The Halo 2 Caption contest has drawn to a close… and Evil Otto has had some fun writing up the results. He included some REALLY bad entries, some almost-good-enough entries, and, of course, the winners. (Several HBO regulars made the ‘almost-good-enough’ list, and a number of others used lines we’ve got in our Title rotation here.) Congrats, however, to shiner1x, epitaph01, and Shishka (yes, our very own Shishka) for gettin’ in! (Dave: for next time, Quote 1 belongs to Steven Wright, and Quote 2 belongs to Dilbert.)

CuBaNo found two Battlefield 1942 mods that have previously gone unnoticed by us here: Aeolus: Spheres of Influence, and Home Front. Both have sizeable amounts of content so far… take a look!

Gholsbane has posted a sketch of the E3 Demo map… and you might be surprised by how tightly connected the whole level is. (He’s planning to update this map in the near future, so we’ve archived this early version for posterity.)

More tournaments: ;*@PTUR3 writes about his clan site, Hushed Casket, which has quite a bit of confusing information; there’s a Halo tournament in Athens, GA at the end of June, but the website listed (http://www.tournamentwars.com/) doesn’t seem to be reachable. There’s another tournament in Game City, FL (we mentioned it in early May), but it seems to have been postponed for lack of interest. There’s also an Independence Day tournament sponsored by UCGA on July 26, in Madison, AL with a payout of $3200 if 32 teams sign up. And finally, we got word from Dynamo, of xbox-qu/bec, telling us about the second edition of their Xbox Challenge. It will be held in Rimouski, Quebec, on June 27/28, and will feature a number of games (including 4-player-team Halo). Details can be found on the Xbox-Quebec website.

Last January, Xbox.com put together their Hall of Fame, in which all major awards for Xbox products are listed in one place. (I never noticed it before; thanks to CuBaNo for the heads-up.) Halo DOMINATES the page. Heh.

Do you play Xbox online? XboxConnect 3.0 has just been released – in the words of one of its developers, “it has more features than you can shake a stick at.” Start shakin!

Gah. Dark Helmet writes to say that his site, darkhelmet.org, is currently offline due to an administrative snafu. He wants everyone to know that it will be back, better than ever, as soon as he can make it happen. Dark Helmet was a pioneer in putting hogs on top of things; he went lots of places first. We can’t wait until his site is back, with new content!

Thanks to Monkey, who pointed out a new GamerFeed over at Xbox.com; it’s a discussion of quantum leaps in quality without changing the technology. Halo is used as an example. 🙂 Check it out!

These guys just don’t stop. Fan Fiction for the evening:

• Covenant Invasion! Part Two, by Hunter_Killer
• Shadow Ops, Chapter 1: The Mission, by Agent Shade
• Halo: The Aftermath, by Matthew Buzas
• Its Just One of Those Days: 02, by Elfster
• Halo: Combat Re-evolved; Chapter One: Into the Void, by Steele
• Asylum, by Dispraiser
• All Roads Lead To Sol…Unless Stated Otherwise: Chapter 5, by S7N
• Shadow Ops, Chapter 2: The Marines, by Agent Shade
• The Fallen: Chapter 2, Section 1, by Hikaru-119
• The Fall of a Covenant Armada, by Ronald Maszk
• On A Red Horse: Chapter 1 (fixed), by Diamond Dog
• On A Red Horse: Chapter 2, by Diamond Dog
• A Marine Named Peters: The Fight For Alpha Base, by GLADIATRRR3000

Read, Marine, Read!

Okay, now I’m intrigued. mehve jumped onto our forum this evening to ask anyone who hasn’t yet voted to visit Bungie.net and toss their two cents into the Quick Poll. (It’s been up for quite a while; I never bothered to mention it because it seemed sort of frivolous; “What is your favorite color when playing Halo multiplayer?”) If mehve wants votes, though, it sure ain’t frivolous. Go vote!

Took forever to get it uploaded – but there is now a smaller (52.1mb, 356×240) QuickTime5-compatible version of the trailer online. Again, this one isn’t as processor-dependent as the .mp4 version Bungie released, though it should be nearly as good, quality-wise.

Monday’s One One Se7en is now online; it’s the third piece of the recent subseries. I gotta ask… did the Jjaro make those?

We received a press release for this Friday’s ‘The X Factor‘ feature on the Discovery Channel. To remind you, it’s debuting at 8 pm ET/PT, and will contain (among other things) an interview with Jason Jones. Read the full press release for more details.

Rob Csigi of the Halo 2 Paradise Forums wrote to let us know of their new URL. They’re on a big push for new members, so swing on by and check ’em out!

So when you win the “America’s Biggest Halo Fan” contest, and you finally receive your prize in the mail… what do you do to commemorate the occasion? I suppose this is one option… (Shamelessly stolen from Red vs Blue‘s news page.)

BOLL has been a busy little beaver recently; there are two new Flash toys for you to play with. The first is a game he created over a year ago (but forgot to polish until recently) – Fly the Pelican through the cave system, trying your best to miss the walls. The Flash file itself is only about 150K. The second item is a pretty cool clock; time is kept by items (vehicles, and the MC himself) on Blood Gulch. Check it out; it’ll become clearer when you see it. The Flash file is 650K, so give it a second to load. If you’d rather run it locally, BOLL has provided standalone executables for both Macs and Windows boxes; they run about a meg each to download. Enjoy!

Nice eyes – Iceman1330 noticed three new storyboards over at Bungie’s Tru7h and Reconciliation site. (They’re not currently mentioned on any of b.net’s news pages.) You get a good look at the ODST’s weapons, and the Pelican cannon. Check ’em out! Update: These got posted on Friday, and I managed to miss ’em in the chaos surrounding the trailer. My bad…

GameFAQs has posted a new poll: Which FPS sequel are you looking forward to? I think we all know the answer to that.

Forgot to mention this yesterday… but Target4Hire nailed the audio challenge we mentioned in Saturday’s news. Thanks to Marty and Jay for the followup explanations.

Clan [WSD] has posted a 30 mb movie showing a clan match between themselves and {SDA} last week. It’s all CTF footage (almost 7 minutes worth), filmed from the perspective of one of the {SDA} members. (The final clip shows why, if you’re playing [WSD], you might want to think twice about giving them raw footage to edit for you… 🙂 ) Stop by their website, navigate to ‘Movies’, and grab the clan match from June 12. Thanks to [WSD]-Deus for the heads-up in our forum.