Wow. Thanks to fAt1, of MPZ Halo, who pointed us to a pretty nice mainstream press mention of Halo – the BBC ran a piece on how the Xbox is challenging the PS2, and Halo is one of two Xbox games shown in play (and the only one mentioned by name). The 2 minute long video (sorry, only a few seconds of Halo) is available here in Real Media format.

In case you missed the reference in the weekly update, Jason Jones turned thirty yesterday. Marty “Old Geezer” O’Donnell blows him a big kiss on our forum – and we’d like to throw in our own wishes for a fruitful few decades to come! (And Peter Marks, too… Marty says he’s still a youngster, but when you’re old enough to put your teeth in a glass at night, anything under 40 is young.)

Gawd. Cortana has a body! Matt’s Halo Update is here this week, and it’s got a few zingers in it. Cortana’s corporeal self is one, in-air battles another, and the kicker:

The tank is back in, too.

Wonga. We’ll be adding this to the Halo Update Database very soon – if you wonder what John‘s been doing, for example, it’s a useful tool.

Mmm… something’s cooking… Cortana.org puts up a placeholder – no real clue what’s coming, but its owner, Steve Campbell, has popped up on our forum again… a sign of new things coming?

Terror dropped by our forum to say that Ozhalo, Australia’s premier Halo site, is running a wallpaper competition. Top prize is a Window Kit from Extreme PC Mods. Stop by and check out the details!

It’s fansite day. Xerxes writes to say that Halo Orbit, a German fansite, has been thoroughly redesigned, with many new features added. Go check ’em out!

Terror writes to let us know that Ozhalo is not a new Australian site (As we said yesterday)… it’s Halo-Australia, joining the CFGN. Same good coverage, same staff, new look! Thanks for the heads-up, Terror. (Word of warning to visitors – as good as this site looks in IE and Opera, it’s painful in NS, and a little funky in iCab – so choose your browser with care.)

Thanks to Ferrex, who posted to his old stomping grounds at Rampancy.net, confirming that location-specific damage WILL be included in Halo. It’s long been speculated that this would be included… but this is the first confirmation of it by a Bungie employee.

Lee Timms writes to say that a new Halo site is coming soon rom CFGN (Cyber Forces Gaming Nation) – OzHalo. As he says, the new design is very nicely done. Looking forward to the site!

Thanks to Dan Rudolph, who pointed out three separate E3 wrapups (one from each editor) at Gamecritics.com. Bottom line – they hated Halo. Ben thought Halo was the “biggest joke of the show“… but then, he got a bunch of stuff wrong. (If you’re gonna name someone by name, get the name right… and if you’re gonna ridicule a special effect, like the umbra effect the Halo guys were so rightfully proud of, don’t confuse it with something mundane, like a lens flare – it throws doubt on the credibility of the rest of your criticism.) Chi declared that “if Microsoft is hedging most of its bets on HALO, it better seriously think about folding its hand and cutting its loses.” And Brad ignored it altogether (though he included a shot of the Halo display in his rant against ALL Xbox titles, and Chi mentioned how underwhelmed all three were by Halo). Ouch!

Thanks to Jan Louw, who noticed that the Game Critics Awards site has posted its nominations for its Best of E3 Awards. Halo is up for Best Action Game. Awards are announced on June 18. Good luck, Halo!

Thanks to Gothmog, who noticed a new poll over at MSXbox.com:

Now that E3 is over, which of the following blockbuster games are you looking forward to the most?

Only 125 votes so far, but Halo’s edging out Project Ego… make sure it stays that way!

Clarification: We’ve gotten a few emails about some pictures we posted last week… and people want to know how they relate to the bungie.org glyph puzzle (discussed here, here, and here). The waters were muddied by this post, written by Chelsea Bridge. Here’s the skinny: There is NO relation between the glyph puzzle and those wacky pics. The timing was completely coincidental – not our fault at all. As for the pics themselves… all you need to know is already visible. Hope this helps.

The Corporation has its own take on the changes Halo has seen recently… thanks to Lophan for the link.

You gotta love it when you totally forget you’ve done something. Halo SETI Team stats were collected yesterday, as they usually are on Mondays… but due to the holiday, we forgot completely to mention them. Team output was up a bit this week – nice job, folks! The Marines are holding steady at 49th place in the Battle of the Teams, but maybe with the two new additions (nurble and Calvin1331) the climb could start again. And what’s with the HUGE increase in unit production from CowMutilator? See how YOU are doing on the 7 day stats page.

Thanks to Ph.D., who pointed out that MSXbox has put up their ‘Best of E3 Awards‘. Halo picked up only one mention – runner-up in the ‘Most Fun’ category. On the other hand, Halo managed to stay out of the ‘Most Disappointing’ category… so it’s not all bad. Go check out the details on the rest of their picks.

Gamespot has put up their ‘Top Games of E3 2001‘… and Halo takes runner-up in the Xbox category to Gun Valkyrie, an action-shooter from Smilebit. Gamespot was clear:

Halo’s one-player mission was engaging and challenging, but the slowdown in the four-player split-screen mode was unavoidably visible.

They have not, however, lost hope:

While the framerate in multiplayer was a little rough, we expect that Halo will clean up nicely by the time it’s released this November.

Go read the whole thing! (Poking around on Gamespot’s site also pointed out this E3 2001 Preshow Hands-on that we seem to have missed from last week… they’re pretty psyched about the AI. Check it out.)

Last week’s Halo Update (originally at Rampancy.net) has been added to the Update Database – the word of the week is ‘Chris‘. The ‘Chris clan‘ has just increased to 5 (Barrett, Butcher, Carney, Hughes, and Lee) – the largest group on the Halo dev team (leading the Mat(t)s – Noguchi, Segur, and Soell) and the Pauls (Bertone, Clift, and Russel). Makes you wonder, doesn’t it, with all those names out there to choose from… how come 11 members of the Halo dev team share three names?

What do you get when you take a marine, you blow up all his planets, and you dump him on an alien artifact with no sleep? Griffon, of Halo Command Central, thinks he knows… and sent us a submission for the Miscellaneous Art section to show us. Check out Halo Dude!

Thanks to Joe Staten, of the Halo Cinematics team, who posted to R.net’s forum today, clarifying a bit about cutscenes in Halo. Nice info:

1. All of Halo’s cinematics will be rendred in the engine.
2. Some cinematics you’ll be able to move while they’re playing (non-interruptive) and some you’ll just have to sit back and watch (interruptive).
3. The “minor” more level-specific cutscenes are the former, the “major” cutscenes are the latter.
4. The Xbox, and, more importantly, the Halo engine has no trouble rendering complex scenes such as, oh, the Pillar of Autumn engaged in a battle above Threshold with the recon picket of a Covenant battle-group. Not that we’re doing that, mind you…

Go check out the whole post for details – but I’m lovin’ the idea of that Pillar of Autumn battle, nice to hear it’s not totally destroyed upon entry into the system (as the original story had it).