Just a reminder – there’s a 4v4 Halo PC tournament over at SeeMePlayMe this evening; 7 pm Central time. Grab the SeeMePlayMe client, jump into the Halo lobby, and you’re off! (There’s at least one HBO-related team playing tonight.) Top prize is a SeeMePlayMe Gold account (which, among other things, allows you to create on-the-fly HaloPC servers all the time, instead of just when they’ve made them free to all.) Details on SeeMePlayMe, for those who missed them last week, can be found here.

One One Se7en contemplates the frightening possibility that the the internet has spread quite a bit by the 26th century…

Today’s Halo: Resolution looks at the little things that fortunately don’t get in your way while playing…

10 Fan Fiction stories for you today:

• Kirk’s Odysee, by Gasman
• Chapter 6: The Trap, by Ace
• Chapter 7: Defeat and Capture, by Ace
• A pilot’s life: Chapter 2 Fallen Angel, by Captain Rasc
• Countdown Earth: Hour Eight, by Mainevent
• Plasma Burns and Bullet shells-chapter 4, by Myth
• Spartan III’s, Part 5: The discovery , by FOrunnER
• Halo: A Troubled Galaxy Ch. 3, by Ghost
• Plasma Burns and Bullet Shells-chapter 5, by Myth
• The Rise and Fall of the Flood Chapter 12, by BlackValkyire

There were many more, but one was a potentially offensive poem, and 6 others were reposted from May; the beauty of our Series link is that you don’t NEED to repost stories you’re returning to six months later… folks can STILL read them as a unit.

GameSpot has posted a Halo Game Guide; it requires basic registration (free) for the web version, and paid registration for the downloadable Acrobat version. Lots of interesting information for Halo newcomers, and 27 new screenshots. Thanks to Scimitarex for the heads-up.

Mat Noguchi’s blog answers another niggling question about why a certain glitch occurs. You may have noticed that the Scorpion tank can be used as a catapult, of sorts; if you’re standing on an upside-down one, and flip it (‘Press X to flip’), you’ll be launched pretty darn high. (This was first noticed about 2 months after the Xbox was released.) Now we know why. (This phenomenon has ALSO been exploited for some of the coolest high-jumps out there that use a Warthog; Dark Helmet discovered that if he climbed to the top level of the Blue Beam towers, then launched a Warthog with grenades on the ground below him, he could use the ‘Press X to flip’ temporary invincibility to get the hog to bump HIM into the sky. This can be seen in several released films – here’s one.) Thanks to Sir Fragula for noticing the article.

Team Sexy has been working on a new movie called Damnation – but it’s been delayed, for technical reasons. To tide you over, they’ve created a movie called ‘Too Much Time’, which parodies most of the gameplay movies out there (their own included). To get it, simply register on their forum, then download it from the Too Much Time thread. To help out on bandwidth, we’re mirroring this for a day; you can also find a copy on files.bungie.org, until tomorrow. It’s 28.8 mb, and encoded in DivX format.

(GT)Juggler created another Halo GT video – this one’s 5:18 long, and available in two sizes; a high-res version at 56.5 mb, and a lower-res version at 12.7 mb. (They’re both 320×240 screen res; one just has less compression.) It’s full of tricks, funky places to go, weird camera angles… fun stuff to watch. Almost all of it has been seen in other vids, but the synchronization with the audio is quite good. He’s hosting both versions on the HaloGT website; check the Halo Media page. (This news was originally submitted a couple of weeks ago, but I managed to lose it.)

Another server browser, Qtracker, has now added support for Halo. Yet another option if you’re unhappy with the internal browser built into Halo PC. Thanks, Blues News (via Ash).

Today’s guest One One Se7en comes from Experiment_01, and looks at one of the downsides to careless multiplay.

You’d have thought that we’d have planned something clever for news post 7777, wouldn’t you? Something suitably Bungie-oriented, maybe mysterious… definitely cool. Yeah, well, it crept up on us. Meleed us in the back of the head, even. Sorry; there’s nothing here. Not even a clue (even an obscure one) for the Great Halo Scavenger Hunt. Hmm…

As a reminder, the list of places you can grab the 131 mb Halo PC Demo has grown to more than a couple of dozen, in many countries. There’s still no official word on dedicated Demo servers… but have no fear, they’re coming.

Monster quantities of Fan Fiction:

• Harvest, by Hikaru-119
• Angels war III stage, by Javier Fernandez-Vina
• Human Elite Interlude: Between ch 2 and 3, by Tinmad!
• Blue Squadron Chronicles, Part Two, by Hunter_Killer
• Pilots Life: Chapter 1-Alpha Squadron, by Captain Rasc
• Homeworlds (X)2, by Mainevent
• The Rise and Fall of the Flood Chapter 11, by BlackValkyire
• Plasma Burns and Bullet Shells-chapter 3, by Myth
• Halo: A Troubled Galaxy, by Ghost
• MJOLNIR, Chapter Three, by Nemesis
• Darkness, by Captain Jack Who Lay Out The Smack
• Tales From the Hook: Old Dead Man, by Alpha Lance/Jinkaiden-XI
• We are the Marines, by Captain Rasc
• Invasion of X41 (Chptr 2: War Zone), by CoLd BlooDed
• Chapter two: Old friends saying goodbye, by Awacar
• Human Elite Ch 3, by Tinmad!
• Human Elite Ch 4, by Tinmad!
• For Every Cowboy . . . [H&R 15], by Jillybean
• Sons of Sparta IV, by SOS.Odin
• SHINOBI CHRONICLES &#4294967191 IGNORANCE IS BLISS (part 1), by Matt James
• A New Masada, by Walker

You’d never know it was a weekend…

Dang. synide shows how it’s done. Check out this flag capture on Timberland – it’s just a meg, 15 seconds long, and if every cap went this smoothly, games would last a couple of minutes. You can let him know what you think in this forum thread.

DOH! This came in yesterday, I totally spaced. Battleground: Halo has interviewed the co-owners of the Cobra League Network, a group devoted to game ladders (one that recently added Halo to its lineup). The interview gives some insight into how the group was formed, and what they do… go check it out for info on game ladders and how they work!

New Halo reviews at Adrenaline Vault, GamePlanet.nz, Gaming Illustrated, and The Entertainment Depot. Opinions ranged from ‘eh’ to ‘good with flaws’. Thanks, as usual, to Blue’s News. Update: oops, missed one; Boomtown looked at it yesterday, too. Thanks, Narcogen (who got it from Shacknews).

The Adrenaline Vault has posted an interview with Randy Pitchford about Halo PC’s performance. On the positive side, he points out a bunch of the critical issues that explain some of the negative press Halo’s been getting. (The biggest is that this is really the first mainstream game to extensively use DX9 – and people haven’t adjusted their expectations from experiences with DX7/8 yet.) The negative side is that some of the frustration of dealing with day-to-day problems leaks out into some of his answers. It’s a good read, and there’s a lot to look forward to. I’m just glad I’m not forced to support people screaming for my blood…

Yayap the grunt has written a short FAQ about the Great Halo Scavenger Hunt; we’ve linked it in our list of helpful URLs on the right side of the forum. Yayap isn’t a Bungie or b.org employee; he’s just a fan who’s written up what’s known about this hunt to date. If you’re having trouble figuring out what you’re supposed to be doing, give it a read!

Oops – almost missed this one. SketchFactor posted a mini-update on Mac Halo over at bungie.net; the official beta testing starts next week. That’s rockin’ news…

Speaking of comics, today’s guest One One Se7en comes from forum regular hehbo2k3. He looks at the PC coop issue. And what an issue it is.