Okay, it’s true. I suck. I promised a month ago that the Wallpaper queue would be cleared out in a few days. I guess ‘later this week’ really means ‘a month from now’… because the queue is cleared, and there are 28 new entries in the Wallpaper section (39 if you count variants). Sorry about that – but go look now, cause there’s some good stuff in there!

Looks like there’s a team beginning to put a Halo mod together for Dawn of War – it’s called Halo: Retreat and Retaliation. Information and early pics can be found at Mod DB. Thanks, MuffinMan.

devildeggs has a fuill suit of Nightmare Armor that he no longer has room for, and is interesting in selling. He’s in the process of repainting it (high-quality automotive paint), but if you are interested in this, contact info (and photos) can be found in his forum post.

Dyslexia wrote up a powerful 2-page narrative covering the 550-person FFA that started off MLG Chicago – it makes me wish I had a computer that could access VoD, so that I could WATCH these matches. Give it a read… and if you’re on a Windows PC, sign up for VoD and see how they do it. Awesome stuff! Thanks once again to 3Suns.

Competing reviews… Eurogamer reviewed Stubbs The Zombie, and concluded that even though it uses the Halo engine (which they love), and the premise is strong, and the potential high… they just weren’t having fun playing it, and gave it a 4/10. On the other side of the coin, Gamegal.com decided it was awesome, and gave it a 9/10. They even put up a GameGal’s Real Girl Gift Guide for 2005… and all three staffers had Stubbs on their lists. So there you have it – Stubbs is either a blast… or a dud. Thanks to 3Suns for finding the info.

Hanchen Lu and 3Suns both pointed out a Halo 2-themed blanket at Josh Smith Online. Perfect for snuggling… or blowing people up!

Mintz points out that there’s quite a bit of new PSP-friendly content on Halo: Portable – and that this will be the last update of the year. Music, articles, videos, artwork, fanfic – it’s all there!

Stuntmutt takes a crack at Frankie in today’s One One Se7en. It might be missing a little off the top…

Over at Halo2Forum.com, you’ll find a couple of great gameplay vids – Exit Woundz playing TmG and Exit Wounds vs Legendz (plus Fonzi and Ms Hotshy). Snipers on Sanctuary (both of them)… great to see how pros use cover. The first vid is 92 mb, the second 134 – both are WMP9 format. Go watch!

DropShockRadio has posted their suicideXmas edition – in their words, ‘girls get added to the “List” and some Plasma Punchout know-how.’ Just under an hour, 27 mb – go grab a copy!

LordGideon wrote recently to point out that PraetoriaGuard had their first birthday on Saturday – and in celebration, they’ve released Episode 5, a celebration of that birthday, a sad farewell to Skvwire, and a an overall reminiscence of the past year in the Guard. 113 mb, in WMP9 format… go by, grab a copy, and wish ’em a happy birthday!

Chris Burke, of This Spartan Life, let us know that some special films they’d made for SpikeTV have been put online. (They were originally created as support for Spike’s Videogame Awards show that aired 2 weeks ago, but there were some unavoidable delays – they’re just going up now.) To see them, visit the SpikeTV VGA site, and follow the VGA TV link. At the moment, I can see three of them – an interview with Jeph Howard of The Used, an interview with Curt Vendel, of the Atari Museum, and an interview with Geoff Keighley, the host of Spike TV’s Gamehead. They’re great interviews, interspersed with life in the Halo universe. More might be coming online (there were 6 originally), so keep your eyes peeled!

Sponsors vs Freeloaders has released Episode 9 of their Flame War series – this one is titled ‘Faith, Hope, and Duality’. The disparate storylines get more disparate – instead of a single cliffhanger at the end of this one, there are several. As usual, great filming, great voicework – a really nice piece. This episode is 10:20 long, and weighs in at about 70 mb for the large version, 20-40 mb for the smaller one. SvF is serving a Hi-res WMP9, as well as low-res WMP9 and QuickTime versions. We’re mirroring the hi-res WMP9 (70 mb) as well as offering a hi-res QuickTime (68 mb). Grab the one that fits your bandwidth budget and viewing style! Thanks to Laird, on our forum, and Yaksha, via email, for letting us know.

Derik Olsson stopped by our forum to point out Jump Tactics Mix 2, a new video release from the Jump Tactics team – awesome jumps, fantastic filming. If you like Jumping vids, you HAVE to see this one. Download links (AVI,DivX, and WMP9 formats, with QuickTime coming) can be found in this thread on the Jump Tactics forum.

c0ld vengeance slaved away on Christmas day in order to release a new skin for the ClanHBO forum – he did an awesome job matching the look of HBO. Swing by, edit your profile, and choose the ‘HBO’ Board Style to see it. w00t!

Whew! Christmas was a day spent with family and friends, away from electronics of all sorts. (Yes, a number of electronic devices appeared under our tree… but their use was put off until today.) That didn’t stop Halo fans from around the net from celebrating, though – so we’ve got a lot of catching up to do! Halo Babies put up a fantastic Christmas wish image, created by HB forum member Etoli. It’s still on their front page – go see it. (Once it slips off, you can find it at this URL.) KillR pointed out that his Beyond Halo has a holiday greeting from the Great White North. Stephen Loftus turned his Pillar of Autumn model into a Halo-themed Christmas tree. Both Dillo and Darkneshasfallen posted Christmas-themed images on our forum. And da zing man created a great little 3D animation over at Newgrounds, entitled ‘A Very Covenant Christmas‘. I’m sure there are more examples around the Haloverse… but that should do for now! Update: There was a great Christmas wish from Amanda, of 7Pandas – I almost missed it. Their QuickTime version is noticeably degraded when compared to their WMP9 version – so I’ve whipped up another version. QuickTime users aren’t second-class! (We’re mirroring the WMP9, too.)

M E R R Y   C H R I S T M A S !



Once again, we here at HBO have snagged an older Bungie Christmas image – they do the drawing stuff better than we do. And once again, we here would like to wish you, there, peace and love during this holiday season. Pax.

And finally, in keeping with a long-standing (two-year) tradition, we’d like to present you another special Christmas wish from Stuntmutt.

We’ll be back updating on Monday, the 26th.

We got a very nice holiday wish from Boxer last night – and with that, I think we’ll call it a day. Enjoy your Christmas weekend… we’ll be back updating on the 26th! (There’ll likely be a Christmas post that goes up tonight at midnight, UTC… but there won’t be any more news. Time to go spend time with family!)

FireDragon04 points out a thread over at the Gearbox forums, announcing a map pack he’s released for HaloCE. Swing by, check out the screenshots,a nd download The FireDragular Christmas Map Pack!