Wow – swing by GameVideos.com for some fresh-off-the-show-floor footage of Halo 2 Vista in action at the Leipzig Game Convention in Germany. It looks like folks are having a bit of trouble with the transition to the keyboard, if you ask me… too many players shooting and not moving. To be expected with the very first day of play, though – check it out! Thanks to Mark MacDonald for the heads-up.(Louis Wu 02:30:26 UTC)

This week’s Halo Humpday Challenge was against the Halo 2 Vista development team – and it looks like they’re busy actually CODING, because they let the Community team (which doesn’t do much except listen to people gripe about stupid new playlists) schooled ’em, 3 games to none. KP tried to play it off as a ‘Keyboard vs Joystick’ dealie… but basically, what happened was that they went looking for some group that didn’t play as well as they did… then challenged them. Go read all the details at Bungie.net.(Louis Wu 02:20:56 UTC)

I’ve been wondering how long it would take for someone to make a wordplay joke about the Halo Graphic Novel’s first story… figures it would be Stuntmutt doing it in a One One Se7en.(Louis Wu 20:11:57 UTC)

Wow, very cool. TheGarbageMan posted a whole series of Halo theme variation sketches – there are 10 snippets, all for piano, plus some commentary. Great stuff! (If we kill his bandwidth, we’ll certainly put up local copies.)(Louis Wu 19:52:34 UTC)

Took us much longer than we’d hoped it would… but the thousand entries we received for the Faceplate contest have been narrowed down to a pair of winners. Congratulations to Hawaiian Pig and Wheels, whose faceplate designs win them a prototype Halo faceplate direct from Bungie! Check out the Finalists page to see the final 14 entries.(Louis Wu 14:56:03 UTC)

Lost: Halostyle has released Episode 7, ‘The Average Journey: Part 2’ – it’s hard to tell which side is more incompetent, but it makes for some pretty funny moments. 7:42 long, weighing in at 48.3 mb (in WMP9 format) or 47.4 mb (in QuickTime format), this one passed the MPRRS this afternoon, and deserves a watching!(Louis Wu 03:05:16 UTC)

Kooberz is back to work on his Lego Zanzibar model… and he’s looking for help. Check out his forum post, check out the model sa it stands, and see what you can contribute!(Louis Wu 02:51:59 UTC)

Lots of people are asking, so I’m going to post this tonight – we’ve managed to pick our winners, and runners-up, for the faceplate contest… but I haven’t had time to put together a presentation page, so we’ll announce the details tomorrow (well, Wednesday, which technically is today, news-wise) – look for an announcement in the next 18 hours or so. Thanks for your patience!(Louis Wu 02:29:08 UTC)

Vista Week continues at Bungie.net, with an interview of the guys from Pi Studios, the folks creating the tools that will let you create new content for Halo 2 on Vista. Great to see familiar names – Dave Mertz did some wonderful work on Halo PC (and the tools released with HaloCE) when he worked for Gearbox. They say several times during the interview that the end user will be provided with everything needed to create new maps for Halo 2 – it’s not stated explicitly, but I’m guessing this means that you no longer need a copy of 3ds Max or gMax to actually build the level geometry. Nice! darthbob was kind enough to post a heads-up on our forum.(Louis Wu 02:17:15 UTC)

CROSSFIRE’s ‘Desolate’ placed in the top 7 positions of movies that passed the MPRRS – making CROSSFIRE the second machinima creator to have two films in the top 7. It’s a sequel to ‘Havoc’ (which came in third on that list), and it finishes up the story started there with a bleak look at the loss of hope. Gorgeous cinematography, great editing, great sound… this one’s fantastic. It’s quite long – almost 18 minutes – and weighs in at about 130 mb… but it’s worth it. Grab it in WMP9 format (137 mb) or QuickTime format (126 mb).(Louis Wu 02:08:53 UTC)

Out of Mind Part 4 is now available for sponsors at the Red vs Blue website. If you’re not a sponsor, Episode 3 is available for you. All in all, it’s an Out of Mind evening!(Louis Wu 23:14:08 UTC)

Looks like Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven were talking to Bungie recently, about making games from some of the best science fiction out there. How did we miss this? Thanks, Matt. (Interesting perspective on the whole ‘gameplay vs reality’ thing in there, too…)(Louis Wu 22:22:30 UTC)

Broken Console created a teaser for Endeavour, a spinoff of their ‘Conquest’ series – the MPRRS liked it. You can download it from their website, in either WMP9 or QuickTime formats (and in high or low-res). The full movie should be out later this month or next month.(Louis Wu 22:07:49 UTC)

Pinkuh created a new Halo art piece for Laird – this one started out as a simple sketch of an ODST… then it got inked… then it got colored. The final product is pretty slick! We’ve added it to her gallery here, too.(Louis Wu 21:26:02 UTC)

Aeropause wrote up an article listing (in their opinion) the Top Ten Best Physics Games. Halo came in at number 3. (The article incorrectly claims that Halo used the Havok physics engine – Havok was incorporated into Halo 2.) Thanks, Mr Sprout, for the heads-up.(Louis Wu 20:25:59 UTC)