Manatee Bound has reviewed Halo – they saw the limited weapons-carrying ability and the limited enemy assortment as the biggest flaws. Final rating was 8.75/10 – we’ve added the review to our Reviews database.

Psyrixx dropped us a note to let us know that they’re working hard on bringing the Psyjnir Complex back online. In the meantime, he’s redrawing the comic series he started before the server melted – with more detail than the first time. Check back every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for a new comic – until the site’s online, they’re not going to be archived, so if you miss ’em, you miss ’em.

A couple of Fan Fiction submissions for you – both nearly free of punctuation. Luckily, one’s a poem. You’ll find Jaywhit10’s The Hell of War and Jehkoh’s Untitled Poem in the Fan Fiction section.

Got a Nokia cell phone? Want to make it ring with the Halo theme? Rage Reset has posted the codes necessary in Nokia Ring Tone Composer format on our forum… and it’s got Marty’s OK (though nobody checked with Microsoft, so be sure you don’t go to Redmond and get calls with this thing…). The lengths some people go to…

A few new One-Shots have been added to our collection – check out the goodies! (No serious spoilers, even for those who haven’t played, I’d guess… minor stuff only.)

Naligun points out that the UK TV show Thumb Bandits finished its season on Friday, and announced that Halo was the best game of the entire series! It was, in their words, “Outrageously good. This game has everything. Utter, unmitigated genius.” High praise, indeed!

Freewill has put up a video comprised of over 1500 webcam snapshots taken over a 14 hour period… it’s 6 megs, and shows (mostly) the projection screen we used for the first 12 hours or so. However, there are people shots, as well… if you’ve got a fast connection, give it a look!

A literal flood of Fan Fiction – here’s what went up tonight:

• The Flood (a poem) by Gasmask
• Earth: Combat Evolved Chapter 2 by drexx
• Renegade Marines Part III – The Evac by Shadow
• What Legends May Fall by Vector40
• (Untitled Poem) by Gi’Tbad’Eovad’Dvan

There are at least 3 more which didn’t make the cutoff laid down by yesterday’s new rules – we’d be happy to look at these again when they’re bigger. You folks are on a writing binge!

A rather strange size, but a pretty nice pic… Germain Couët drops off another fun desktop – you’ll find it on our Wallpaper page. Check it out!

Kudos to Freewill, who posted the text to a fun little blurb in Entertainment Weekly this week on our forum. Nice to see Halo lanfests getting recognized as ‘the Next New Thing’ by a mainstream magazine! (The scan will be posted next week, when this issue is off the shelves.)

Later today (or possibly tonight) there’ll be a large Fan Fiction update – there have been a number of submissions over the past day or two. However, I’d like to make a new policy – or at least codify a current, unofficial policy, so that submitters know what to expect.

A Fan Fiction submission, unless it is poetry or a novelty item, must be a minimum length for acceptance. Since some submitters can’t seem to deal with a vague description like ‘long enough’, we’re putting a word-count minimum on submissions – items of less than 500 words will not be posted. In the Halo inbox right now are two submissions of fewer than 100 words, both ending with ‘to be continued’ – here’s my advice: continue them before you submit.

We don’t like to reject submissions – of ANY type, from fan fiction to artwork to videos… but “The master chief is cool. The end.” does nothing but dilute the value of the entire Fan Fiction section. If you’re writing in chapter format… write two chapters, combine them into one submission, and THEN submit. I hope this helps both submitters, and readers.

iBonk.com begins to branch out – they now have a reader-submitted collection of pics of a warthog balancing on its front bumper on Blood Gulch. (Hey! Gameplay Tricks is OUR bag! 🙂 ) Check it out – that’s some nifty balancing! (Thanks to MaTT for the heads-up.)

Aerothorn writes to point out that The Cole Protocol is running a contest – the winner needs to submit a picture with the most copies of Halo visible in it. Check out their news page for March 4th and 5th for details on rules and prizes.

BarrysWorld has put up their Halo review – and it glows. Check it out – we’ve added it to our Reviews Database. (75 sites have reviewed Halo – the average rating is 94.7%. Are there any other games that can say this?) Thanks to The Junkyard for the heads-up on this one.

Whoa – gone for two days, and the news backs up to the roof! There isn’t time to post it all right now – I’ve got a birthday party to organize – but I’ll put a few things up. First up: a relatively new feature on our forum has been the HBO Weekly Review. I’ve held off mentioning it, but it’s time now – a nice synopsis of the week’s posts, organized nicely for your reading pleasure. If you enjoy it, search for other posts written by ‘Weekly Review’ – there have been 5 of them so far.

Whew! Back from Pennsylvania, after some rather excessive driving speeds and 17 hours (!!) of straight Halo playing – 16-player carnage with almost 25 players rotating through. More updates later, as well as text and pictures from the fest itself – but suffice it to say, we’re happy.

I’m headed to Pennsylvania for *Ar-Isildur’s End of Chemo Party, so updates will be rather sparse for the next couple of days. Be patient – I’m playing Halo!

Ian Barnes sends in Chapter 4 of his Operation: False Prophets saga. If you haven’t read the rest, you can read the series in one shot. Our Fan Fiction collection grows.

Slayer31 sends in some new pics of Sidewinder, with everything – jeeps, ghosts, and tanks – off the map. That’s a first, as far as I can tell… we’ve added it to our Gameplay Tricks section.

Due to yet ANOTHER obnoxious hacking attempt, anonymous logins on our ftp site have been suspended until I can get in and clean things. Sorry. If you have submissions, please mail them. Sorry.