A new Subzero Rivalries has been posted. I’m listing it because we’ve listed all the previous ones – but this one’s humor is rather juvenile. If you’re easily offended, don’t bother visiting, and if you do, we don’t need to hear about it. Thanks, MarkHawk.

Hehe – sometimes a free planet ain’t all you bargained for. Check out today’s Calvin and Halo.

Not willing to be left behind (SpikeTV, IGN, and Gamespot all announced stuff earlier this week), Gamespy has put up THIER 2004 Game of the Year sections. Halo 2 won several awards: Xbox Game of the Year, Xbox Shooter of the Year, Best Use of Xbox Live, and Best and Worst Ending in an Xbox game. It’s also up for Overall Game of the Year (which will be announced next week). Thanks, Black Six.

There’s a new interview with Chris Butcher over at How Stuff Works – this one focuses on Halo Networking. It’s a fascinating read – if you’re interested in the workings of Halo vs Halo 2. Thanks, Target4Hire.

Interesting. Uriel has put out a call to modders for a Halo project involving Nexus: The Jupiter Incident. Go read his post for more info.

I’ve turned off the poll we started last week (Which map would you like to see return for Halo 2?) – the results are still up, and it’s clear that the two favorite choices were Hang ’em High and Sidewinder, but it’s also clear that almost EVERY map in Halo had its proponents. Please be aware that this poll has no binding effect on ANYTHING – Bungie saw it, but they’re not obligated in any way to follow it. If they choose to release Halo maps, redone for the Halo 2 engine, you can be sure that they’ll take this information into account – but there are other factors (like the new weapon balance, and so on) that are possibly more important; the choices they make will take into account ALL the factors, not just what some of us would LIKE to see.

Stuntmutt looks at one of the pitfalls of clan play on XBL in today’s One One Se7en. If that doesn’t give you enough of your recommended daily allowance of corn, you should stop by his blog – he’s posted 20 guest strips that have been sent in to us over the past 8 months or so (since we stopped accepting guest strips). The first one, in particular, is fantastic.

Deimos, over at Subnova, wrote a nice little app that allows you to get MSN Messenger Alerts via IRC. This is relevant to this community because you can, for example, sign up for XBox Live Alerts, which will tell you when your friends sign on, or when you receive a game invite… and you can receive this alert while you’re logged into the Subnova IRC network, chatting on, say, #HBO. I’ve never paid much attention to the MSN Alert stuff, because I don’t want to run the Messenger IM application on my computer – but now I don’t have to. MorningStar has written up instructions on how to integrate these two services; if this sounds appealing to you, go read, and sign up!

An interview with Tyson Green, aka Ferrex, was published in February’s Electronic Gaming Magazine – and is now available on 1UP.com. It’s a fantastic read, even if Tyson misattributes the Warthog Jump vid to Frogblast, instead of Randy Glass. Tons of “why did you do it this way?” questions – with real answers. Go read! Thanks, Voodoo Extreme.

Wow, I guess it’s Awards time. As many people might remember, last night was the broadcast of SpikeTV’s Video Game Awards 2004 – Halo 2 was up for a bunch of stuff, but GTA: San Andreas took most of it home. Jason Jones won Designer of the Year for the game, and Halo 2 won Best First Person Action. (An easier place to view the entire list of winners is Australia’s The Age – thanks, Brett C.) Interestingly, Ron Perlman accepted the Shooter award on behalf of Bungie – thanks, Spike. The Gaming Big Boys did awards stuff too, last night:

• IGN’s Best of 2004: Halo 2 takes home Best First-Person Shooter, Best Xbox Live Game, Best Soundtrack, Best Use of Sound, Most Innovative Design (for Bungie.net’s XBL stats), and Xbox Game of the Year, with a Runner-Up prize in Best Graphics. (There’s also some wallpaper to download.) Thanks, Jonathan Rivas.
• Gamespot has announced their Best and Worst of 2004 (the actual countdown starts on Friday), and Halo 2 is nominated for Best Original Music, Best Sound Effects, Best Multiplayer Game, Best Original Game Mechanic, Biggest Disappointment, Best Shooter, and Best Xbox Game. Thanks, KP.

And if all that awards stuff isn’t enough for you, Voodoo Extreme is holding another Halo 2 vs Half-Life 2 poll – I guess Gamespy’s ridiculous months-long one recently wasn’t enough. (Half-Life 2 is currently kicking booty.)

ZATZAi has posted a new contest over at High Impact Halo – decorate a tree on Coagulation, win a hat. (There are really specific rules for decorations – read the post.)

Xerxes writes to point out that he’s begun transcribing the Halo 2 levels – in German. You’ll find the first five levels – on normal difficulty – at Halo Orbit.

20 new pieces for you in the Fan Fiction section today. Lots of words. Read some.

Mr. Jukes has updated his Trick Jumping Guide with a 22.5 mb WMP9 video covering Headlong. Nice work!

Nate sent along a soundfile of the Egg grunt on The Great Journey. (If this means nothing to you, you’ll need to wait for the Eggs page to go up.) We’ve added the entry to the Halo 2 Dialogue Databank.

Weird. The Game with Fame promotion (play over XBL with famous people; previous participants include Willis McGahee and Ben Burnley) continues – with the band Chevelle. Sign up on this page; grand prize winner will get an Xbox and the chance to play Chevelle online on December 20. 100 runner-ups will also get to play (but won’t get Xboxes). An additional 10 people will win a copy of Chevelle’s new album. Thanks to DailyGame for the heads-up.

Last night, we mentioned a new machinima series, Stryke Force. Within a couple of hours, it was dead in the water, a victim of enthusiastic downloaders. Episode One was interesting, and deserves to be seen… so we’re helping out. You can find the original WMP9 version (20.4 mb) at both mythica.org and bungie.org, and a QuickTime version I just encoded (19.9 mb) also at mythica.org and bungie.org. Hopefully, these will lighten the load on the original server, and allow the HTML pages they have to be displayed.

Calvin brings up a pretty good point in today’s Calvin and Halo. Food for thought…