DOH! Webshift gently reminded me (via the forum) that while I’d updated the reordered I Love Bees page yesterday to include the last three chapters, I’d forgotten to make a news post about it. Go grab the end of the story! And feel free to use that forum thread to let Webshift know what you think of the project!

Bungie’s Weekly Update is now posted, and the majority is spent discussing a new playlist coming in a few weeks – it’ll be known as Team Hardcore, and it will be significantly more difficult than anything currently on Matchmaking. (Go read the update for full details.) There are also small tidbits about other stuff, and a decided lack of info about Halo 3 (or even the EXISTENCE of Halo 3), and a great Mister-Chief-as-a-baby pic. Check it out!

The time has come – we’re officially announcing this year’s 343 Guilt O’ Lantern pumpkin carving contest. The prize list is rather substantial, though I haven’t found the time to sort out what’s going in which goodie bag, so as of now, I can’t tell you who gets what… but rest assured that there’s some cool schwag in there, and that the top three pumpkins (plus a non-North-American pumpkin, if we get any) will be splitting it all up nicely. You’ve got just over a month to get us your entries – don’t rush it, take your time, look over previous years’ entries, plan out your masterpiece… the winners last year were pretty slick, and my guess is, we’ll be getting some amazing entries. Now… where did those carving knives go?

Captain Spark released another 22 dialogue snippets today – you can grab them from his website, or you can browse them in the Dialogue Databank. Some pretty funny ones in this batch!

There’s still time to get entries in for the 117 Words contest being run by Stuntmutt and Jillybean – the contest ends today! (No whining about needing more time, either – 117 words isn’t very much at all, you can write them over lunch.)

Now, I’m not sayin’ that Stuntmutt was taking a direct shot at me with today’s One One Se7en… well, I know he wasn’t, cause I try not to even PICK UP the sniper rifle, but just in case… phpthbbbb.

Teamcoltra wrote to point out Geeks Paradox, with a collection of Halo 2 Game vids for download. They’re poppin’ up everywhere…

That Weasel posted a note about a new TWTv sub-site – MODex, a group dedicated to eploring mods (for HaloCE, it looks like). Check ’em out.

anti noob posted a note about his new website, and the featured item, a new montage. 68 mb, WMP9 format, hosted on FileFront. (Lots of killtaculars.) Look around!

Gamespot has put up a new preview, new screenshots, and new videos for Stubbs the Zombie (the ‘Do the Zombie‘ vid featured at the top of the preview is hilarious) – go check this stuff out. I can’t wait to drive around in the sod-o-mobile! Thanks, Wort Wort.

3Suns ran across This Gaming Life, a collection of gaming screenshots with added captions. There are lots and lots of Halo ones – and some are quite funny.

Today’s Halo Babies takes a shot at the new Nintendo Revolution’s controller… go read! Thanks, mrsmiley.

Normally, we don’t make site notices on our front page – but this one’s a bit… unusual (special, I suppose). -Hp-FIL4, from the MLG forums, pointed out that his movie site, xtina, had never been mentioned here at HBO. And he’s right. Which is surprising, because the collection of movies available is rather large, and in some cases quite rare. There’s lots of gameplay footage, for folks who like to watch that… there are tips vids, and tricks vids, and the first season of Red vs Blue… there are hack videos. Lots of stuff. And the connection’s decent, too (though a post like this might actually be a bad thing for that). It’s been around for quite a long time – if you’ve never been there, you should check it out!

There’s a great interview over at Gamasutra with Alex Seropian, of Wideload Games. He discusses how the business model works (outsourcing assets rather than creating everything in-house), and how they expanded the Halo engine to fit the needs of a zombie-based comedy action-thriller. It won’t be long now – the game will be out next month! Give it a read. Thanks, Roger Wilco. Update: there’s also a preview of the game over at GameSpy – they call Stubbs (the character) ‘rotting, putrid [but] lovable’. Hmm… thanks, Rampancy.net.

8 new Fan Fiction pieces in this mid-week update. Go read!

A month ago, we posted a sub-4-minute Silent Cartographer speedrun from insidi0us – the only thing that SLIGHTLY drew away from its awesomeness was the fact that it was run on Normal, instead of Legendary. He’s fixed that. He uses roughly the same tricks to shave time off on this run as he did on the last one, with one exception – there’s a grenade jump just after picking up the invisibility that’s simply beautiful in its time-savingness. He panics a bit near the end, I think… but the last overshield holds until the checkpoint, and he comes in at 3:54 – amazing. We’re hosting copies of both his original WMP9 version (33.2 mb) and a re-encoded QuickTime version (34.8 mb) – if you like speedruns, grab this one!

Darksage has completed the first version of his Floodgulch for Farcry Instincts map; it’s a reproduction of Blood Gulch for Farcry Instincts, but with quite a bit of standing water. He’s planning on setting up a dedicated server for folks to download the map this evening, from 5pm-midnight, EST. (If you grab this, please set up your own match, rather than playing off Darksage’s server – he wants to reserve the bandwidth for downloads. To download the map, join the game hosted by Darksage OSI or Darksage OSI V2.) He’s planning on creating a flythrough of the map soon, so people can see what’s involved… but here’s your chance to play it first!!

The reordered I Love Bees release continues – today we have a couple of large chapters, 9 (34 minutes) and 10 (30 minutes). The meat of the story is beginning to come out at this point… go listen!

Wow – rockslider has written up a highly-detailed guide on a new bit of fun to be had on Halo (the second level of the original game). He calls it the Arc of Death, and from reading his description, it sounds like a blast! (Um, literally, I guess.) Give it a read, then try it out for yourself!

StealthSniper22 created a ‘new kind of montage‘ – it’s called ‘The Stalker’, and it’s composed entirely from real XBL Matchmaking Head-to-Head games. It’s AMAZING how often his opponents don’t notice him following them. (Or, in some cases, standing on their head…) It’s hilarious. A lower-res (320×240, 22.3 mb) version can be found in this post, and a higher-res (640×480, 52 mb) version is linked in this post. Both are WMP9 format. (I’m willing to work on a QuickTime version if there’s interest.) Go watch – and giggle. Update: Now available as a QuickTime, as well (480×360, 53.1 mb, smoothed a little bit).