genohunter writes to let us know that a second Halo french preview has come out, at GameKult.com.

For those whose french is as clear as the covenant language, I’ll just say that the Gamekult team found the game quite exciting, and, of course, really wonderful (especially all the bumpmapping effectsÊ·ith dynamic lights). They tested it on a beta version, and they deplore the framerate problem that we heard telling about (too) many times. As a conclusion, they think that Halo is one of the best Xbox first games, and, apart of the framerate problem,Ê´hey really enjoyed playing it.

The fact that it’s a development build is clear from some of the 57 (!!!) screenshots included with this article… some of which could be considered SERIOUS spoilers.

jeremedia notes that his recently-purchased retail copy of Halo is missing the training sequence seen in the O’Donnell/Staten commentary film and GameSpot’s Xbox movie 2. (He mentioned this before, a few days ago… but then he was playing at Xbox Unleashed, and it wasn’t clear if there had been some way to bypass it that had been chosen.) Bummer… seemed like a fun section, and useful for continuity. Update: Both Mat Noguchi and Jay Weinland (tools programmer and Cinematics team member, respectively) have jumped in to suggest reasons why jeremedia might not see that sequence. If the game is saved after the training sequence, you won’t see it again… and in any case, it’s only shown on Easy and Normal difficulty settings; it’s skipped on Heroic and Legendary. Thanks, guys!

Overnight forum doings… the Xbox manual scans we mentioned last night got crushed from the demand – Final Solution’s monthly bandwidth allotment has been used up… so Funky J has kindly put them up on his hotline server. Psyrixx has created a new Mastercard ‘Priceless’ parody – you can find it at The Psyjnir Complex. (5+ versions of browsers, please.) Jester explains how to save Real Audio streams (this is illegal in the US) – a little too late, since the Halo commercial mentioned a couple of days ago had disappeared from the net. (It seems to be back now, though… hmm.) And another new thread popped up over at IGN, in which someone is claiming to have gotten from their MS buddy the news that (once again) PC Halo is dead and buried. (It’s mentioned here, here, and here.) Thanks… but until we get word from Bungie that they have, in fact, decided to bag it… we’ll pass on this rumor.

Hmm… Matt Soell drops hints about new media to be released at the Halo Launch Party…

Almost missed this, because of the ridiculous traffic the forum is getting these days… but Adam Daniel noticed (in an obscure location on TeamXbox’s site) that futureshop.ca is selling a CD called ‘Definitive Xbox Compilation’. Along with the music comes a Bonus CD:

The disk contains band EPKs, Xbox title movies and previews, and The Making Of Halo, a behind-the-scenes insider’s glimpse into the development of this Xbox title.

Release date is November 13… and if you buy before then, it’s $14 (canadian) – a steal!

Hermes Trismegistus, Chapter 15 – dead men tell tales, and whatnot. Read it (and more of Tursas’ stuff) in our Fan Fiction section.

Whoa – bizarreness. Matt (no, not the Matt) found a way to see the IGN Multiplayer game guide, even without Insider access – apparently, GameFixx mirrors the stuff somehow. It’s slow loading… but it’s all there. Check it out! (They seem to be related to IGN in some way, so this is probably on the level… maybe.)

Spoiler alert – Final Solution has scanned in the entire Halo booklet that comes with the game. Full of information about weapons, vehicles, monsters… very, very high-res scans. Grab ’em now before they’re gone! (Or don’t, if you want to be surprised on launch day…)

Jason Yates has picked up an interesting bit of trivia, over on the Marathon’s Story page forum: in the small print of the manual that came with his CD was this snippet:

Brothers and Sisters: the time is nigh. There is strength in numbers. Unite and the planet is ours: www.seventhcolumn.org

(The URL doesn’t resolve yet.) Jason did some sniffing… and found that the site is registered to Max Hoberman, aka Yeroen, the Bungie webmaster (not to be confused with the Webmaster). (What Jason DIDN’T notice is that seventhcolumn.com and seventhcolumn.net were ALSO registered by Max.) Things that make you go hmm…

Final Solution writes to say that he picked up his Halo disc today – you can find scans on his site. Hmm… ‘Do not make illegal copies of this disc’… that’s still non-trivial, right? (Duping 8.4 GB discs still takes big hardware, right?)

We’ve added the latest batch of GameSpot screens – these are the 26 released on November 2 with the Updated Halo Preview. You’ll find them in our Screenshots section. It’s gettin’ easier…

“Diamond” Dave Candland, of the Bungie Online Team, decided to clarify the issue of multiplayer game types. You should read the entire post for full details… but the bottom line is this: There are actually 5 game types (Capture The Flag, King of the Hill, Slayer, Oddball, and Racing). Each of these has rule variants, and there are environmental settings on top of these variants. To make life easier for gamers, Bungie decided to include presets of their favorite combinations, so that you could just play, instead of configure. There are 26 of these presets. So: It’s not 26 gametypes, it’s 26 preset configurations of 5 gametypes. The beauty is… you can add as many as you like. Thanks, Candyman!

Reading Halo: Fall of Reach, and the phone rings? No problem – Justin Brimm has just submitted a Fall of Reach bookmark. It’s in Photoshop format, ready for printing up to a 6 inch x 1 inch bookmark at 288 ppi, so none of the high-res goodness will be lost. You can see a preview (and download the zipped .psd) in our Miscellaneous Art section.

Thanks to no7orious, who pointed out the Xbox Year-End Roundup over at GameSpot – Halo gets just a couple of paragraphs, but the first line says it all:

Halo has the most potential to be the Xbox’s killer app.

Take a look (and see what they said about other Xbox games, while you’re there).

If you visit any of Bungie’s official sites (bungie.com or bungie.net, or any – well, most – of their subsites) right now, you’ll get a message: “No web site is configured at this address.” As Rampancy.net reported, this is because Bungie is preparing to redefine their web presence… it’ll be worth the wait.

Last week, Gaming Age posted a ‘First Impressions‘ article about Halo. They describe it as a ‘must-have’ – and though there are a couple of misconceptions in the article (bump-mapping is described as ‘sparingly used’ by Bungie, for example), in general, it’s a solid read. The most impressive feature for the reviewer was the audio – the depth of content. Take a look! (Thanks to TXB for the heads-up.)

IGN Xbox has put up part 2 of its Multiplayer Guide – this one details the 26 multiplayer types, with a few (small) screens. Unfortunately… it’s Insider-only for the time being. Credit goes to Dan for noticing this first…

Gordi has submitted ‘Chapter 3: Ile Aval‘ of his ongoing (untitled) series – and this one’s a monster. Check it out in our Fan Fiction section. Remember – if you haven’t read the first two parts, you can read them all together using the ‘more by this author‘ link.

A couple of reviews in the last few days (nothing horribly new – just plain old-fashioned drooling): ConsoleWire.com says it ROCKS (thanks, No7orious at the R.net forum)… and Game Revolution says it’s “the Xbox’s pride and joy” (thanks, Narcogen at R.net). But you knew those things already…

Wow. Thanks to Mike Flacy, who was the first to send us word of the first Halo ad – it’s linked to this column, which tears into gamers as a bunch of ‘absolute freakin’ morons’. Don’t mind the insults – watch the trailer. It’s tiny, and in streaming Real format… but it’s pretty astounding. (There’s already a decent-sized thread on our forum about it…)