Haloplayer, of Injured Knee Productions, sent the MPRRS ‘The Life Obstacles of Special Ted, Episode 4’, a video depicting the troubles Ted has in the fast food and automotive sales industries. Poor Ted. Funny stuff – grab a copy in WMP9 format (34.4 mb) or QuickTime format (34.2 mb).(Louis Wu 14:16:59 UTC)
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X06 Humpday Challenge (sort of)
Sneaking in under the radar, SketchFactor posted a Humpday Challenge writeup yesterday, missed (by our readers, anyway) until this morning, when hnc wondered about it. It’s not Halo, this time around – they played Shadowrun and Gears of War – but the end result (Bungie gets battered) was pretty much the same. Well, that’s not TOTALLY true. Sketch and Frankie played against bots in Shadowrun… and got demolished. Then Frankie played Sketch in Gears of War – and Frankie won. (Hmm…) Anyway, fun read, take a look!(Louis Wu 13:47:37 UTC)
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He’s hit bottom, and just started digging
Foo Mo Jive points out new content at Podtacular.com. Episode 82 has been posted, with guest host Stuntmutt, who is so self-effacing that the Podtacular boys have started a ‘save Stuntmutt’ fund. (It also covers stuff like the Bungie Podcast, Halo news, a glitch roundup, and more. This was all recorded on Sunday, which means the X06 revelations from yesterday aren’t mentioned.) And Halo News 6 is up, the latest episode of a new parody machinima news show, in both YouTube (Flash) and iPod (mp4) versions. Get to downloading!(Louis Wu 13:39:52 UTC)
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Down the Road
One of the biggest discussion topics flooding our forum at the moment (and flooding is the right word; we’ve jumped from an average of about 200 posts/day to about 800 in the last 24 hours) is the idea that Halo content is now being created outside of Bungie’s direct control. This may or may not turn out to be a bad thing, in terms of the quality of Halo game content down the road… but many of the issues have been laid out by Hawaiian Pig, on our forum, and Narcogen, at Rampancy.net. Both are good reads; check ’em out.(Louis Wu 13:32:22 UTC)
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X06 Humpday With A Twist
Frankie and SketchFactor, over in Barcelona for the X06 event, decided to do a different sort of Humpday Challenge this week, applying their Halo 2 skills to other games available for play.
The two pitted themselves against bots in Shadowrun (the bots won) and then against each other in Gears of War (Frankie won).
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X06 Humpday With A Twist
Frankie and SketchFactor, over in Barcelona for the X06 event, decided to do a different sort of Humpday Challenge this week, applying their Halo 2 skills to other games available for play.
The two pitted themselves against bots in Shadowrun (the bots won) and then against each other in Gears of War (Frankie won).
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In With The New… And Push The Old Stuff Over A Bit
To cope with all the new things we’re tracking now, we’ve made some additions to the site. There is now a Halo Wars image gallery and a mirror of the QuickTime version of the Halo Wars trailer; this is a mirror of the same file provided at HBO and re-encoded by Louis Wu.
The image gallery has the five official images from the HaloWars.com website, as well as a series of 17 screen captures from the QuickTime trailer.
There are also keyword tags for Ensemble Studios, for Halo Wars, for Wingnut Interactive and for their upcoming series of Halo games, which for the moment we are codenaming BLAM because no title has been announced.
The Features menu in the left sidebar has a new widget for Ensemble, and this is where the Halo Wars content will live. If you’ve got javascript enabled, each of the hierarchical menus with a triangle sign can be open or closed without reloading the page by clicking the triangle.
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In With The New… And Push The Old Stuff Over A Bit
To cope with all the new things we’re tracking now, we’ve made some additions to the site. There is now a Halo Wars image gallery and a mirror of the QuickTime version of the Halo Wars trailer; this is a mirror of the same file provided at HBO and re-encoded by Louis Wu.
The image gallery has the five official images from the HaloWars.com website, as well as a series of 17 screen captures from the QuickTime trailer.
There are also keyword tags for Ensemble Studios, for Halo Wars, for Wingnut Interactive and for their upcoming series of Halo games, which for the moment we are codenaming BLAM because no title has been announced.
The Features menu in the left sidebar has a new widget for Ensemble, and this is where the Halo Wars content will live. If you’ve got javascript enabled, each of the hierarchical menus with a triangle sign can be open or closed without reloading the page by clicking the triangle.
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X06 Humpday Challenge
Frankie and I are over in Barcelona for Microsoft’s X06 event but we still managed to throw together a little Humpday Day challenge… with a twist. Some things may change, but some things will always remain the same.
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Deadly Encounters Of The Spirit Of Fire
From Ensemble Studios’ own web page is this announcement for Halo Wars, which may assuage some of those already screaming that the meagre amount shown in the trailer contradicts known canon:
Breaking News – Ensemble Studios is bringing real-time-strategy to the Xbox 360 and to the Halo universe. Designed exclusively for the Xbox 360, Halo Wars allows you to take charge of the human UNSC armies and see the Halo universe from a totally new perspective.
Halo Wars is set during the UNSC’s first deadly encounters with the Covenant, allowing players to lead the crew of the UNSC’s “Spirit of Fire” from initial skirmishes to an all out war against the evil Covenant.
It’s been pointed out that the very first Covenant-Human encounter was at Harvest, when no Spartans were present. However, I certainly think there are enough gaps in the record of the Human-Covenant war as presented in the novels to place a ground battle on a human colony world with Forerunner artifacts the Covenant want access to, where Spartans are in play and the Covenant are not yet glassing all Human worlds as a matter of policy, or are perhaps avoiding glassing one in particular for specific reasons.
