Halo Bunker is running a contest; come up with the ‘sickest halo pc desktop image’. First and Second Prize winners will get copies of Halo PC, Third Prize will get Halo for Xbox. Deadline is October 10. Visit the site for more details. Thanks to [[[-X-]]] for the heads-up on our forum.

A bunch of new clans/websites to mention: Baptized by Fire is a clan involved in many games. Halo is now on its ‘Future Games’ list, and they’ll be adding it soon. Halo Center is a full fansite, with sections for Halo (PC and Mac) and Halo 2; it’s part of Ogre’s Network. And The Scorpion Warriors are a Halo clan that’s recruiting at the moment (they mostly play on Xbox, but they’re looking at the PC version). Check ’em ALL out!

Sorry, folks. You may have noticed that your spoiler settings reverted recently to ‘No Spoilers’ – though you hadn’t done anything about them. This is due to the September 30th, 2003 expiration date that cookie held. Silly me. It’s been reset (to December 31, 2004 – we’ll figure out if things need to change before that date arrives); in the meantime, simply hit the ‘Change this!‘ link above to reset your spoiler cookie. (You may have to run it through twice; the first time resets the date, the second time the cookie grabs. It seems to vary by browser; when your banner shows green on the main page, all is well.)

Today’s One One Se7en explores the better part of valor. Or something.

Gah. I thought I could get away with not posting this… but there seem to be a lot of Gamespy fans among you. The current Gamespy Grudge match (visible on the bottom left of their home page) is between Halo’s Master Chief and Half-Life’s Gordon Freeman. Go vote. At the moment, MC’s getting his butt kicked. First heads-up for this goes to jabond102, about 24 hours ago.

Fuzzy has altered the release schedule of Halo: Resolution; it’s now going to come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Therefore, Episode 2 is up now – it’s called ‘A Strange, Strange World’, and it takes care of a problem I’d very much like to deal with in this manner…

The next round of reviews have come out: Games Domain, ActionTrip, Gaming Nexus, Homelan Fed, and PC Arena. Lots of screenies. Lots of ‘it’s fun’, lots of ‘it needs big iron’. Thanks to Blue’s News for the links.

17 new stories for you in the Fan Fiction section:

• Chapter Six: Rise of the Phoenix, by Blue Jaguar
• All Roads Lead To Sol…Despite What The Map Says: Chapter 11, by S7N
• Buried Treasure: The Finale, by Frensa Geran
• Temporal Rift PART II: SLAVER SLASHING – A GOOD PARTTIME JOB, by Alexander_Valient
• Halo: The MCconto Chronicles Part 11, by JCDenton
• Death By Corrosion V1, E1: Start From The Beginning, by Kurt Cobain
• Have Faith (Recreated/ corrected mistakes), by Alpha Lance
• Death By Corrosion V1, E2: Tell Me More, by Kurt Cobain
• The Fight for Bravo Base; pt. 5- Enemy Reinforcements, by ONI_operative_343
• And now all hell will break loose Part 6, by metallicafan
• Spartan III’s Part IV, by FOrunnER
• Part 1 Awakening, by Ghost Sniper
• Part 2 Malice, by Ghost Sniper
• The Inter-Galaxic Wars, by Hunter_Killer
• Attack on Eristock Part 5: The Covenant’s Discovery, by xitWOUND117
• Home Is Where The Halo Is [H&R12], by Jillybean
• The Marine’s Requiem, by Gasmask

Read Read Read…

Been a little while since we’ve updated the Wallpaper section… got 13 desktops for you, some real doozies. Check ’em out!

While I was over at WorthPlaying, I found a whole bunch of screenshots (54 of ’em) posted about a week and a half ago. They’re interesting, because they’ve got lots of graphic features turned off; you can see what the game looks like with no specular reflections, low textures, etc. Warning to those who haven’t played yet – they’re full of spoilers.

Speed is everything. The Halo v1.01 patch is already available for download from WorthPlaying.com. It’s 3.6 mb, but WP doesn’t know what, exactly, it addresses. Thanks to Tocki, of Halo Orbit, who’s already put up a mirror. More details when we have them. Update: It’s mirrored at Halo Universe (in Germany), as well. Thanks, Marc!

The official Halo PC Press Release has hit the wires; get ready to start fragging.

More info from Neo Alucard X about the Bonus DVD coming from Bungie (Soonâ„¢). It’s going to have 5.1 versions of both Halo 2 trailers, plus a suite of music from the E3 demo (also in 5.1). Plus a new image. Info comes from the Marty Army chapter of the 7th Column. (If your response is ‘huh? WHAT bonus DVD?’ – you haven’t been keeping up. Neither have we, really… it’s been mentioned at that chapter a few times, but I don’t have any other info for you.)

GamePro has put up their Halo review… and they were REALLY unhappy with the framerate issue. (They gave Halo a 3.5/5 on Graphics partly because it’s dated… but partly because (in their opinion) you have to turn everything off in order to play the game.) Thanks to KP for the heads-up.

Very nice. Gearbox has put up a new screenshot – this one shows Dave Mertz getting toasted crisply with the flamethrower. Thanks to comcipher for the heads-up.

Today’s Guest One One Se7en was submitted by forum regular Simpsons Rule… and it expresses a heartfelt sentiment shared by most forumgoers.

As KP pointed out, Gamespot has updated its coverage to include a 10 minute video review for Gamespot Complete members.

Serious tasty bits from Dave Mertz, lead designer of Halo, over on the Gearbox forums this evening. Highlights:

• The first bugfix for Halo PC is already almost finished, and will be ready soon after the game’s release. Two more patches/updates are in the pipeline.
• Additional features are coming soon.
• Game tweaking to conform to the needs of the CPL (and tournament play in general) is underway.

Check out the whole post (and, indeed, the whole thread, if you’ve got an hour to kill) – rest assured, Gearbox is VERY aware of the issues being brought forward by the community (even though most of the vocal ones right now have stolen the game), and are working hard to make things better.

Hell on Halo, another Halo clan, is also recruiting. Check ’em out.

HaloJuggaloProductions has another new design. Go take a look.