Newcity Chicago (a city paper in – yep, you guessed it – Chicago) has a writeup of the MLG Chicago event a couple of weeks ago. It’s a pretty interesting read, because it’s a subject we’ve seen a lot of press on recently – but none from outside the Halo community. (This is pretty mainstream.) Check it out!

A couple of tidbits over at MLGPro.com – the Player of the Week this week is Lil Poison, the 7-year-old wunderkind; “pound for pound, Lil Poison is quite possibly the best gamer in the world.” Heh. Nice interview. (Thanks, 3Suns.) And they’ve started a fun new feature – Pro Player Cards, where you can get all the stats on your favorite Halo pros. (It doesn’t look like they’re actually PRINTING these yet – they’re just online. I’d be curious, though, if there were a real live market for this sort of thing…) Thanks again, 3Suns.

Yesterday, the Village Voice posted their picks for ‘Best Video Games of the Year’… and Halo 2 is on it. (I tried to find their 2004 list, but I wasn’t successful – I was curious to see if Halo 2 would have been on that one, too.)

I love days like this. (Well, not really.) Finally catching up on Halo news – sorry for the delay! Last night, Bungie put up a new Top Story – a number of the staff put forth their New Years Resolutions. There are a couple of TINY Halo mentions, which allow this post to squeak by in the ‘relevant to HBO’ category… but many of you will be more interested in the oblique references to Bungie’s new project. There’s no HARD info… but a few nice teasers! (It’s playable, it’s got a multiplayer mode, they’ll be talking about it soonish.) Go read! There was a fight on the forum for dibs on first post… looks like Spartan Jag might have won, though the typo in his title is unfortunate. (Funny – but unfortunate.)

Tied The Leader has another rant up – this one looks at folks complaining about the ‘problems’ with Halo 2. It’s definitely confrontational… but then, this issue always is. Read it with an open mind.

2old2play has posted 2old2type Episode 16, a two-part podcast that looks at the Xbox 360, their new Halo Challenge team, and the future of their MLG Pro team (plus lots of tips). Just under 50 mb… go grab it!

Yesterday, insidi0us (heretofore known primarily for s7ylish speedruns) sent me a link to a thread on the MLG forums, which highlighted a new project he’d just released. In it, he took a really artistic tour through the Halo 1 multiplayer maps – every aspect of this video was amazingly well thought out. Ostensibly, it’s a 1v1 game with his girlfriend – but in actual fact, he manages to cut gracefully from one map to the next, showing every map at least once, and really taking care with the details. (The score’s perfect every time, there are no left-over blastmarks, powerups are perfectly used, the opening and closing credits are really clever… and on and on.) There are some really slick gameplay moves, as well – I know the grenaded rocketlauncher on Damnation is common, but geez, he didn’t even slow down or turn around to make sure the throw was good! All in all, a really, REALLY slickly-done ode to the beauty of Halo 1 multiplay; a must-see. The MLG thread has links to a hi-res WMP9 version (97 mb) and a low-res WMP9 version (49 mb) – to that we’ll add a hi-res WMP9 mirror and a hi-res QuickTime version (87 mb). This one makes me feel warm all over.

The Ultimate Movie Cynic pipes up in today’s One One Se7en. The man’s got a way with words…

MLG’s Sundance DiGiovanni wrote an article for GameDaily Biz about the potential for watching televised gaming – it was picked up by an Ars Technica blog with some enthusiasm. Has the time come for videogames to join pro sports as spectator events? You decide!

Jessica (I refuse to use her forum tag name!) details her involvement in getting her HS Orchestra Band to play The T&R Suite!

The just under 4 min, 18 mb WMV file is being hosted by Mythica, go grab a copy and enjoy!

