I wasn’t going to post this, because… well, because it was sort of anti-news, but we’re getting enough mail that I guess we should. Because of the Bungie Winter Pentathlon (which was going on for most of the end of this week, it seems), there was no Weekly Halo Update. They’ll have pictures for you next week, though.

The submission period for the Killer Grunts contest has ended – and the voting period has begun! Voting will be open to the public until Tuesday (time is fuzzy at this point) – go check out the entries (there are 116 of them!), pick your five favorites, and may the best box win!

Folks have wondered recently if Halo is moving aside for other online games… Stuntmutt’s take on it all can be found in today’s One One Se7en.

BATMANKM, a member of 2old2play, was one of the artists that entered in the Seventh Column Art Competition earlier this month; he recived an Honorable Mention in the writeup, but his work was not shown. Fellow clanmember DanLeCrinque talked to him about the work – you can read the interview (and check out the gorgeous piece, including progress roughs) on the 2old2play website. There’s even a set of wallpapers based on the pic… and a Batman Master Chief! Awesome read. Thanks, DSmooth.

21 new pieces in the Fan Fiction section this week. Folks have been busy… go read!

Preston Heckel noticed that the next installment of MLG’s Newcomer’s Guide to Halo 2 has been posted at MLGPro.com – this one focuses on Teamwork. There are great tips in there; some stuff is common sense, other stuff is not, ALL of it is stuff you should be thinking about when playing team games. Positioning, weapon control, powerups, map control, spawning issues… it’s all good. Go read. (There’s one more part coming.)

XerxdeeJ speculates about what makes a great game great in his latest Tied the Leader blog post. Nice read.

A new update over at the Halo Story Page – sweeping speculation, everything from Azimov to wormholes. Check it out! (And thanks, Finn.)

Wow. Thanks to mr_mcmurder, who found this bad boy, and this one, over at Craig Mullins’ website (posted 3 days ago – geez, you guys are slow). I’ve sent off a request to add them to his Halo gallery here, but in the meantime, you should browse around his site… because, well, he rocks.

This is just SO friggin’ wrong. I… words just can’t DESCRIBE how wrong this is. And then he had the temerity to be FIRST? Bah. Update: Mintz points out that there’s a PSP version up at Halo Portable, too.

This Spartan Life has posted a new module – it’s Part 1 of an interview with Marty O’Donnell, set against a backdrop of Containment’s outer reaches. Great stuff – go watch! (QuickTime is up now, WMP9 coming soon.)

We got word from MR-T, and DT, about Battlefield Halo, a web-based role playing game with a Halo theme. Sign up, look around, and start role-playing in the Halo universe! (If you’re curious about what you’d be getting into, you can find some great representative screenshots on this briefing page.)

Cool – BARBARIC RAGE sent along a link he found to a Halo 2 Battle Rifle… made of Legos. Looks awesome, too! Check it out!

Saw this a couple of days ago – but it took DstrucTSions to get me off my butt about it. Over at Geezer Gamers, JameyT has written a fun article about ‘Doing Life Right’ – and guess which game is held up a shining example that others should follow? Yep, Halo 2. Go read!

As you may remember (hey, there’s an icon right on this page!), we’re running a contest right now – and the deadline for submissions is tomorrow. Response so far has been great – dozens and dozens of submissions. Many of these, however, stretch the description of ‘fight game box art’ – some are simply shots of MC, pasted on a wallpaper snagged from our Wallpaper section. No text, no ‘box’… just something that wouldn’t even qualify for the Misc Art section (according to our guidelines). Folks – you’ve got a lot of latitude… but it’s got to at least LOOK like a game, no? For people who’ve submitted pictures like this – you’ve got another day to gussy up your work and resubmit… but the stuff already here will be tossed. Sorry – but if I’m going to be formatting 100 pics for public voting, I’m not going to waste my time on stuff that doesn’t even TRY to meet the guidelines. Thanks! (Oh, yeah, and remember: if it ain’t in our contest uploads, it ain’t entered.)

Peronthious noticed that Podtacular Episode 44 had been released – and he even wrote a review of it. Can you ask for more? Go listen.

We’ve mentioned Muckle statues quite a bit recently; they were primarily used for marketing Halo 2 in Europe, but they’re starting to show up on eBay in the US as well. They’re higher-quality statues than what showed up in game stores in the US… so it’s not surprising that folks are buying these up. BARBARIC RAGE bought one of the 7 footers on eBay… and sent us pictures. (Front view | back view) Now THAT’S a dominating presence!

Whoa. Over at the HIH forum, there’s a thread started by scurty, showing off some speed runs of Keyes, in Halo 1; he’s below 4 minutes in EVERY difficulty, but the Easy run is below 3 minutes. That’s insane! Next up – Pillar of Autumn in 30 seconds. Warms my heart to know folks are still hammering away at these things… thanks to insidi0us for the heads-up.