Narcogen has tackled the issue of Halo 2’s replayability (in campaign mode, of course) in his latest Retort at Rampancy.net. It’s a solid look at what was replayable in the FIRST Halo, and what’s worth doing again in the SECOND one. Diehard fans might not like all of Narc’s conclusions, but they’re honest, and fair, as far as I can tell. (I disagree with some of what he says, but opinions are allowed to differ.) Worth a read if you want to think about what makes a game replayable.

SupaPuerco, of mindquirk software, points out his Xbox Live Friends app, a MacOSX-based program that keeps track of your XBL Friends list (when they’re online, what their stats are, and so on). It also has a built-in emblem designer. Pretty slick! Check it out; it’s only about 600k. (As far as I know, this is the first standalone stats viewer that runs on a Mac.)

Project ODST, a live-action fan film, has released a teaser trailer – the forum post says ‘keep in mind this is not a representation of the final product’, so I’m not sure what it is… but you can watch it. Currently only available via BitTorrent, you can visit this page to grab the torrent. 12.2 mb, WMP9 format.

The Fan Fiction section picked up another 21 pieces over the weekend – sorry we couldn’t post any of them before now. Go read.

And the Game With Fame series continues – this time with band 3 Doors Down. Play ’em tomorrow, win Xbox stuff. (You have to sign up to be eligible.) Read the press release for full details – thanks, Ted.

MLG makes the news in the Philippines, it looks like… INQ7.net has an article summarizing the league and how it started. Sundance Giovanni is rosy about the future:

“I see pro gamers pulling down six-figure endorsement deals and being treated like celebrities. I also think you’ll be seeing more and more of MLG on television as those players develop into stars. Eventually MLG will grow into a media powerhouse with a huge silver office tower in the middle of Manhattan. My office will be the one with the hot tub,” he quipped.

Thanks, ICDedPpl.

Love MUST be in the air… it’s even in today’s One One Se7en. Happy Valentine’s Day!

Hehe – more Valentines wishes, this time from Bluestone. Nice!

Darkphibre has released version 2.1 of his Halo 2 Stats Tracker – lots of new features. You can read about it (and download it) from his site – and you can comment in his forum thread.

Hehe – Pak wished SOMEONE a Happy Valentines Day in Halo fashion. (Not sure how I’d feel if I got a card like that – but from the outside, it’s pretty funny.)

Interactive Civilian took some photos of the Kubrick Master Chief that all Japanese Halo buyers were entitled to (it was finally delivered this week). Pretty cool – I’m guessing the hardcore Halo schwag collectors are gonna be scouring eBay…

The StK Ogres have a new montage vid out – you can grab it off the ComboVideos.com Halo videos page. 50 mb, WMP9 format (almost 11 minutes long). Some really nice moves… I learned stuff from this one. Thanks, BlazeD, for the heads-up. Update: ComboVideos went down last night – excessive bandwidth. HALOChat has put up a BitTorrent – you can grab it here. Update 2: Looks like HALOChat linked to the wrong file. Sorry, folks; don’t bother downloading this one, it’s just Ripp0n’s montage all over again. If this gets fixed, I’ll post again. Update 87: Whee, isn’t this fun? There’s a new torrent file available from our server – along with a little bit of starting bandwidth. Hopefully, enough folks can chime in to make this work!

Wow. Didn’t think it was going to happen – but I’ve cleared out the desktop queue again, and updated the Wallpaper section. Almost a month’s worth of submissions – there are 23 new entries, but if you count all the variants (color, size, etc) there are over 50 new images. Check ’em out!

Wow. Frogblast has taken the time to compile a list of almost all the death cameras in Halo 2. What’s a death camera, you ask? When you die, the camera jumps to a preset angle, depending on where you were and which direction you were facing. Froggie’s pinned these down. Go look; as he says, this could be pretty useful information for egg-hunters.

Jillybean continues to work on this beautiful Sunday – check the Halo Story page for a pair of tidbits to advance your understanding of the Halo backstory.

I meant to post this yesterday – things got away from me. We mentioned a new contest being hosted by ICDedPpl on Friday – by Saturday, the prize list had grown sizeably. Go visit the contest page to see what’s up for grabs at this point; there are now 7 prizewinning slots, with a pretty hefty collection of schwag for the top ones. If you have any skill whatsoever with an image editing program, you should enter this!

Walshicus has finished his conversions of the Hall of Mural tablets from the originally submitted black and white versions that 7he One sent us in late January to full-color, larger renderings – you can find the last 3 in this forum post or on our Hall of Murals page. Nice work, all around!

A bit ago, Eric Oxenberg submitted a movie he’d made for an audio engineering class in college. It’s something a little different; it’s footage from the E3 2003 trailer, with all new sound effects, music, and dialogue. It contains over 100 SFX queues. It’s not for everyone (the video hasn’t been altered at all, it’s just new sound), but it’s well-done and fun enough that I thought we’d offer a copy. It’s available in QuickTime (13.9 mb) and WMP9 (14.2 mb) formats. Check it out!

Red vs Blue Episode 49 has been released for sponsors… and for long-time Bungie fans, this one’s fantastic. (It’s great for everyone, actually – but the Marathon nod is awesome.) This is one of the funniest episodes I can remember; I think I like it when the whole team is feverish while recording. If you’re not a sponsor, it’ll be up for everyone on Monday. Go watch!

Walshicus continues his work on coloring the Hall of Mural tablets; he’s redone the third tablet (basically just a recoloring of the Prophets’ headdresses) and finished off the fourth. You can find them in his forum post, or on our Hall of Murals page.