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…)

The Halo SETI Marines hold steady at slot 52 in the Battle of the Teams, thanks in large part to the awesome crunching of charleya and Int_21… but the influx of nearly 1000 units (thanks to new members Istan, Radar, Matthew and Vladoz) doesn’t hurt, either. See all the crunching data on the 7 day stats page.

Cesar Berardini, of TeamXbox, lets us know that TXB has a report about launch title commercials up – the short version; they’ll go live on November 11. Go read the long version to find out where Microsoft is spending its half a billion advertising dollars…

A couple of new desktop images for you tonight – one from Daniel Byrne, and one from [SE]X-Com. You can find both in our Wallpaper section.

The Hawk Chronicles continue – Chapter 3a arrived tonight for our Fan Fiction section. A taut read – check it out. (And don’t forget to leave Vector40 feedback in the Comments section!)

The HaloServer team points out that the haloserver.com domain (which, as we mentioned a few days ago, is for sale), is now at eBay. Auction ends in a bit less than a week – current bid is $5, and the reserve is not met. Go grab a good fansite name now!

FAQ overhaul: two major changes are visible to you, the reader; There’s a new page, called ‘Most-Asked Questions‘ – you should point people to this page if you see them asking about the PC version, or bots. (Likewise, you should let us know if there’s a question you think belongs on this page.) Additionally, the Weapons page has been brought up-to-date; new pictures, cleaned-up pictures, far more detailed info on most weapons (thanks, JB), and an overlooked weapon has been included. Comments are always welcome.

Woohoo! Folks have asked how long Halo will take to finish, and how the different difficulty levels change this… Chris Butcher, who developed much of the AI, has posted a detailed commentary on just this subject on our forum.

for an epic battle (or if we’re playing co-op) I pick Legendary. it took me about 60 hours of continuous play to finish the game on this difficulty, and that’s after months of developing and playtesting the game.

There are details about how Legendary compares to Myth’s Legendary difficulty, or Marathon’s Total Carnage – bottom line, in Chris’s words; Don’t Stop to Breathe. Go read this!

A couple of forum posts worth noticing; DevilFrog found a MadCatz trackball for the Xbox (interestingly enough, the idea of using a trackball came up a couple of days ago, and was met with serious enthusiasm)… and Darkman noticed that Microsoft’s official Halo site has been updated again – the timeline has been removed, and replaced with the prologue to Eric Nylund’s novel, ‘Halo: The Fall of Reach’. (This is the same text that showed up at Random House’s site on Wednesday and at IGN Xbox yesterday.) Even when we’re out, the forum is full of good info!

Oops – we managed to miss Cloudchaser’s Xbox Unleashed: Halo Impressions Part 3. (We commented on parts 1 and 2 yesterday, and part 4 earlier today.) They were impressed, especially with the AI and the audio. Careless of us… sorry.

In a HORRENDOUSLY long thread over on the IGNCube.com forums, Matt Casamassina, Editor-in-Chief of IGNCube.com, put up a few screenshots to point out what textures SHOULD look like – he’d started the thread by complaining about what was being done on the GameCube. His example? Halo. We’ve added 4 of these shots to the Unofficial Screenshots page – they’re nothing special, in terms of what’s going on… but as a peek into what Halo is capable of, texturewise… they’re awesome. (That grass one just blows me away!

A month ago, we showed you the first Halo 2-page print ad. The second one’s been floating around for a bit now… It’s been seen in Rolling Stone and GamePro, for example. As before, we’ve scanned it at a small size (800×527, 84K), a larger size (1500×989, 242K), and the ad copy itself (800×168, 25K). Enjoy!

Cloudchaser Microsoft has put up part 4 of their Halo impressions – this time, it’s a fan-written commentary on the level known as ‘Flawless Cowboy’. It’s interesting, given that it’s written by someone who has either never seen Halo before, or is pretending that they’ve never seen Halo before:

Well, this lady told me over a radio or something that a enemy dropship was approaching and that I should cross some tubes or pipes to the other side of the river to escape being detected. I promptly ignored the command and starting scanning the horizon for the enemy. I wanted some action. I got it pretty quick. The drop ship arrived along with two of those personal fighter like thingies. I was instantly under heavy fire. The drop ship dropped about 6 bad-guys (Covenent right?) and then took off in a flurry of gunfire.

A fun read, in either case. Check it out!

Ooh… nearly missed this. Narcogen, at Rampancy.net, noticed a story at Wired News with the following subhead:

Rumors of the Xbox’s shaky stability have been greatly exaggerated.

The story notes that Xboxes in use at the Xbox Unleashed event have been running for 12 hours straight, with no crashes. (There are more than 50 consoles at the event.) There haven’t been any more net stories about kiosks crashing, either – seems the software upgrades distributed last week really did solve the problem.