This week’s Halo Babies strip looks at the ever-tightening field of Halo montages – what’s a guy gotta do to get noticed? (Things might be a bit slow; they’re having some server issues. Be patient… they’ll work it out.)

Nine new pieces in the Fan Fiction section today. They’re keeping busy…

Last night, Bungie posted a writeup of this week’s Halo Humpday Challenge, in which they took on the Seasoned Gamers… and lost. It was a good loss, though – they enjoyed themselves. (agdTinMan pointed out a couple of typos in Frankie’s writeup… but it sounds like he’s jealous or something, so you might wanna take it all with a grain of salt.) Thanks to Zattack89 for letting us know, when Frankie was breezin’ out of the parking lot instead of keeping us informed. (Yeah, he can’t win. We make fun of him for being first, and we make fun of him for not posting at all. I think it’s the hair.)

This was supposed to be up days ago – but what with one thing and another, I’m behind. All of the prizes for the 343 Guilt O’ Lantern contest have been sent to the winners – including the voicemail messages recorded by Tim ‘GuiltySpark’ Dadabo and Steve ‘MasterChief’ Downes. Michael Coffing sent us mp3s of the two recordings he got from Steve (one, in fact, has BOTH of them on it) – you can listen to them here (255k) and here (396k). Thanks to Chris ‘Max Power’ Dewberry for supplying the lion’s share of the goodies, and thanks to Dustin at splode for his generous contribution of gaming gear. And, of course, thanks to everyone who carved, and everyone who voted! If all goes well, there’ll be another one in 2006!

You may or may not be able to read this. For some, there’s no problem at all. For others, the site is utterly and completely down. For most of us in the middle, it’s more sporadic than that (though for some reason, the front page seems to be most affected). If you can read this, know that it’s a network problem, and we’re doing everything we can to alleviate it. (If the site was down for you for most of Thursday, then by the time you’re reading this it’s back up, and you can safely ignore this.) Either way, apologies. Update: we’re better now.

1Up has a huge article on Dead or Alive 4, and the inclusion of a Halo Spartan. (Her name is Nicole, for the record. They think of her as a person, not a suit of armor.) It’s a great read – and there are three new Halo-specific screenshots. Check it out! (Thanks to 3Suns for pointing it out.)

Back in April, 2002, NFL246 sent along some pictures taken in the Control Room on Two Betrayals; there are some decent (but not perfect) images of the huge Marathon logo created by the layout of the room. Yesterday, insidi0us sent along a new shot (104k); we don’t really do Trick stuff any more, but this was a pretty beautiful screen cap. (He got it by flying up in a banshee, then jumping out and swapping weapons really quickly.) Nice work!

Benjamin Brewster has taken a hard look at the anti-aliasing upscaling feature of the Xbox360, in theoretical terms (he’s going on published reports, because he doesn’t have a 360 yet) – but he’s worried that the way in which Bungie has chosen to implement 720p support will lead to more image degradation than simply allowing the TELEVISION to do the upscaling. (Anecdotal evidence from admittedly unscientific reporters would suggest he’s wrong – but until someone with both an Xbox360 and the will to confirm this does some real comparison tests, we won’t know.) In the meantime, go read his article!

A billion years ago (well, summer of 2004) High Impact Halo ran a contest to see who could get to the top of the beam towers on the level Halo with the most s7yle. The prizes for that contest took a little while (in the sense that dinosaurs ruled the earth for a little while) to get to their owners… but get there they did. Kudos to Ducain for persevering in the face of ridiculous odds!

XerxdeeJ pointed out a new update on his Tied the Leader blog – a look back at the development of Halo 2 (and Halo before it) as community builders. Nice stuff!

The South Dakota State University Collegian has posted an Op-Ed piece written by HBO forumgoer Lady Rziha, addressing the complaints in the piece we mentioned a couple of weeks ago – another female perspective on the Halo-as-a-timesink phenomenon. Sometimes joining ’em (and beating ’em) is more fun than beating ’em.

Crossfire submitted Hell Quarters: Jonathan Quail to the MPRRS a couple of days ago – the reviewers loved it. (This version uses subtitles, because of a technical glitch during the creation – he’s hoping to submit a new version with voice acting once the problem is solved, and if he does, we’ll simply swap it in for these versions.) It’s an interesting, dark look at traumatic stress, nicely filmed. (This movie was announced at High Impact Halo last weekend, as well – I’m actually using the hi-res link from that thread instead of the medium-res release submitted to the MPRRS.) 7 minutes long, 72.4 mb in WMP9 format, 75 mb in QuickTime format. Go watch!

One One Se7en episode 400 comes out today – and Stuntmutt burns through more than 2 months of material for this punchline. You better like it! (Congrats, Stunt, on 400 episodes!)

Foo Mo Jive writes to let us know that Podtacular 28 is out – tips and tactics for Headlong are the focus, but there’s plenty more. (They were recently written up in Tips and Tricks magazine, and scans can be found on their website.) Go look!

Seven new pieces in the Fan Fiction section today – go read!

Bill writes to let us know that DropShock episode 5 has been released. We’ve warned you before – we’ll do it again; this podcast definitely needs an MPAA warning. An hour and 12 minutes, 33 mb. Go listen.

Captain Spark says he’s done collecting Halo 2 dialogue – he’s released another 14 snippets that you can grab from his website, or from our Dialogue Databank, but at this point, he’s decided that the returns no longer justify the work. We’re gonna miss the submissions – go see what he brought you this time!

CSports.net sent us a collection of links to Halo articles they’ve published recently – there’s Present and Future Marine Weaponry, which compares the weaponry in Halo to the weaponry used by today’s US Marines, a Halo: Combat Evolved review, which reviews the original version of the game, and a study of the Halo: Race Clans and Community – apparently, there are groups that play together JUST to race. (I can’t actually investigate this, since it’s a premium feature on the CSports website, but I’ll take their word for it.) Go read – they’re pretty excited about it all!

After Stat wrote to point out a video over at Final Supremacy – it’s called ‘Four on One‘, and is exactly that – a nicely filmed game of slayer on Lockout, where all of the Blue team except for one quit at the start. I’m not sure where it goes – the resolution isn’t nearly as clearcut as I’d expected it to be… but the angles are nice. 67 mb, in MPEG1 format.

Tempus Fugit pointed out an article at TeamXbox about some of the content that will be available on the Live Marketplace when the 360 launches next week – and Red vs Blue videos are among the items you will be able to download. Nice!