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen video of a school attempting to play some Halo music, our own CYBRFRK shot some footage a few months back. If the trend continues, I say we all win. <g> Update: while Mythica is perfectly capable of handling the load on this one, useruploads isn’t the server for it – so I’ve swapped the link for a local one. While I was at it, I added a QuickTime version, for those allergic to WMP9. Enjoy! (edit by lwu)

DigitalPh33r has put together a machinima called ‘Abnormality 2’, which tells the story of some unofficial Spartan augmentations, and what can happen when things go wrong. It’s really well-filmed, has a solid storyline, and decent acting – the only downside is that the video quality isn’t fantastic. Unfortunately, the raw video files have been lost, so we have what we have. This video passed the MPRRS last night, so we’re hosting both the original WMP9 version (720×480, 49.6 mb), and a smaller (500×333, 56.4 mb) QuickTime version (screensize was shrunk a bit because I just couldn’t get decent quality for a conversion at the larger size). Regardless of image quality, this one is DEFINITELY worth watching. Go grab it!

Compton wrote up a 6v6 CTF match in a way that puts you in the game – you can read it here. (And yes, it seems that Compton will soon be acting like a giddy school girl. Scary thought.)

Over at his Tied the Leader blog, XerxdeeJ has written a piece looking at the job Guillermo del Toro might do as director for the Halo movie, if he does, indeed, become the director. A nice upbeat outlook – we all need to read these at times! Check it out.

Ross Mills found a couple of Halo-related strips at the Press Start to Play webcomic – you can find links in his forum thread.

Dead or Alive 4’s unlockable Spartan has been the subject of quite a bit of scrutiny recently… Major Nelson posted 22 new screenshots (thanks, Capt 0bvious), though they look better if you stretch them back to 4:3 aspect ratio, instead of the 16:9 he posted them at, and Jeux France has a 75 mb MPEG-encoded video of gameplay (thanks, Tempus Fugit)… but for me, the highlight was Dan Chosich’s romp through Nicole-land. Once again, he shows some pretty amazing talent as he puts Nicole through her paces, in a truly stylish way. You gotta watch this one. He created a couple of H.264-encoded QuickTimes, and one Sorenson 3-encoded QuickTime – I added a mirror for the larger QT7, as well as a decent Sorenson-3 version, and a watchable WMP9. Grab the version that works best on your computer – and check out Nicole’s moves against a variety of opponents.

Whoa. You don’t have much time – but if you’re interested in Master Chief armor, Briar’s Armor (search our news if you’ve never heard of them) has a red set up on eBay – with just under a day left in the auction. What a great after-Christmas present for that special Halo fan in your life! (Or me…)

Stephen Loftus has been busy again – this time, he’s taken a close look at the Bumblebee-class Lifepod. Everything from design considerations to statistics to known passenger rosters have been covered – as usual, the depth is astounding. Go read.

CliffyB, an outspoken developer known for the Unreal series and now Gears of War, has put up a new blog entry at 1UP.com, talking about ‘Clarity of Experience’. He’s discussing how some games make it really hard to know what’s going on – who you’re fighting, who’s on your team. His example of a game with great COE? Halo. Right on! Thanks, 3Suns.

I’m not sure what’s going on, but in the past week or two, we’ve gotten a whole bunch of requests to publicize threads on the Bungie.net forums – and the only thing these threads have in common is that they’re complaining about certain features of Halo 2, and they’re asking Bungie to ‘fix’ the problem(s). Our official policy on this sort of thing: we don’t link to those threads. No, it’s not because we’re suckups and want to make sure Bungie doesn’t get mad at us – it’s because there’s absolutely no value to be gotten by publicizing them. Bungie is very aware of most, if not all, of the complaints people are making, and quite a bit of thought has gone into deciding what problems to solve, and what problems can be left alone. (Remember – a large number of these ‘problems’ aren’t problems at all – they’re features of the game that some people don’t like. Other people, however, like them a lot.) I’d be very surprised if there were another patch for Halo 2 – but if there is another patch, it won’t be because we posted a link to a bungie.net forum thread on our front page. So please – stop sending these requests, because we can’t honor them. Thanks.

Stuntmutt gets a little help (is that what we’re calling it these days?) from Pinkuh in today’s One One Se7en. Nice Dickens reference, too.