Everybody calm down.
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Deadly Encounters Of The Spirit Of Fire
From Ensemble Studios’ own web page is this announcement for Halo Wars, which may assuage some of those already screaming that the meagre amount shown in the trailer contradicts known canon:
Breaking News – Ensemble Studios is bringing real-time-strategy to the Xbox 360 and to the Halo universe. Designed exclusively for the Xbox 360, Halo Wars allows you to take charge of the human UNSC armies and see the Halo universe from a totally new perspective.
Halo Wars is set during the UNSC’s first deadly encounters with the Covenant, allowing players to lead the crew of the UNSC’s “Spirit of Fire” from initial skirmishes to an all out war against the evil Covenant.
It’s been pointed out that the very first Covenant-Human encounter was at Harvest, when no Spartans were present. However, I certainly think there are enough gaps in the record of the Human-Covenant war as presented in the novels to place a ground battle on a human colony world with Forerunner artifacts the Covenant want access to, where Spartans are in play and the Covenant are not yet glassing all Human worlds as a matter of policy, or are perhaps avoiding glassing one in particular for specific reasons.
Everybody calm down.
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The Passing Of The Torch?
While I don’t think there’s enough actual content in the Halo Wars trailer to do a full-on annotation, as for the Halo 3 trailer, I did think it worthwhile to try and collect some thoughts about yesterday’s announcements that will be worth pondering in the time between now and when we actually see these new games. Some are picayune details, and some are big questions. First, the picayune details.
For the entire article, click “read more” from the front page.
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Episode 82: Podtacular Update with Special Guest: Stuntmutt
Download | Show Notes
It’s the Podtacular Update show, where we talk about news and events (as of Sunday the 24th) in the Halo and Podtacular communities, cover some glitching tips, and we light up the stage for “Podtacular night at the Apollo” or Halo comedy people send in. With the usual JVB on a cell phone with people laughing and talking in the background and guest host Stuntmutt, artist of One One Seven, the regular comic on HBO. Pod art is actually related to a story JVB tells later on… you gotta hear it. It’s drawn by Paul Maestri, artist of the Halo Heads comic. Check out his comic, it rocks! Thanks to Ciclonic for editing audio, he did the best he could and so did we since JVB was on a cell phone and Stuntmutt could not find how to lower his volume. I have to apologize for the irony of a Podtacular Update without the biggest update of all that happened just today. (Halo Wars, Wingnut Interactive) Sorry but my time machine’s in the shop. Enjoy the next hour and seven minutes of Podtacular goodness!
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Episode 82: Podtacular Update with Special Guest: Stuntmutt
Download | Show Notes
It’s the Podtacular Update show, where we talk about news and events (as of Sunday the 24th) in the Halo and Podtacular communities, cover some glitching tips, and we light up the stage for “Podtacular night at the Apollo” or Halo comedy people send in. With the usual JVB on a cell phone with people laughing and talking in the background and guest host Stuntmutt, artist of One One Seven, the regular comic on HBO. Pod art is actually related to a story JVB tells later on… you gotta hear it. It’s drawn by Paul Maestri, artist of the Halo Heads comic. Check out his comic, it rocks! Thanks to Ciclonic for editing audio, he did the best he could and so did we since JVB was on a cell phone and Stuntmutt could not find how to lower his volume. I have to apologize for the irony of a Podtacular Update without the biggest update of all that happened just today. (Halo Wars, Wingnut Interactive) Sorry but my time machine’s in the shop. Enjoy the next hour and seven minutes of Podtacular goodness!
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Halo Wars Trailer
1:31 Minutes
From HaloWars.com
A Halo RTS for the Xbox360… who would have thought? Apparently Bungie though, and this pre-rendered trailer sets the mood for the game and gets you ready for the epic battles that await! Despite the name (how generic is that?), this game looks like it could be a lot of fun.
Update: If the iPod version was giving you trouble, it should work now. Thanks, h2freak.
PSP – 6.3MB 
Pocket PC – 3.3MB 
iPod – 9.3MB 
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Halo Heads – Gerbil Wars.
Paul Maestri, having no idea that the Halo news scene would get flooded by goodies coming out of Barcelona, sent us a link yesterday for Halo Heads 11, which continued the running gerbil gag. (Made me laugh out loud.) As soon as he saw the treasure from Spain, however, he whipped up a topical strip, Halo Heads 12, and sent it along. I didn’t want to confuse anyone with out-of-order episodes, so we’re pointing out both at the same time. Enjoy!(Louis Wu 01:18:53 UTC)
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It’s not yesterday anymore.
Just a reminder – if you’ve been away from the Halo scene for a day or two, you REALLY want to check Wednesday’s news; there were quite a lot of tidbits worth reading.(Louis Wu 01:13:42 UTC)
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HaloOrbit interviews Halogen Leader
Thanks to Oliver “HO Legend” Stopienski, who pointed out an interview with Dispraiser, of the Halogen team, at his website, HaloOrbit. An interesting read, and an interesting choice of release times… (Louis Wu 01:10:22 UTC)
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Halo Wars Trailer in QT
There have been a number of requests for a QuickTime version of the Halo Wars trailer; I doubt there’ll be one coming from Ensemble, so I whipped one up myself. It’s not the full 720p version – but it’s still bigger than the low-res 360p they’ve made available – it’s 480p (852×480), and it weighs in at 24 mb. Grab a copy today if WMP9 sets your teeth on edge.(Louis Wu 22:00:37 UTC)