Rounding out the comic strip updates (for HBO, at least), One One Se7en finishes up the Tale begun on Monday… it’s a good thing lawyers in Dickens’ day aren’t like today’s sharks.

Calvin and Halo, as well, has a new strip out today. It’s number 13, but since the first one is numbered ‘0’, this is actually the fourteenth strip since the series began. Appropriate, no?

Halo: Resolution finishes out the week with its Christmas theme… and it takes a shot at Razors. Oh, yeah.

A passel of Fan Fiction pieces have been submitted in the past 48 hours – 21, to be precise:

• And now all hell will break loose Part 9, by metallicafan
• The Second War: Part 1, First Encounters, by FOrunnER
• Old Style: Memories, by Horror
• The Final War: Enemy Battleground[5:1], by Awacar
• The Final War: Enemy Battleground[5:2], by Awacar
• The Final War: Enemy Battleground[5:3], by Awacar
• Christmas on the Front Lines, by Mainevent
• A short story: Mathew’s tale, by Helljumper
• Life Workin for HBO, Part Four, by Hunter_Killer
• The Adventure of Monitior 090 (comedy), by Awacar
• Life Workin for HBO, Part Five, by Hunter_Killer
• Whiskey 239 c1, by Cohenour
• Christmas on the Frontlines 2, by Dispraiser
• The Fall of Fate: Special Edition (Parts 7-8), by ‘Nosolee
• The Harvest Campaign Chapter 4, by Fleet Admiral
• Shadow Ops II: Chapter Eight, by Agent Shade
• A Spartan’s Path – Chapter 10, by Myth
• A Spartan’s Path – 11, by Myth
• Tides of Desturction (Part 5, The Hook and the Fish), by teemus
• Counterstrike Chapter 1, by Chief-117
• On A Pale Horse: The Escape, by Silent Hunter

What are you waiting for? Grab some leftover eggnog and get reading!

Here’s hoping everyone had a wonderful Christmas. I’d like to point out that I’m headed out for vacation, beginning tomorrow… so although there will be others minding the store, a good chunk of what’s been submitted recently (as well as what GETS submitted in the next few days) will be held until early January to be dealt with. Please don’t send it again if you think we’ve ignored something – please, just be patient during this holiday season. And now, without further ado, a few items that showed up over this past day. First on the agenda: Battleground: Halo is running a new poll. They want to know “Will Halo: PC survive/thrive once Halo: 2 reaches the shelves?” Chime in on their front page!

If you’re looking for things to do this Christmas Eve, go visit Homefront; the Battlefield 1942 mod has now been released! Boatloads of mirrors, so grabbing it shouldn’t be a problem. (Someone should send us a report of how it is. We won’t post it until Friday, but you should send it anyway. 🙂 )

Very, very cool – Rafi Chavez, otherwise known as Superman, created a rockin’ Christmas wish for the HBO community – jump in and say hi! (For those who don’t keep up on these things, Rafi is the son of Miguel Chavez, Bungie’s Number One Fan – and Master of BS.)

Merry Christmas, from Jonah – he found a copy of Halo at EBGames.com for $20. Can’t beat that!

Finally. rapture completed the absurdly long-threaded contest started by Gutupio a week ago… I’m guessing the answer’s gonna tick off some of the contestants. Reasoning coming later today (keep an eye on the thread, if you’re curious). Company arrives in an hour; I’m offline for a while.

Holy missed opportunities, Batman! Somehow, I managed to overlook a massive review of Mac Halo over at MacGamer about a week ago. Corey Tamas gave it a 99% when all was said and done. PC reviewers have almost universally complained about performance, and have downgraded the PC version accordingly. MacGamer claims that the Mac version runs up to 25% faster than its Windows counterpart (I’m not sure how this was measured, given that it’s hard to find reference platforms to compare) – so a much higher rating for the Mac version seems reasonable. There are also 60 (count ’em, 60) new screenshots to look at; some of the multiplayer ones show the difference between how chat is shown on the two platforms. Worth a read… sorry I missed it! (And where were the REST of you macheads, anyway?)

We got an update from Webshift, of Nightmare Armor; the full suit of armor (unpainted) is now available to be ordered. Check their front page for a picture of the entire suit (in pieces), and the Store page for order info. They have 8 suits in the works right now, and all 8 will be finished within the next month. (They’ll all be different colors.) Man, I wish I had more disposable income…

vector40, once a prominent member of the Halo community, has returned with a vengeance because of the release of the Mac version, and re-entrance is marked with an article on Banshee flight tactics. It’s been posted to the Junkyard, Subnova, and Rampancy.net – but only the Subnova version isn’t actually visible yet. Worth a read; at the moment, he’s competing only against folks playing on 1.02 servers, but even on 1.03 servers, there aren’t THAT many people implementing some of these concepts.

The second of Stuntmutt’s Christmas-themed One One Se7en episodes is up… and he’s STILL taking shots at poor Halo PC. Ouch.

Narcogen has posted the second of his Narc’s Retorts over on Rampancy.net; this one is titled ‘A Christmas Wish To Bungie’. It’s long… very long… but boils down to a hope that access to raw XBL statistics will be possible in the future. (I’m pretty sure it’s a hope with a chance of being answered.) Go read it!

Today’s Halo: Resolution continues the holiday theme… sort of. Gettin’ funky…

A massive CPL report was posted over at Bungie.net earlier… somehow I missed it. 🙁 A good read; congrats to the winners! Go check it out. (Thanks to Hamid Djangi for poking me.)

Back in June, The Discovery Channel aired a special called ‘The X Factor’ (we posted a press release for it on June 16). Since then, it’s aired a number of times (and, indeed, will air again, on Discovery Times, this morning, at 2 am, and again tomorrow, Christmas Day, at 10 am and 6 pm) – but a web version has been elusive… until now. (Dan Chosich created a beautiful one when it first aired, but yanked it because of legal concerns, and since then, we’ve had some difficulty contacting the legal department of the Discovery Channel.) Thanks to the great help of Jim McQuillan, the filmmaker behind the special itself, we can finally bring you a hi-res, gorgeous version of the Bungie portion of this special. It’s a 6 minute clip, in QuickTime format, with a DV-quality screensize of 720×480, and a filesize of about 92 mb. We currently have mirrors up on Mythica.org and files.bungie.org, and Two Degrees has once again seeded their P2P network, for those looking for the fastest downloads. For people who might be slightly more bandwidth-challenged, we’ve also created a 360×240 version that weighs in at just over 27 mb, which is also mirrored at Mythica and files, and has a Two Degrees peer-to-peer seed. We’re happily adding any mirrors we can find, so if you’ve got the bandwidth, grab a copy, post it, and send us a link; we’ll add it to the Bungie Factor Mirror List. Again – this gives behind-the-scenes info on the making of Halo, and the ideas behind Halo 2… definitely worth a viewing by any Halo fan. Update: Rockin’; our first mirror is up already. Thanks to That Weasel! (Link is on the Mirror page.)

MoCt wrote to point out that his Halo clan site has a bunch of movie downloads available. It’s HPC footage in WMV format… quite a bit of it. Take a look!

It’s not going to be as regular as our other comics, but Warbow shows no sign of slowing down… yet. Calvin and Halo, episode 12, has been posted – and it definitely got a laugh out of me!