A few weeks ago, SaTaN discovered a cool new trick – you could use the momentum of a vehicle to push your player up a LONG way. He described it on our forum, and then Bonk filmed a demo of the technique… but SaTaN’s put out a video of his own, showing how versatile this trick really is (and showing some s7yle in the process). We’ve started you out with two mirrors for the 8.6 mb film… but we’re happy to list more.

Daniel, of Team 7hr33, points out that his sister Robyn (Dephalt) wrote (and recorded) a very nice addition to Marty O’Donnell’s ‘Siege of Madrigal’, and the result is posted on Team 7hr33’s website. (Sheet music is also included.) Go listen! (It’s on the Miscellaneous page.)

Fan Fic For Freddy:

• The awakening, part 1, by agsbladerboy55
• Capture of the Bounty, part 2, by SkyRyan1
• The Hell Of War, part 9, by Jaywhit10

Get to readin’!

Alex Cross, who has been writing chapters for the Fan Fiction series Aftermath for about a month now, has submitted a desktop image to accompany the writing. You’ll find it in our Wallpaper section.

Now this is just plain cool. Some Halo fanatics recreated some Halo wallpaper at a Sidewalk Arts festival in Georgia… in chalk. Lots of chalk. Check out the results in our Miscellaneous Art section. (Explanation included.)

Yesterday, Matthew Brady found this Japanese Halo review, but didn’t know what it said. A quick question on our forum elicited two translations – interesting reading!

Small change in the Gameplay Tricks section – you now have the option to search by Trick Type. (If you don’t care about Exploration, but want to see all the weird glitches people have found… this is for you.) As soon as I can figure out a clean way to do it, you’ll be able to combine limiters – explorations on Blood Gulch, for example. (Right now, the only way I came up with takes too much room at the top of the page…) Thanks to Reckless Angel for the suggestion. And while we’re thanking people, thanks to Mark Mendenhall for suggesting a variant of the Trick Suggestions database that went up a couple of days ago – be sure to add your ideas to the list!

Red hunter at night, take flight. To the Wallpaper section with you!

Today’s Fan Fiction batch:

• Capture of the Bounty, by SkyRyan1
• Effusion, part 6, by Tursas
• The Hell Of War, part 8, by Jaywhit10
• Operation False Prophets, part 10, by Ian Barnes

Went nicely with Barenaked Ladies…

Another half-dozen tricks have been uploaded to the Gameplay Tricks section – keep an eye out for easier navigation, coming soon. In the meantime, check these babies out – they range from elegant to seriously useful, with fun stuff thrown in just for kicks. And what’s this? The queue is almost empty! W00t!

Nice article over at Gamespot – this issue of Gamespotting has ‘Halo’s 10 Commandments‘, a well-written list explaining why Greg Kasavin says he “wouldn’t hesitate to name Halo as my single favorite system launch game of all time.” The only thing that bugged me was the pic he chose to illustrate The Co-op Mode’… Thanks to DT for the heads-up.

Robert Whitaker has kindly translated (or explained) the speech and captions of the four Japanese Halo commercials released last week – visit his translations page and see if you can decipher the inscrutable Japanese advertising mindset…

Wondering why the number of grenades in ammo caches on multiplayer maps isn’t constant? Read this.

The Gameplay Tricks database has gotten rather large – currently, there are 114 entries in it (plus another collection of tricks illustrated by some of the One-Shots entries; there are almost 50 of those). It’s becoming difficult to tell what tricks have been done, how they’ve been done, and what still needs to be done. To that end, we’ve set up a simple Gameplay Tricks Suggestions page. We’ll let it run for a while – feel free to add whatever comes to mind. (Try not to be obnoxious – yes, you can fill it with garbage, but how useful is that?) We’ll eventually use it to build a comprehensive table of tricks – we’ll include the tricks already in the database, plus any tricks queued up but not yet added, so that people can tell, in once place, what still needs to be accomplished. Until we get around to building that list, the creative among you should use the entries as inspiration for cool new submissions! (If someone submits a trick that’s listed in this database, and it comes in after the database entry, we’ll be giving joint credit to the suggester AND the submitter; there doesn’t seem to be any other fair way to do it.) Now go add your info!

A new Halo review – this time at X-Boxed. 9/10 – ‘the best console game [he] ever played’. Not too shabby! We’ve added it to our Reviews database. Thanks to Subnova.com for the heads-up.

Over at The Seventh Column, Bungie’s community site, you’ll find a chapter that’s compiling a database of the funniest deaths – visit Hunterz to see what’s already up, and add your own! (Don’t forget – you can create databases to store any info you think might be valuable; a few weeks ago, we pointed out that PanZer was building a Human and Grunt Sayings database… it’s up over 600 entries now!) Thanks to Tru7h and Reconciliation for the heads-up.

A few months ago, Edge Magazine gave Halo a 10/10 rating – a score shared by only 3 other games in Edge’s history. Yesterday, Edge Awards 2002 went on sale in the UK… and Halo took a whole slew of honors:

Game of the year, Halo :- “Halo works on so many levels and is simply on a different plane to any other title which has emerged in the last year.”

Technical achievement of the year, Halo :- “Technically, Halo displays a level of rigour and finesse sadly missing from many modern video games.”

Audio achievement of the year, Halo :- “…it cannot fail but give an emotional impact missing from most modern games… It’s all enhanced by the realtime Dolby 5.1 surround sound… Plug in, sit back, and be absorbed by a singularly superb aural experience”.

Also runner up in Graphical achievement of the year.

Thanks to fAt1, of MPZ Halo, for compiling this information!

Half-a-dozen new tricks have gone up in the Gameplay Tricks section – some pretty cool stuff there, take a look. (And keep your eyes peeled – the next batch won’t be a week away; in fact hopefully it’ll be done before the end of the week.)

Xerxes, of Halo Orbit, writes to point out that they’ve mirrored the Warthog2k2 video from Nico D., posted a few weeks ago. Warthog jumping can be fun! (They’re also hosting the latest release of Counter-Strike, so the server might be a bit hard to reach at times…)

That Weasel has mirrored 2 new movies, in 2 flavors each: The Halo Movie Teaser 3 is up in QT5 and WMP formats, and you’ll find a new encoding of the Pillar of Autumn with No Weapons there, as well. (The new WMP8 version there is 4.8 mb.) More mirrors, less waiting!