Looks like I missed a bunch of things while I was out of town this week. Thanks To HaloPlanet‘s newsies for being on the job. Major League Gaming released a vid of the final match between StK and FFA at Midwest Mayhem. 71.2 mb, 640×480, 7:16 of a rough Team Slayer match on Hang ’em High… the game came down to who could hold the high ground; FFA said ‘we can’. Registration on the MLG site (free) required. [DD]ZION released the tags for a railgun that can be included in HaloCE maps (pics can be found in this thread). And Icetiger has put up a beta of his newest map – Icetigarus. Pics and download links in this thread. Whew!

Ross Mills points out a winnable Limited Edition Halo Xbox, covered by Gabe’s doodling, that will be given away at Penny Arcade’s Expo in late August. As though you didn’t already have enough reasons to try and get there… Update: DOH! I’m as bad at reading as Ross is. Op-ivy points out that this will be given away at the San Diego Comic-Con, July 22-25, NOT PAX. Sorry.

Coolness. If you’re planning on seeing ‘I, Robot’, and your choices of venue include a Loews Cinema… pick that one. You’ll get to see a snazzy new Halo 2 trailer. (Thanks to cman for the heads-up on the trailer, and Frankie for clarifying where you can see it.) Update: It’s not just I, Robot – it’s a number of hot films, including Spider-Man 2, The Village, King Arthur, Catwoman, and Alien vs Predator. You do have to see them in a Loews theatre, though. Thanks, Dark Helmet. Update 2: Whoa. Comments from Mat Noguchi, tools programmer at Bungie:

One thing they didn’t mention was the 5 days and 40 GB of raw data I had to render out at least three separate times. Plus the tools I had to write to handle movies bigger than 2 GB.

Random trivia for the hardcore: I rendered the movies at 1280×960, 30 fps. This is the best you will ever see Halo in motion.

Well… if it never makes it to a PC, yeah. 🙂 (You can currently get better framerates than that on Halo PC at 1600×1200 on an X800 or a 6800.) Thanks, Adam Daniel.

Stuntmutt finishes up the Female Marine series today with a One One Se7en devoted to my favorite character from Aliens.

Halo: Resolution has Sparky with a… pet?

Ducain pointed out a new vid mentioned on the High Impact Halo forums; it came from a post made by Juggertrout a few days ago. He suggested that object overload could be used to empty the Pelican that flies over the first bridge, allowing space for you on board. (This pelican was the object of some serious attempts by Frogblast, back in the day… but he, for the most part, attempted to ride it down from the OUTSIDE.) Madrox provided a video showing the after-the-oo action (overload took him over an hour). To save Madrox’s bandwidth, please use our links for the 5 mb video – you can get either the original WMP9 format, or a QuickTime version.

There’s an article over on Xbox.com I’ve never seen before; dunno when it got posted, but Character Close-up: Know Your Enemies is a fun read. (I’m not sure I agree with all the advice – in fact, I think almost every section had something that made me go ‘hmm…’ but it’s a nice complete list.) Spoilers, for those keeping track. Update: There’s a Weapons Strategy Guide and a ‘Cheats‘ (more like glitches, actually) page that are new to me, as well.

28 new Fan Fiction stories since I left for Boston. Go read ’em.

Top story at TeamXbox today is a Top Ten Villians article – and Halo’s Elites come in at number 2, losing out only to Darth Malak, from KotOR.

Armored beasts that resemble what an Alien mother and a Predator father might pump out is a great pace to start when creating a player character nemesis.

Thanks, CuBaNo.

Hmm… Play video games with band members (I have to say I’ve never heard of any of them), win prizes. Interesting concept. Details can be found on this page. Thanks to W1ldfire for the heads-up.

Bungie mentioned yesterday that the deadline for entries to the Mountain Dew Halo 2 contest has been extended until July 21. (This means that the photoshoot has been rescheduled, as well – to July 24.) Thanks, Mad Cow.

Halo Babies Episode 48 is out today – go check it out. Looks like MC’s been hanging out with Bungie employees…

Going Nowhere Fast winner Sean Oehrle’s run of Assault on the Control Room is now available for download via BitTorrent. It has been known for some time that by jumping off the first bridge, enemies for MOST of the level will not be spawned (because the trigger to spawn them has been bypassed) – Sean shows a pretty impressive descent and a quick way to the nearest vehicle. The download is 52.2 mb in QuickTime format.

Apologies for the delay – the third release of the Going Nowhere Fast winning runs, Truth and Reconciliation, is now available via direct download. 850 people have already grabbed the vid via BitTorrent (along with 2000 copies of the Pillar of Autumn run and 1000 copies of the Halo run) – but I know there are always those who would rather use their web browser, so for you folks, we have a number of high-capacity download links. You’ll find them on the GNF Status page.

I’m headed up to see Blackstar pretty soon, so before I go, let me toss out today’s Calvin and Halo, his comment on some potential pitfalls in upcoming level design.

1up.com has added a new Halo 2 preview today – it looks somewhat familiar, but I can’t find a record of posting it before, so I’m crossing my fingers. Dan Hsu, of EGM, clearly liked the game. Thanks, Anton. (It’s also interesting that Halo AND Halo 2 are on the 1up.com Buzzometer – in 6th and 1st place, respectively. Thanks, Toby.) Update: Free at Last thinks he read it, too – and points out this news post (whose link no longer works). It looks like 1up.com changed their layout completely, and some of the dates might have gotten toasted in the move.

The Xtournaments Crew points out that they’ve added a Sniper Derby to their State vs State Nationals event in September. Your team’s best sniper will have 1 minute to shoot as many other sniper-equipped players as possible. The event is on Boarding Action, CTF settings (so that the sniper is one color, all targets are another), and nobody but the sniper can shoot. (The targets are all other contestants, so you can be sure they’ll be doing their best not to die.) Sounds like fun! (There’s no additional cost to enter this derby, and the winner will take home some cash.) If you’re signed up for the tournament, you need to leave a post on their forum with the name of your team’s sniper.

Today’s Applegeeks comic is Halo-related; it’s the second half of a story they started a couple of days ago. Thanks to Inky and Black Six for pointing it out.