Woohoo! Mirrors, mirrors, everywhere! Another Commercial mirror, courtesy of Bounty, at Battleground: Halo:

• FilePlanet

And three mirrors for the Launch party footage:

• Fileplanet (thanks again, Bounty!)
• Halo’s Universe (thanks, genohunter!)
• Kbjlake’s mirror (thanks, Kbjlake!)

That should hold most of you…

Thanks greatly to Mavruss, who has sent in 8 minutes of video footage from the Launch party – ambience, food, and gameplay. It’s in WMV format, and it’s 5.6 MB, zipped, and we’d love mirrors for it. (Please – nobody complain about the format; the original upload was a 650 MB .avi that wasn’t readable by anything I have here. This is MUCH more reasonable, and its small size means we can distribute it from our mac.com space. Narration is done by Russell’s wife Sara – brownie points to anyone who can spot the two of them in the video. (Did we mention we need mirrors?)

Dink!… The Halo SETI Marines, despite the influx of two new team members (and an increase in crunching from existing members), are left in the dust by The Athlonmb.com Seti Team. Ouch! They fall one place, to 53rd, in the Battle of the Teams. Are you doing YOUR part? Check the 7 day stats page to see.

Kbjlake writes to say that the Halo commercial (mpeg format) has been mirrored on his webspace – grab it there if you’re having trouble with our link! (Thanks, Kbjlake!)

There are more in the works, we hear… but the first screenshots sent to us of the Launch Party have been uploaded – a few shots showing the Halo T-shirt Bungie was selling at the event. Take a look… this’ll be available to the public as soon as the Bungie Store goes live again!

Ryan ‘TheMystic’ Lord, of Invisible Dream, writes to point out a large article on the Halo launch party – descriptions, interviews with partygoers, and 35 photos – including some fun shots of Bungie employees, like this one, showing Matt’s new “Unabombers R Us” beard… Check it out! (For more Launch Party goodness, check out the most recent submission to our coverage page – Art Sangurai, of the Brotherhood of BoB, wrote a blow-by-blow account of the evening – you’re almost there!)

Kayas has kindly converted the Halo commercial (first available in Real format, then this evening in .asf) to MPEG format – we’ve placed a copy on our overflow space at mac.com. (Anyone who wants to mirror this – let us know as soon as possible!) In addition to being in a much friendlier format, it’s now bumped up to 320×240. Take a look!

TeamXbox has put up the first four Xbox gameplay commercials (including Halo, of course), in ASF format (downloadable). Thanks to Forrest Wickman for the first heads-up!

Red Hot Ryan points out that 3D Action Planet has posted the Gamespy Halo review that went live yesterday. Same story, different background…

The first few reports have trickled in from the Launch Party last night (folks having too much fun to report back, it seems!) – overall response seems to be pretty positive. jaslak summed up the general attitude towards Bungie’s willingness to do stuff like this:

It was an impressive sight, to see bungie employees and fans talking one on one. I have yet to see another company as cool as Bungie.

Lots of little details, including the unveiling (at least verbally) of the new Truth and Reconciliation site Bungie’s putting up (you almost got the name right, Theocracity)… read the reports to soak it up. An Xbox and several copies of Halo (as well as t-shirts) were given away… and several people (from Marty O’Donnell to TeamXbox) were conducting interviews. No7orious mentioned on our forum that the only new media he saw was a sort of training video (sounds like fun, though) – but we have yet to hear from the Bungie guys themselves.

General announcement: if you were at the party, and would like your thoughts/comments preserved for posterity on the coverage page, drop us a line – we’ll set you up with access so you can post there. (This goes for Bungie employees, as well, if you’re so inclined.) A search function will be added soon, so that finding that tidbit you wanted will be simple. For those of us not at the party… looks like we missed a good one!

GameSpot has put up another GameSpotting article, this time devoted to the wonder that is Halo multiplayer. Joe Fielder waxes poetic about the 8-player carnagefests they were having for hours:

One time, two enemy tanks came up to our base. Shahed hopped out of his tank to enter the base and take our flag. I jumped into his tank while he was inside the building, took out the driver of the other tank with my tank’s cannon, and was sitting there completely still, aiming right at Shahed as he ran out with the flag. I heard him call to his teammates from the other room, “I’ve got it! Let’s go!” and he made a beeline toward me. I fired a round from my cannon straight at him and yelled from Jeff’s office, “Wrong tank, Shahed!”

Makes me hope I can find a few other Xbox owners in the area… thanks to Forrest Wickman for the heads-up.

Thanks to Uriel, who discovered 15 new Halo screens at PC Games.de (you can see them in 640×480 format, or 768×576 format). Some nice ones in there…

For those who haven’t checked in for a while, the Halo Launch Party got underway about 45 minutes ago at the Hotel Monaco in Chicago. I hope all that needed to be inside GOT inside… we’ve gotten no word from anyone there yet, but if news breaks, we’ll let you know! The Halo Launch Party Coverage page is accessible to a whole horde of HBO regulars at this point… they need to be our eyes and ears tonight.

Jeremy, from Xbox Addict, took a few pics at his local software boutique while playing – you can check ’em out in this thread on their forum. Thanks to TomeOne for the heads-up.

St. Killer drops a montage on us – a pretty scary fightscene, if it actually went down that way. 🙂 Check it out in our Miscellaneous Art section.

Gamespot’s Joe Fielder gives Halo a video review (80-90 MB download, also available in streaming formats) – word on the street is it’s full of spoilers. 🙁 Still – it’s out there.

There’s not much there yet… but in a few short hours, the Halo Launch Party will get underway in Chicago, and we’ve set up a page to handle the news and information. A bunch of HBO regulars will be there, and hopefully will get the chance to post their thoughts and observations as the night progresses. (The page will remain up, so that folks who don’t have a chance to post from the party can add their two bits after the fact – it’ll be a central repository for news and pictures from the event.) Bookmark the page!

IMPORTANT: At 2:41 am Chicago time, Matt Soell dropped into our forum to apologize for the RSVP snafu (and the limitations of reality in general). He’s not going to be able to respond to all of the RSVPs – but here are his general guidelines:

Bottom line: If you RSVPed two weeks ago, you are almost definitely in. If you RSVPed two days ago, or two hours ago, I guarantee nothing. If you didn’t RSVP, stay home.

It would be very much of a downer to be turned away at the door… so take this to heart.

Gamespy has put up their full Halo review… and they weren’t that imporessed. A solid title, but nothing special. Mostly, they were frustrated with what they saw as repetitive gameplay (“It’s like a videogame equivalent of Groundhog Day”). You can’t please everyone… Charles Clifford gets the first-spot nod.

IGN has put up their Halo review – unfortunately, it’s Insider-only. It makes some interesting points that the other reviews don’t make – but since most of them could be considered spoilers, I’ll refrain from quoting them. They also include some MAJOR spoilers – but clearly delineate them, and write them in white text on a white background, so the only way to read them is to WANT to read them. Thanks to Dan for the heads-up – read his post for the actual breakdown of their review.