[-GTC-]MaverickJ, who disappeared a while ago after producing a series of really nice movies (check our Movie database), is back with a new site, and new movies. Well, movie, for now, but more are coming. The Grammaton Clerics are a clan, and this is their site… but the movies are useful to everyone. The first movie they’ve released is pretty amazing; it’s called ‘Basic Essentials’, and it shows (and explains, in words) how to do some of the myriad of tricks that good tournament players consider essential. Watch this movie, and see your lan performance rise immediately! You can find it in their Video Archive in DivX (22.6 mb) and QuickTime (22.9 mb) formats. It’s 2:48 long. Comments can go in this forum thread. Update: Bah. We (along with any other site that linked to them) seem to have broken them; they’re out of bandwidth for the day. I can’t do anything about the DivX version (i never downloaded it), but you can grab the QuickTime version (which is actually only 18.6 mb) at files.bungie.org. I HATE overloading someone’s bandwidth, especially when it’s something worth watching.

MikeMan445 noticed a subtle but rather critical change in Bungie’s Halo 2 FAQ this morning:

Q: When does Halo 2 come out?

A: It’s official! Halo 2 will be released in the U.S. and Europe [emphasis mine] on November 9th, 2004. Halo 2 should be available very soon after in other markets but exact dates are TBD.

Given the uproar recently on our forum and others, this news should come as a welcome reassurance to EU gamers worried how long they’ll have to wait to play Halo 2. (It doesn’t help people OUTSIDE Europe, unfortunately… but please remember that Bungie will do its best to bring you your Halo 2 lovin’ as quickly as it possibly can.) Mike found this tidbit in Mat Noguchi’s blog, as a subtle hint with a subject of ‘Testing the land-speed record of information desemination of the Internet’. (Judging by timestamps on the site, it would suggest that this attempt at the record clocks in at about 10 hours. Not bad!)

Fire Team Charlie’s 12th offering is up and available for download, in both Divx and QuickTime formats. It’s hefty (60 mb in DivX format, 47 mb in QuickTime), long (6:57), and very, very funny. Once again, mods rule the special effects, with some stunning visuals resulting. What are you waiting for? Go grab it!

Bungie.net will be offline for a couple of hours today, starting around 10 am PDT (5 pm UTC), with some visible changes to be noticed when they come back. Hmm… Thanks, Wolfy.

Boxer’s put up another .comic at Subnova. Frankly, I don’t get the humor behind this one, but maybe it’s just me.

Just for Halo Custom Edition mapmakers – it looks like there is now a tool to export maps from gmax (and 3ds max, for that matter) to a format that Tool can read and import for Guerilla and Sapien. It’s called ‘Chimp’, and you can thank Baka, at the Gearbox forums, for it. This thread is pretty useful, and the actual download is here (210kb). If you couldn’t afford the steep cost of 3ds max, you now have an alternative!

For all the people waiting patiently for the Halo 2 magazine scans from last month – the wait is over. The June issue of Game Informer magazine hit newsstands today, so we’ve put up last month’s Halo 2 article in our Press Scans area. There’s more coming later today, so stay tuned! (Most of the pages are sized for readability without overloading our server – but there was a picture spread on pages 3-4 that was so gorgeous I resized it to fit larger monitors; you might have to play a little with the width.)

Today’s One One Se7en was actually written a month ago, when Bungie.net unveiled its new design. The queue was so full of hilarious jokes, though, that it had to be put off until now. Hmm… wait, nobody’s gonna believe that… okay, we lost it. It got covered up by the deviled ham when we put it back in the fridge. Sorry. (I have a special fondness for this strip because the Beautiful South rocks.) Update: This was supposed to be an archived strip; it’s completely and utterly my fault that you’re reading it in the main series. That said, I blame Stuntmutt.

If you weren’t sure about release dates, Halo: Resolution clears things up.

Jester writes to let us know that music.psyjnir.org has been updated with 10 new pieces from the Bungieverse. Two of them (Haloesque and another Under Cover Of Night remake) are Halo-related. Go visit, and listen!

NiTrOuSoXiDe posted a note in the Gearbox forums, showing pictures of the New Mombasa map being worked on by a pretty talented team of mapmakers and artists; go over and take a look! (No, it’s not ready for downloading yet.) Thanks to Mrs Doublefire, one of the key people on the mod team, for the heads-up in our forum.

There’s no Red vs Blue episode this week – they were busy at E3 last week, and they’ve got other surprises going on – but there’s plenty of new content to visit for, anyway. A new song was released in episode 33, called ‘A Girl Named Tex’ – fans were clamoring for a full version, and now you can grab one. (There’s also a link to trocadero.net, the site belonging to nico’s band – nico is responsible for much of the cool original music in RvB.) You can also grab a pair of art files – a zipped collection of an image by Jay ‘Anaphiel’ Faircloth (you can see some of his amazing work in our Miscellaneous Art and Wallpaper sections here, too) and a beautiful view of Blood Gulch from Heather ‘Nesnora’ Cristofaro (a forum mod for RvB and the designer behind trocadero.net). Finally, for Sponsors only (in the season 2 sponsors forum), you can grab copies of all the Xbox kiosk videos they made for the first round of Xbox promotions last year. (There’s a new set in stores right now, and they’re starting a third set next week.) RvB lovin’ for everyone!

Dan Chosich is the latest target of the Junkyard’s Spotlight series; go by and read about this up-and-coming moviemaker. You know, now that I think about it, he DOES look a little like David Hasselhoff… hmm, no, he doesn’t.

Andrew, from XboxOttawa, has put up some pics he took at Dean Miranda’s Plasma Fiesta lanfest after E3 – he managed to miss all the food, but he got the people. Yes, Silverbrin likes playing Halo standing up. Don’t ask me why.

Rockhard noticed an interesting clip on TechTV; a pillow fight with some models and a host goes awry when the Master Chief gets involved. Webshift, from the Nightmare Armor crew, confirmed that it was, indeed, one of theirs, and mentioned an upcoming interview. If you have access to TechTV (my cable company doesn’t carry it 🙁 ), be sure and keep an eye out for this!

Steve and Hextall27 are starting up the 1st Annual Enkidu Fanfic Contest – rules and regulations can be found in this forum post. They’re also looking for judges.

Alpaca continues the analysis of the E3 screenshots over at [HOH]. Number 3 is up now.

In reply to this week’s Bungie Weekly Update, Stuntmutt has turned in a new One One Se7en – the first in about a month. Woohoo! Or… oh, darn. (Depending, of course, on your opinion of One One Se7en strips.)