Shockwave, of TeamXbox, has put up a 3 page, in-depth review of Halo, complete with 4 new video clips (major spoilers inside). It’s very, very positive. The game gets an overall 4.8 out of 5 – the score is broken down in great detail. Check it out… 6 more days!

Nice catch – Hyperium found a TechTV Halo review. Except for implying that Halo will not come out on a PC, it’s a decent review. They had some troubles with the controls… but nothing they couldn’t handle. One odd thing – the video clip enclosed (generic splitscreen coop play – no spoilers) at one point shows the two teammates in a jeep… and BOTH screens are in 3rd person mode. (There is no way to see what the gunner in the back is actually shooting at; the camera remains on him.) Several months ago, the gunner was first-person – either this has changed, or something was pretty screwy over at TechTV. Hmm…

Eric Trautmann stopped by the Rampancy.net forum to clarify a few details about ‘The Fall of Reach’, and the prospects for a Halo movie. Read the details for yourself!

Mr. Bunny has uncovered a couple of mainstream articles that mention Halo – the Washington Post, in a comparison of the Xbox, the GameCube, and the PS2, points to Halo as evidence that Microsoft is targeting older gamers, and the New York Times says Halo is “the most involving title” for the Xbox. Not bad, for mainstream press!

Djof has succumbed to Bungie fever, and created a nice desktop using the Bungie motto (and some nice compositing). Check it out in our Wallpaper section.

Battle of the Photoshoppers… Matt Baker and Strykerwolf have both created images purporting to show an Xbox being played in a living room, a week before launch. Both images have been added to the Miscellaneous Art section.

The Juan Ramirez Covenant statue (to be given away to celebrate the re-opening of the Bungie Store – early pictures of the statue can still be seen there) is coming along very nicely, as shown on the Bungie Webcam today. Here are a couple of views of it (thanks to Adam Daniel for the earlier one).

Matt Soell has posted an important note about the Launch Party – apparently, the page on Xbox.com rocketed the number of RSVPs to way over what the Bungie folk can handle. They’ll be contacting everyone who responded to let ’em know whether they’re in or not – check for details in his post. (Please – don’t send new mail, asking whether you’re in; that’ll only slow him down.)

CG Online managed to corner Jason Jones for a brief question and answer session – after a definitive ‘YES’ to the obligatory ‘Is Halo REALLY coming to the PC?’ question, he got to the good stuff:

Is Halo a better game for having been made into a showcase title for the Xbox? What have you been able to do, technically and in terms of production value, that PC gamers will see when the game is released, but wouldn’t have seen if the game had just remained a PC/Mac game forever?

Well obviously we have been able to focus on two major areas for the Xbox version.
1. Single player story
2. Graphical/Audio fidelity

The Xbox really frees Bungie up to turn on all the bells and whistles. Bungie no longer had to worry about making it optimized for hundreds of different computer configurations or a low the minimum spec. We only had one minimum spec and one configuration which allowed the team to max out all the settings. Things like Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound, bump mapping, pixel reflection or volumetric lighting will just blow players away. These processes are expensive and require tremendous horse-power that is standard on the Xbox.

Go read the rest – and bookmark the page for future reference! Thanks to Freewill for the heads-up.

A kind soul over at the TeamXbox forums has uploaded .avi versions of the gameplay commercials (including the Halo commercial). Unfortunately, these require the DivX codec – and even though I have it installed (on both a Mac and a PC), I can’t get these to work. Others, have, though… so it’s worth a shot!

For those who haven’t visited yet… the 7th Column site shows an almost Marathon-like glyph, a counter (it’s down to 6, from yesterday’s 7), and (hidden in text the same color as the background) “NON FACETE NOBIS CALCITRARE VESTRVM PERINÆVM” (which, loosely translated, means “Don’t Make Us Kick Your Ass”). Coming Soonâ„¢…

TeamXbox noted that there seems to be a Munch’s Odyssey demo on the Halo DVD… decent marketing ploy, no? Thanks to Paul Roberts for the first heads-up.

No7orious noticed that the Halo Launch Party has made it into the news at Xbox.com. Remember – this is a site that saw 580,000 unique visitors last week… so if you’re planning on going, and haven’t yet sent your RSVP to halofest@microsoft.com… well, there are only 250 spots…

Because the subject (rumors that PC Halo is dead are BULL) is so important to so many readers, and because we posted this late in the day yesterday, we’re going to direct your attention to this news post – Matt Soell, once again, stomps on the rumormongers. Read it. Show it to your friends. Beat forumgoers at other sites over the head with it.

Solid Halo preview from PlanetXbox – they got the date wrong, but otherwise it’s a nice summary of the game. Thanks to Charles Clifford for the heads-up. Update: Oops, careless – this is the same article that was posted at PlanetXbox’s host, Gamespy, a week ago. My bad. Djof gets the first-noticed kudos.

Many thanks to Kbjlake, who has kindly mirrored the manual scans that have had such a difficult time finding a home. You can grab them individually, or get the whole shebang, zipped (3.6 MB). (And thanks again to Final Solution, who scanned them all in the first place!)

Five gorgeous hi-res screens at VoodooExtreme – go get ’em. First notification props to jan luow. (Who loves ya, baby?)

Okay, for most regulars here, this is a broken record. However, with the proximity of the Xbox launch, there are many newcomers… and this issue has become hot recently. A few days ago, Matt Soell, in response to a forum post in which an Xbox Germany representative was quoted as saying that PC Halo would be released in late fall 2002, said this:

If Jason Jones is still unsure how we’re handling the PC version (and he is – I talked to him about it two days ago) then it’s pretty unlikely that some MS guy in Germany has the inside track.

Some jumped on this as proof that Bungie was waffling about doing the PC port in the first place. Matt has posted a new missive on our forum, in an attempt to be perfectly clear about one thing: a PC version of Halo is still in the works.

I have asked many questions about the Mac/PC versions in recent days, because I want to know what’s going on so I can get the “I have confirmation it’s never coming” wankers off the community’s back. I have asked people who are in the best position to know what’s going on, like Alex and Jason. They don’t have answers to all the questions yet, and they don’t want to say anything until all the ducks are in a row, but they know what they have to do. If pressed to choose between an “anonymous source” referenced by some random guy on a web forum, and two real people with names who have confided Bungie secrets to me for years, I’ll pick the latter. And I cheerfully invite the anonymous sources, if they actually exist, to come on over to Bungie HQ and chat with Alex and Jason and myself so we can eliminate the communication breakdown.

The short version? BUNGIE HAS NOT SCRAPPED PLANS FOR A PC PORT. This, of course, will not stop people from speculating that they have, indeed, scrapped plans for a PC port (or even better, haven’t been told by their Microsoft overlords that the PC port is history, and are toiling away in ignorance)… but as of today, a week before the Xbox launch, the PC port is officially in the works.

The Gameplay page of the HBO FAQ has been updated. Old info has been pulled, new info added… one more question (coop splitscreen play) is there. This is a work in progress… more to come. Update: The Weapons and Vehicles pages have been updated, as well, this time using information from the Halo Manual.

Final Solution writes again – the Halo manual pics he put up yesterday (down on his original site, for bandwidth overflows – he can’t even log in to remove them) have been re-upped – to a Geocities site. Dunno how long THAT one’s gonna last… but if you haven’t gotten ’em yet (and want ’em), give it a shot.