(GT)Juggler has posted a new movie on his site – this one’s called ‘Car Bombing (Random Insanity)’, and weighs in at 14.2 mb. It’s a 2:09 long story of a guy who goes to work, then gets blown up when he leaves for home. Feel free to add comments to this forum thread.

I’ve seen this done on Xbox, when you get a dozen people together in one room, on a closed system… but never over the internet, on an open server. Kudos to the obsessives who made this happen.

IGN has put up the first part of a video comparison between Halo and Halo 2, for Insiders (part 2 will be posted next week). It’s 55 mb at 640×480, or 33 mb at 400×300. It shows side-by-side analogues from each engine, pointing out how Halo 2 improves on the original. (The one mistake I caught was the assertion that the MC model has more polygons in Halo 2 – from what I remember, a Bungie employee said that the poly count actually DROPPED, but that the bumpmapping and lighting improvements made this irrelevant.) If you’re not an Insider, this isn’t worth buying a subscription for; it’s all footage you can find yourself on the net,and anyone with a little extra time could put together the comparisons… but if you already have a subscription, it’s a fun download. Thanks to rendar for the heads-up.

T3muJin wrote to us to ask us to get the word out; apparently, The Stronger Than All League stated if enough interest was shown in Halo PC, they would start a league for the game. If you’re interested in a league where you can play on set nights and times (as opposed to the random environment of the ladder sites), you should post a note in this forum thread.

News on the Battlefield 1942 mod Homefront, for those keeping track of this stuff; there are new screenshots posted (some are rather bizarre, if you ask me), and a release set – Christmas Eve at 6 pm EST. Thanks to MADDA CHEEB for making me look.

Hmm… interesting find by Nick. There’s a job offering on Microsoft’s site for a Software Development Engineer to work on Networking for Bungie. This job is NOT listed on Bungie’s Jobs page. Hmm…

343GS.com has put up episode 7 of EchoFourNineteen; it’s a Christmas episode. Take a look! (Visit the site, hit the ‘Downloads’ link. While you’re there, look around; there’s quite a bit of new content since last we mentioned them.) Thanks to IXIGhandiIXI for the heads-up.

The Junkyard continues with their Spotlight series, this time covering Matt ‘Viper’ Anderson, of Battleground: Halo. Take a look!

Wow. We got mail from Webshift, one of a team of what looks to be pretty talented folks. They’ve got a site called ‘NightMare Armor‘, and if you click on the Gallery link, you’ll see some astounding pics of Halo armor. There’s a Store link (currently empty), which suggests they might be selling this stuff before too long… Whoa.

Inky writes to say that the 10.3.2 update to MacOSX (released yesterday) cleared up some framerate jerkiness he was experiencing with Halo on a tricked-out G5. Good deal! On the PC side, ATI just released their Catalyst 3.10 drivers for Radeon cards on WinXP machines… and they fix the black-box-when-zooming-with-IR problem that I (and many others) experienced. Goodness for everyone!

Hehe – Putamee says Halo got him in to college. Not bad…

Gamespy has posted the results of its 2003 Game of the Year Awards… and Halo took 6th in the top 10 PC Games. Not too shabby! (Thanks to Pico for pointing it out.)

Stuntmutt looks back on 100 strips of One One Se7en in strip 101 today…

Warbow’s back in the saddle, with the third Calvin and Halo in as many days. (Okay, okay, yesterday was a Guest strip…)

Guess who’s back in Halo: Resolution? Hehe – I’m not tellin’…

21 Fan Fiction pieces for you today:

• Jake A Model IV: Chapter One SSDD, by Slipping Knot (Who the Hell Tied This Thing?)
• One Last Bullet, by Walker
• An Even War: Part 1: Betrayal, by D4rgant
• The Doctor’s In, by Mainevent
• Tides of Destruction (part 2, Invasion), by teemus
• Battle for Tectron: Chapter 3, by Helljumper
• Small Price to Pay, by CoLd BlooDed
• Halo Cataclysm: Prelude , by Snake Solid 117
• IONCLAD: Second Prelude, by Capo Rip
• IONCLAD: Second Prelude (section 2), by Capo Rip
• IONCLAD: Second Prelude (section 3), by Capo Rip
• IONCLAD: Second Prelude (last section), by Capo Rip
• Marooned Chapter 8, by Steve Ollett
• Halo: Hunted-Part One, by Overwhelming Force
• An Even War: Part 2: Last Hope, by D4rgant
• Precious Soldiers, by Sergeant B
• Ship to Ship, by Steve
• They Have Come, by Sentinel
• Shadow Ops II: Chapter Five, by Agent Shade
• No Way Out: Part 3, by Arthur Wellesly
• In the Shadows of Darkness, by Mainevent

Lots of poems in this batch.

Apparently, Linkin Park visited Bungie last week… and someone was around to take pictures, because it got posted on Xbox.com. According to Evil Otto, a couple of them were at the Fanfest in Santa Monica last year, too. Thanks to cubanB for the heads-up.

Geek Patrol has put up a Halo Performance Review, with actual numbers, from a pair of macs (that pretty well bracket the quality range). Good info. Thanks to Plastic Chicken for the heads-up.

A couple of people have translated the German review – Wraith posted his translation on our forum, and I added a second sent in via email from The Dark One to the thread. Check ’em both out!

A new Halo 2 shirt is available from the Bungie store – pretty simple, pretty nice! Thanks to Sledgefare for the heads-up.