As has been mentioned a few times recently, a lengthy LANfest (6 days now, sort of, and counting) has been going on involving some community regulars. The first real writeup got posted to our forum a little bit ago – Stuntmutt, taking a page from Tolstoy’s playbook, wrote a monster of a reminiscence of the trip so far. (I must say, I’ve been maligned. Possibly justifiably… but maligned nonetheless. Pistols at dawn, sir.) It’s a great read, whether you were there or not – it sums up some of the high points of the event really nicely. (Pisses me off – he nailed pretty much every single point I wanted to cover in my OWN writeup. I may just have to admin his post and put my name on it.) Check it out.

Today’s One One Se7en suggests a feasible way for certain Halo clans to make a little money. Go, Helljumpers.

Twelve new stories posted today in the Fan Fiction section – busy weekend for the writers! Go read.

Remember Briar’s Armor? (We’ve mentioned them a few times.) The Master Chief armor is finished – and tonight we got a pair of images in our inbox. Gorgeous work! Full body shot (343K) | closeup (296K)

3Suns sent in a roundup of pro-level Halo news articles from around the net:

• From Team3D.net – Ogre 2 won a car playing Halo 2
• From HaloPro.com – Team 3D’s Hotshy (Walshy) interviewed
• From Team3D.com – Team 3D won VGL regional NY a few weeks ago
• From MLGPro.com – IGS Monglers take first at MLG Nashville

Some of these might be a bit old – but they’re all unreported here.

Podtacular Episode 6 has been posted – 90 minutes long, highlight is an interview with Overswarm, the author of the Not So Common Sense strategy guide hosted right here. Thanks, henry brown.

Last night, Ename Nep pointed out an article over at 1Up.com, entitled ‘Broken Halo: Five ways Bungie can fix Halo 2’. It’s nothing that hasn’t been said a thousand times before on Halo forums the whole ‘net round… what makes this somewhat surprising is the fact that it shows up, in this form, on a site like 1Up. (I’ll say right now that my respect for their journalistic integrity has dropped a notch or two because of this article.) It’s full of absurd absolute statements (“Since the rockets on Coagulation don’t respawn when someone is holding them, the Banshee pilot (unless he’s maladroit) is invincible”) and faulty logic (“Because there is a singular power weapon on Colossus with no counterpart, even shoddily organized teams can get a beam rifle, use it to get a fast lead, and then hold the beam rifle with a couple shots left in it for the rest of the round and use their lead to win”) – it’s so strident in its tired arguments that even the decent suggestions (I liked the idea of retaining Halo’s plasma pistol overheating-after-an-overcharge feature, which would have toned down the hard-to-counter PP/BR combo) are lost in the rhetoric. Cody Miller pointed to a Slashdot poster’s summary of this article that nailed the problem quite nicely.

Last month, we mentioned a helmet being created by corpseguy – I noticed today over at HaloPlanet that he’s posted a bunch of photos of the finished product. It looks great! Check it out.

A message came in yesterday morning that got missed – Gamecloud has coverage from the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle; you’ll be able to watch the episode of Red vs Blue that showed there Friday night (and at Lincoln Center in New York a week ago) at RvB’s site tomorrow, but today you can read about the discussion that was held after the showing. Additionally, there are a few photo galleries from the Expo (here, here, and here) – only a small portion is Halo-related, but you can get a good flavor for the goings-on. Thanks, John Callaham.

Two different montages (both hosted over at halo2forum.com) were posted on our forum today – SWAT Halo69’s 7th Montage and Halzred’s Montage 3. They just keep coming…

We’ve mentioned the Twin Galaxies Legendary Run competition a couple of times before – yesterday, Cody Miller posted on our forum that he’d completed the challenge: Halo 2 on Legendary, with no deaths. All I can say is… wow. Read his post for details.

One last thing before I hit the road – Stuntmutt created a special Sunday One One Se7en to commemorate his favorite moments of his trip to the US. We wish him all the best getting back home.

The lanfest that has been going on here for a few days will continue for a day or more to come – but unfortunately, it will do so without me. I need to head home to be with my family and responsibilities… but there was a game tonight that was notable for its competitors; we saved two screens, a pre-game screen (100K) and a post-game screen (86K). (This will only have relevance to folks who visit our forum occasionally.) I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – Halo 2 plus good friends plus many hours of gameplay equals some of the most fun you can have with your clothes on. (Even if you’re wearing a pink shirt.)

That’s pretty much the end of updating for the day. An internationally-attended lanfest (notables include Stuntmutt, c0ld vengeance, BOLL, and Canada’s Anton P. Nym, as well as US-based folks like Ducain, Warbow, and Shishka) kicks into full gear – it’s been going for a while now, but the largest number of attendees will be here today. A game of folks who wanted to make it, but couldn’t, was played yesterday – hats off. We’ll be back in full swing updating tomorrow – for now, enjoy your Saturday!

Podtacular! has posted Episode 5 of their Halo 2 podcast – Warlock and custom gametypes head the topics of this hour and a half audio blog. Thanks, Kaizer Bun.

Wow, very cool. Chris Bryan has posted a couple of new renders from his upcoming reel – you can see them here and here. Gorgeous!

WaLKa put together a preview for a new montage – sticks, snipes, sword kills, Halo and Halo 2. Nice to see footage that combines the games! You can find a download link on our forum, and another (larger by far) thread about the vid over at Halo2Forum.com (thanks, Z). 62 mb, MPEG-2 format.

The Weekly What’s Update is now posted at Bungie.net – info about PAX, info about the new playlists coming out in the next couple of weeks, a larger version of Mike Hill’s amazing warthog pic we posted this morning, and a really, really scary pic of Mister Chief in a speedo. (Blame DanteThePoet if your eyes bleed.)

A movie called ‘Untouchable’, by TheHaloGod, cleared our Movie Peer Review Rating System this morning, with a pretty unprecedented score. It’s a montage vid – but the timing is simply astounding, and the music choice is great. As luck would have it, I’m not anywhere near home today (nor will I be for the next couple of days), so the tools available for multiple formats are not what they should be. We’re offering the original WMP9 version, 44.7 mb – quality is fantastic. We’re also offering a somewhat larger, somewhat lower-quality QuickTime version (49.2 mb) – it’s still quite watchable, but not as beautiful as the WMP9. I’d point out the spots that made us all go ‘OMG’ – but they’re more fun to experience on your own. Even if you’re pretty jaded with respect to montages, this is worth watching.

Recently, Red vs Blue enhanced their website with a ‘Featured User’ option – each day, a different member is chosen, and people get to meet someone they might otherwise have overlooked in this community of thousands. Not long ago, one of these Featured Users was Elnea, an eye surgeon who enjoys playing Halo with her son. Exploring her RvB space, I found that she’s quite an artist – with a style I really enjoy. She was kind enough to allow us to spotlight her work here – so check out the Art of Elnea, a page that will grow as time goes along.