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!

Seventeen entries for you today in the Fan Fiction database:

• The War Within, by Dustin
• Jake A Model IV Chapter Two: Broken Men, by Slipping Knot
• The Second War: Prolouge (My triumphant comeback!!), by FOrunnER
• Foregoing the Experience, by Mainevent
• Fight for New Tatley Finale (Chapter 9: Saving New Tatley), by CoLd BlooDed
• Old Style: Fear, by Horror
• Dust Off, by Booney
• Dust Off Chapter 2, by Booney
• The ONI Chronicles Part 2, by Jaywhit10 and JediKnight114
• Marooned – Chapter Nine, by Steve Ollett
• Athenians-II Chapter 3: Assault Part 1, by ZackDark
• The Fall of Fate: Special Edition (Parts 3-6), by ‘Nosolee
• Time and Again, by Mainevent
• Shadow Ops II: Chapter Seven, by Agent Shade
• Tides of Destruction(Part 1, The Cavelry), by teemus
• Battle for Tectron: Chapter 4, by Helljumper
• Spartan-X Chapter 1, by SilentStrider

Totals are getting big…

IGN put up part two of their Halo vs Halo 2 comparison (part 1 went up on Saturday). It’s still Insider-only, but you have the option of downloading just the second part, or the whole thing (133 mb in 640×480 format). Thanks to caudronix for the heads-up.

MC gets lost in today’s Guest One One Se7en. Hmm…

(GT)Juggler has put up another glitch film, his fifth. Brings back memories of the golden age of Halo tricksterism (early 2002) – I don’t think there are any NEW glitches here, but they’re put together nicely, and for folks who haven’t been around for years, it’s a great overview. 16.6 mb, in QuickTime format. Grab it on Halo GT (should be the top news item).

Wonga. SparkEdit 2.5 has been released; it now supports model viewing, object property viewing, BSP mesh property viewing, object rotation, and more. Grenadiac posted a screenshot on our forum – looks great! (Supports Xbox and Halo PC.)

MaverickJ came back to our forum to point out the Halo Nationals, a $10,000 contest taking place in late February in Philadelphia. The money sounds great; that $10k is GUARANTEED, no matter how many teams show up. Entrance fees get ADDED to it, so the more teams that enter, the more money there is to win. Check it out!

Halo Babies is back up! Bandwidth restrictions have lifted a bit, so there’s a strip today, and there’ll be another on Friday. There’s also a PayPal link, if you want to help out with their moving costs… The strip itself is Christmas-themed… and a harbinger of things to come. Ouch!

Man, I wish there were a faster way to handle this stuff… but there isn’t. I’ve cleared out the Wallpaper queue; there are 20 new desktops (more, if you count variants) in the database today. Some of these are simply gorgeous. Check ’em out!

Lotus222 reminded us that MacGamer’s Giveaway from last week (3 copies of Halo to the best three ‘Master Chief goes to Hollywood’ photoshop jobs) has been completed. After seeing the winners, I’m wishing I’d finished my ‘Enter the Master Chief’ pic…