and the new WikiRiot forums. Check it out!(Louis Wu 22:07:11 UTC)

EternalScrappy submitted ‘Pushing Me Away’ to the MPRRS; they liked it. (You might have noticed a large number of EternalScrappy vids coming through recently. We have, too. We’ve also noticed some reviewing… irregularities associated with these films. We’re not going to penalize any films that have already come through the system, but we’re going to be looking very closely at future films – ALL future films. (The problems we’re noticing weren’t something I thought we had to worry about at all – I guess I was being naive.) I suppose this is a heads-up to filmmakers in general… if you try and game our system, you might end up being shut out of it completely. Again, though – that’s a warning from this point forward; it doesn’t affect this current release.) You can grab this in WMP9 format (40.7 mb) or QuickTime format (42.5 mb).(Louis Wu 21:07:10 UTC)

Interesting article in the Toronto Star; it suggests that the new ad campaign for the Canadian Forces is using ‘a kind of video-game imagery’ to attract new recruits. The idea is that the target audience is males aged 17 to 25… a big video game playing crowd, so if you ‘speak their language’, they’ll respond to your ad. Halo is mentioned several times (though it is not part of the ad campaign – in fact, no video game is actually shown in these ads.) I found a pair of the ads on YouTube; you can definitely see the ‘video game imagery’. I’d be interested to know how well this works – are commercials that show war in terms that might be more familiar to young people more effective as recruiting tools than commercials that are ‘squeaky clean and all about getting a job’ (an assessment of the last CF campaign)?(Louis Wu 16:40:53 UTC)

Alex Tice pointed out a video clip from Video Games Live over on AOL; yes, there’ve been others around, but this one is the entire Halo piece, including the intro, and it’s really nicely filmed. Streaming only.(Louis Wu 16:35:11 UTC)

Major.Dump continues his 3D animation experiments – this time, it’s a pair of Seraph fighters, weaving through a small Covenant formation, with a glassed Harvest in the background. Nice work!(Louis Wu 16:22:31 UTC)