[HC]D-Man found a 3-page editorial in the July issue of a magazine called GVGames – it can be downloaded in PDF format (the editorial begins on page 41), or read online. There’s nothing really new here – it’s a not-very-professional rant about how Halo 2 sucks and Halo was the best game ever. If you’ve spent any time on our forum (or any Halo forum, for that matter) – you’ve heard this rant, sometimes more eloquently put. What intrigues me is that it shows up in this form in a magazine…

Saturday morning, we got email from Z, at halo2forum.com, that Dymdez’s Montage II had been released, along with a request for submission to the Movie Peer Review Rating System. It took about 36 hours for the movie to work through the system – in what might be a first, it didn’t receive a single score below passing. Go watch some fantastic montage footage! 44.7 mb, in DivX format.

Chaos Recon pointed out a presentation, in PDF format, called ‘Research in Game Development: Halo 2’ – it looks at how different problems can be attacked, and what some of the pros and cons of each technique might be. It looks like this was presented at the Microsoft Research Asia Theme Workshop 2005, in Beijing, this past May, by someone named Hao Chen. (I don’t know exactly who this is – the server hosting the bios for the conference isn’t up at the moment.) A good read, for anyone interested in the tech behind the eye candy! Update: oops – Hao Chen is listed in the Halo 2 credits under ‘Engineering’ – my bad!

Vella pointed out that there’s a really small Halo mention in the latest Wired – in the Found section (a ‘Last Page’ feature of Wired which shows ‘Artifacts from the Future’), there’s a shot of the crossword puzzle from an edition of the New York Times in 2019. 65 Across is ‘First video game to nab Oscar: “______ 4″‘… and the answer is filled in already, as ‘Halo’. Heh. This is online at Wired’s site. (Thanks to Dzejms, who reminded me I hadn’t posted it yet.)

A week or so ago, we got email from Mars Man 0013, stating that the 9 multiplayer maps were available on the September OXM bonus disc. Unfortunately, we’ve now received confirmation from both TURBO and Max Power that this info is not correct – there are no maps on that disc. You’ll have to buy them the normal way, or wait until August 31 and download them for free from XBL. Sorry!

PumaHog Productions has released its Toy Soldiers Series Trailer – an introduction to their upcoming machinima series. I’m likin’ the Elite. Check it out! 25-36 mb, depending on format (WMP9 and MPEG1 available).

corpseguy has posted an update for his MC Helmet (we mentioned this yesterday) – it’s now painted. Looks great!

IGN has posted their Top 100 Games of All Time – Halo makes the top third. Thanks, DPowers90.

Ross Gemuend is working on a rendered animation – MC vs some Elites. I can’t watch the second one (the combination of WMP9 encoding and an AVI format seems to make it unwatchable on a Mac – but if you’re on a PC, it’s the bottom link, labeled ‘MC Vs Elites’), but the first one has been locally mirrored (for the original DivX-encoded AVI), converted to QuickTime, and sped up – because Ross mentioned that he originally planned it to be 4 times as fast, but slowed it down for detail. You can find all links in his first post. Farther down in the thread, 7he One converts it to WMP9 format, and adds sound – quality suffers a bit, but the sound is a nice touch. Check this out!

Reinsoft has whipped up another rap parody – this one is called Rocket Part 1, and is set to R. Kelly’s ‘Closet Part 1’… you can find it in this forum post. 3:22 long, 2.7 mb, MP3 format (or streaming).

There’s a ton of info over at MLGPro.com about results from yesterday’s competition at Halo Nationals 2 – more coming today, including full writeups, but for basic info about who won – swing by their front page! Thanks, 3Suns.

There are more updates over at the Halogen site – there’s apparently a video (Safari refuses to recognize the ‘Forum’ link, so I can’t see it), and info about some new units. Since they plan to update every couple of days, please take this news post as an indication that if you’re interested in this conversion, you should visit every couple of days – we’re going to pass on posting a ‘there’s new stuff’ note two or three times a week. And maybe, MAYBE, they’ll fix the Flash so that it’s visible in more browsers… thanks, logical2u.

We don’t usually post trick stuff any more – High Impact Halo does such an amazing job covering that whole field that stepping in seems like trespassing – but yesterday, something pretty darn cool got posted to our forum… something that I couldn’t pass up. KadeshSa gave us a movie showing a nice hog launch on Assault on the Control Room. Big deal, you say? You’ve seen a million of ’em? Yeah, well… how many have you seen where the launcher was SARGE? The vid’s only about 6 and a half megs, available in both WMP9 and QuickTime formats – the thread starts here, download links are in this post.

The Weekly What’s Update went up as expected last night – it’s been a quiet week, so this one basically covers some common questions Bungie gets. Some decent clarifications – Action Replay is fine if you use it to transfer unmodified game saves, for example – and some good ‘nice to know’ stuff. Go read!

In an uncharacteristic move, I’m emptying the Miscellaneous Art queue when it’s almost brand-new – there are a few really spectacular pieces waiting to be seen, and one was overlooked for several weeks, accidentally. Go check ’em out – and I hope you’re as impressed as I was!

You know the Halo Babies are growing up when conversations like THIS one start happening.

Larger Then Live is running a 32 team double elimination tournament online – yo ucan find all the details on their front page. Gameplay begins on Tuesday (I assume this coming Tuesday) at 9:45 EST, and will continue each night until the competition is over. It’s free to enter, and there will be prizes (undecided at this point). Thanks to Legolas71088 for the heads-up.

Reiginko posted a rendered 3D Mister Chief – first a head, then a whole body, then a walking Chief… then a DANCING Chief. That’s right – Mister Chief does the Lindy Hop. Yeah.

Bunker 27, Episode 2 has cleared the Movie Peer Review Rating System – Goose is shooting for The Stupidest Spartan Evar award, and is in serious contention. Some great techniques, some bad jokes, good filming – give this one a watch! WMP9 format (38.5 mb) or QuickTime format (36.7 mb).

Episode 13 of the Halo CE Chronicles has been released – ‘Realization’ examines personal weakness and self-realization. Minimal action, but plenty of emotion. Read Dennis Powers’ summary on the HCEC website if you’re unsure what this means for you. WMP9, QuickTime, and Flash formats – 9.3 mb streaming, or about 25 mb to download.