Speaking of new sites, Nartin Spitzenberg points out that Halomedia (also German) is now online. Nice design!

[lw]Reicheraltermann sends in a pair of desktops for our Wallpaper section – pretty nice to look at. One of them advertises a Halo site (German) we’ve never heard of: haLoXpEriEnCe.multipalyer.de (not fully online yet, it would appear). In any case, check out the images!

[SE]X-Com, from Socket Error, turns in another desktop image for our Wallpaper collection. Neon…

The Halo SETI Marines take a hit from the loss of Luke Brannon… but charleya and Int_21 continue their astounding crunching rates, nearly making up for the slackage in the rest of the team. Total crunching is down significantly – are YOU helping find the Covenant, before they find us? Check the 7 day stats to see!

Thanks to CubanB, who noticed more Halo commentary at VoodooExtreme; seems Apache finished it this weekend, and he’s

sticking with my “best first person shooter ever” statement, as the game kicks ass from start to finish.

He goes on to explain why. In case you weren’t already having trouble waiting…

Today’s Penny Arcade news rant has Tycho wondering whether someone who really HATES the Xbox could sit down and do a solid review – he’s afraid that the good news is coming from people who were already convinced, and the negative press is coming from people who have a grudge against Microsoft, or the Xbox, or SOMEONE. It’s a good rant. (Thanks to Forensic and Bachus for the heads-up… seems a post Matt Soell made on our forum made the rant.)

Djoey.154 has created a new Halo Winamp skin; we’ve stuck it in our Miscellaneous Art section. (We don’t really have a ‘downloads’ section…) Pretty nice looking!

Thanks to Zypper, who pointed out a Halo review from the IGN Xbox boards written by the IGN DVD editor, ManaByte. I’ll refrain from quoting from it, since my favorite snippets would inflame some regulars here… go read it for yourself.

Our Movies listing has been brought up-to-date… all movies released in the last month or so (and it’s a sizeable list) have been added, along with all known (current) mirrors. If we missed something, let us know!

Thanks to Mr. Temper, who brought to our attention the current episode of Gamespotting at (where else?) GameSpot. Three sections rave about Halo: Joe Fielder gushes:

So it’s good. How good? You’ll have to wait until my review to find out, but suffice it to say, I think that Microsoft’s purchase of Bungie was one of the smartest moves that it’s ever made in the games industry. I was a big fan of Marathon on the Mac and enjoyed Myth II: Soulblighter for the PC, but I think that this game could be the defining moment in the developer’s career.

Shahed Ahmed is more subdued, but still quite positive:

Halo hasn’t received as much attention from the console gaming enthusiast as it should.

And Shane Satterfield puts Halo in the ‘Sure Bets‘ category:

If you’re a fan of first-person shooters, or action games in general, don’t think twice about picking up this game. It’s the Xbox’s killer app and it does not disappoint.

All in all, the Gamespot editors are pretty impressed with this game.

Thanks to Noctavis, of Rampancy.net, who uploaded a preview of Halo from the December 2001 issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly. The scan is small (540×706, 403K), but readable… Halo is top-rated among the Xbox launch titles – EGM loved it. (For those wondering about our posting this, given our general policy of allowing the issue off the newsstands first – this is part of a 34-page spread on the Xbox; there’s more Halo goodness elsewhere in the mag. This scan shouldn’t stop you from buying the dead tree edition.)

A bunch of new art recently – one Miscellaneous Art submission from Matt Baker, and three pretty slick desktop images from AEon. (These last can be found in our Wallpaper section.) Some days, you just get behind…

Thanks to Chanan, who was the first to point out that the Halo novel, ‘The Fall of Reach’, is appearing in bookstores around the nation. And it’s already receiving positive reviews on our forum.

Very interesting movie out there – FULL OF SPOILER MATERIAL. It’s filmed with a handheld off a small TV screen, with no sound… but it has some very interesting content, such as interface screens, help screens, the fact that you can have closed captioning of spoken text… It starts with the player turning over an upturned Ghost – and later an overturned Warthog. (How is not clear.) It’s hosted by an Italian site with a VERY fast connection… which is good, because it’s 42 megabytes. (Thanks to incude-stdlib, on the IGN Xbox forums, for the heads-up.) Update: Matt Soell points out that what I noted as ‘closed captioning’ is, in fact, the result of a developer build – some of the text is even status messages. (This suggests that pressing ‘X’ to overturn an upended vehicle might not actually work in the game you bring home… don’t get your hopes up.)

Wow – the stories circulating around the internet about crashing Xbox kiosks might just have some basis in reality! Matt Soell passed on this tidbit:

Stefan just heard this from one of the MS testers…apparently some of the software on the demo discs was accidentally built with an old video library. A conflict between the finished hardware and the old library will, under certain conditions, manifest itself as the weirdness reported over the last few days.

That probably doesn’t make the MS boys happy… but at least it’s easily fixed! (Read the rest of Matt’s post for more details.)

Thanks to Mavruss, for the heads-up: Matt Soell has posted a note over on the Bungie Sightings forums, giving details about the RSVP situation for the Halo Launch Party. He needs the standard stuff – who, when, why… okay, maybe not why. Go read it at BS, or wait a bit for it to show up on Bungie.net.

Whoa – very cool. Chanan has sent in 15 screen captures (720×480) from the features movies on the December 2001 DVD bundled with the Official Xbox Magazine – there are a few Halo snippets in there. Some of the shots are similar to what’s been seen before, some are mediocre… and some just make your mind spin. (This one, for example…) Check ’em out… and remember how cool the Halo community can be sometimes!

Halo showed up on TechTV today (a little after 4 pm Eastern Time). A couple of minutes of smooth gameplay… nice exposure!

TeamXbox has a story about the Xbox “Odyssey” Tour – a 40-city rolling Xbox circus; 50 Xboxes with plasma monitors and giant projection screens. There are a few pics, including one of a Halo game in progress. (Thanks to TomeOne for the heads-up.)

AEon wrote to let us know of a Halo desktop he submitted to Fileplanet last year. We’ve added it to our Wallpaper collection.