Quiet weekend for Halo reviews. The only one listed at Blue’s News was the one at Worthplaying. It was written by someone who actually never played the Xbox version (or at least, never played it all the way through, campaign). Disappointment at system specs, disappointment about lack of Coop… but he was impressed by the solo AI, and enjoyed the immersion. There are 40 screenshots (though they’re at 1024×768, not the listed 1600×1200), as well.

Really, what else is there to say? It’s back up, so feel free to hop on and get some good carnage in!

Remember when Halo PC went gold, and Gearbox was posting tons of pics of that gold master in various places? One of them even found their way into One One Se7en. Gotta love the queue times…

Halo: Resolution provides reason number 2,342 why you should be happy Halo’s not MORE realistic.

Thanks to jayWHY, for noticing that Machinima.com has posted the results from Saturday’s Machinima Awards 2003 (they’ll be officially posted by Machinima.org later today). Red vs Blue’s Blood Gulch Chronicles took Best Independent Machinima Film, Best Writing, and Best Picture – not a bad collection of prizes! (You can download most of the entries, including a whopping 487 mb, 4-episode version of Blood Gulch Chronicles, from FilePlanet.)

You may have noticed that our Halo PC dedicated server has been offline for about 24 hours; we’re having trouble figuring out what the problem is. In the meantime, though, our friends at Subnova have come to our rescue – you’ll find a server called ‘HBO-Subnova’ in the ingame server listing now. The password is the same as the one we set up yesterday on the GameDaemons box (you can find it prominently displayed on our forum if you missed it), and the mapcycle is ROUGHLY the same (I’m ashamed to say I didn’t save local backups of some of the gametypes or the init file). When we get the GameDaemons problem sorted out, we’ll rename that server to HBO-GameDaemons, so that the two servers appear next to each other in the server listing. Additionally, the Server Status link on our main page has been updated with the new URL. Again, apologies for the downtime, and enjoy the hospitality of Subnova!

Tycho, from Unreal Ops, dropped us a note about a new site he’s started up called (not surprisingly) Halo Ops. It’s a slick-looking site, and it starts off with a bang – an interview with Randy Pitchford, put together during the Halo PC Fanstock event that took place a couple of months ago. Some very nice background info in there – go check it out! (And keep an eye on the site; if he’s anywhere near as devoted to it as he is to Unreal Ops, it’s gonna be a serious player in the Halo scene.)

mehve is back from Anime Reactor (we mentioned she was going last week), and has posted a quick summary of events at Bungie.net. Sounds like a more complete writeup is coming!

Nice. Mat Noguchi took a look at a thorny issue (why does the Xbox, with (by today’s standards) middle-of-the-road hardware, kick PC butt when it comes to rendering Halo?) in his weblog. Definitely for the geeks… but an interesting read. (Noticed by Cullen, in our forum.)

Whoa. Not one, but TWO new updates to the Halo Story page – mnemesis is making significant inroads on the bulging mailbag. Sevens, Forerunner, malicious AIs, and more! Go read all the juicy details.

Stuntmutt, inspired by the rockin’ online fun of Halo PC, hits it right on the money with a Sunday One One Se7en. (Timing is pretty slick, given the recent passwording of the HBO server, limiting access to HBO visitors alone…)

You may have noticed that the HBO Halo PC dedicated server is now password-protected. No, we’re not getting elitist, or anything… we’re simply opening up space for folks from our very own community looking to play with each other on a great server. If you visit our forum, there’s a big, hard-to-miss link near the top, which reads ‘FIND HBO SERVER PASSWORD INFO HERE’. Click it for the current server pass (if it changes, the current version will always be there) and information about connecting to a Ventrilo voicechat server to be used by HBO servergoers. The first few hours of operation have proven extremely satisfying; may it continue this way!

Sparkedit 2.0 has been released – and it now works with Halo PC. Just tested it out – and I must say, it’s pretty slick. Check it out! (Thanks to Grenadiac for the heads-up.)

Once again, we’ve let the user-submitted artwork sections fall by the wayside because of the madness surrounding Halo PC (and now Mac Halo). Apologies to creators and viewers alike. We’ve got 5 Miscellaneous Art pieces for you today, including a modified screenshot, two comics, and a pair of awesome drawings. (ZZoMBiE13 continues to blow me away.) Go look!

Multi Player Zone is offering free bookable Halo servers; you need to register (free) to read that, or to visit the ‘book a server‘ page, but if you’ve got a clan that needs a server to practice on, and you’re broke… check ’em out. (They’re in the UK, btw.) I found this link at Halocity.

funky wrote to point out a new Halo PC browser app – it’s called HaloSpy, and it lets you query specific servers for detailed info (before joining the game). You can read about it (and see screenshots) in this thread at Halocity. It’s not available for download yet.

Website roundup: these are links sent to us in the past few days. Apologies for any delays in posting.

• Black vs Red – a new series of movies (there’s a trailer up – but it’s totally black)
• Avatar Storm (follow the Halo Page link) – not much there yet
• ClanBase added another pair of Halo ladders – Team Slayer and Assault
• Halo Humpers – a Halo clan
• HaloRevolution.tk gets a new look and a bunch of Halo PC info

I’m sure there were more, but I can’t find ’em. 🙁

Ooh… I’ve been waiting for this One One Se7en guest strip to make it out of the queue for a LONG time. BOLL, in typical BOLL fashion, takes One One Se7en to the next level. (I went and looked into the memory card slots of my controller, just to be sure.)

18 stories for you this time around in Fan Fiction:

• The High Tide Chapter 1+2 together, by Relentless_hate
• Halo 2: The New Front (Chapter 3), by System Failure
• The Resurrection of the Chief Chapter 1, by CovieKilla
• A Pilot’s Life: Chapter 4- Desperate Battles, by Captain Rasc
• Devestation- Chapter 8- Destruction and Devestation, by Michael
• Halo: A Troubled Galaxy Ch. 4 (Final), by Ghost
• Dreams of Master Chief, by Max Ellis
• Attack on ERISTOCK Part 12: The Uncovering of Illyadar, by xitWOUND117
• The Adventures of Alpha Squad, Part Two, by Hunter_Killer
• Blue Squadron Chronicles, Part Three, by Hunter_Killer
• Homeworlds XXII, by Mainevent
• A Soul of Steel: Part 4, by The Scribe
• A Marine Named Peters: BOOM, by GLADIATRRR3000
• AN ANCHOR IN THE STARS: Chapter 1, by Sketcher
• Sons of Sparta V, by SOS.Odin
• The Rebel: If you want something done right…, by Elfster
• The Last Chance Chapter for everything 1: The first move, by brian murphy
• Shadow Ops II: Nowhere to Run, Prologue, by Nemesis

Go get ’em – there’s sure to be more tomorrow.

Okay, this never got posted on the front page because it was sort of a cool bonus for folks with Halo PC to find on their own… but it’s starting to clutter our forum, so I’m putting it here. On the Halo PC CD is a Goodies folder. (Most people never see it, because the disc is set to Autorun; there’s no reason to open it.) Inside the Goodies folder is a file called ‘Preview.pdf’ – it contains previews of all three Halo novels, including 8 pages devoted to ‘Halo: First Strike’, due out in early December. It’s chock-full of spoilers, so if you want to read the story without preconceptions, pass on this… but if you are curious, there it is. (And before anyone writes to us screaming about how they found this first, and should get credit for it… we knew it was there in mid-September, a couple of weeks before the game was actually out. If you told us about it BEFORE that, we’re happy to listen to your claim. If you mentioned it after… congratulations for finding it on your own, but there ain’t no public credit for ya. 🙂 )