A new Halo review – this time at X-Boxed. 9/10 – ‘the best console game [he] ever played’. Not too shabby! We’ve added it to our Reviews database. Thanks to Subnova.com for the heads-up.

Over at The Seventh Column, Bungie’s community site, you’ll find a chapter that’s compiling a database of the funniest deaths – visit Hunterz to see what’s already up, and add your own! (Don’t forget – you can create databases to store any info you think might be valuable; a few weeks ago, we pointed out that PanZer was building a Human and Grunt Sayings database… it’s up over 600 entries now!) Thanks to Tru7h and Reconciliation for the heads-up.

A few months ago, Edge Magazine gave Halo a 10/10 rating – a score shared by only 3 other games in Edge’s history. Yesterday, Edge Awards 2002 went on sale in the UK… and Halo took a whole slew of honors:

Game of the year, Halo :- “Halo works on so many levels and is simply on a different plane to any other title which has emerged in the last year.”

Technical achievement of the year, Halo :- “Technically, Halo displays a level of rigour and finesse sadly missing from many modern video games.”

Audio achievement of the year, Halo :- “…it cannot fail but give an emotional impact missing from most modern games… It’s all enhanced by the realtime Dolby 5.1 surround sound… Plug in, sit back, and be absorbed by a singularly superb aural experience”.

Also runner up in Graphical achievement of the year.

Thanks to fAt1, of MPZ Halo, for compiling this information!

Half-a-dozen new tricks have gone up in the Gameplay Tricks section – some pretty cool stuff there, take a look. (And keep your eyes peeled – the next batch won’t be a week away; in fact hopefully it’ll be done before the end of the week.)

Xerxes, of Halo Orbit, writes to point out that they’ve mirrored the Warthog2k2 video from Nico D., posted a few weeks ago. Warthog jumping can be fun! (They’re also hosting the latest release of Counter-Strike, so the server might be a bit hard to reach at times…)

That Weasel has mirrored 2 new movies, in 2 flavors each: The Halo Movie Teaser 3 is up in QT5 and WMP formats, and you’ll find a new encoding of the Pillar of Autumn with No Weapons there, as well. (The new WMP8 version there is 4.8 mb.) More mirrors, less waiting!

Thanks to John Kronk, who points out a pic of the Halo Championship t-shirts currently being raffled off in Japan. As John says,

I want one just for the Engrish.

Me too.

Laughing… out loud.

The daily dose of Fan Fiction reading material:

• The Lone Survivor, part 1, by The Iceman
• A Comedy of Peace, part 2, by Jason Pridgen
• Strange Bedfellows, part 1, by Robo42786 and JayWhit10
• The Long Ride Home, part 6, by Joshua Barreto

Off you go…

Trey Ikon has created a series of pistol concept sketches – the AR sketch isn’t quite finished yet (according to him), but the rest are ready for prime time. You can find them in our Miscellaneous Art section.

New desktop image from Wetslayer – you’ll find it in our Wallpaper section. (We’ve also added the ‘Obey Your Thirst’ shot that Subnova put up a couple of days ago.)

News catch-up… Peter Haughie points out that the latest issue of Xgamer, a UK Xbox mag, has some speculation about a Halo 2 announcement at E3 next month (they state that ‘an inside source has confirmed that Halo 2 exists’):

The timing is everything. Xbox is off to a rip-roaring start but Microsoft needs to keep the momentum going. And what better way to keep the good times rolling than by announcing the follow-up to the game that’s got people pulling Xboxes off the shelves as fast as their hands can move? That announcement will take place at videogaming’s biggest industry event of the year – E3 in Los Angeles, between May 21st and 24th.

The rest of the article is pretty interesting, as well – once it’s off the shelves, we’ll be sure to put it up in our Press Scans section!

Halo-game has mirrored the newest Halo movie teaser from Blackstar productions – we’ve created a mirror list for it; as more come in, we’ll add them. Off to update the movies page… Update: Not to be outdone, today’s other release, The Pillar of Autumn with No Weapons, has also acquired a mirror list. Collect the whole set!

Thanks to Alan Wu, who noticed a third Halo Soundtrack sample at xbox.com. (Windows Media format,64 Kbps, just under a minute.) At this rate, the entire soundtrack will be released before the Soundtrack is available!

These are fantastic.

Today’s Fan Fiction:

• ODST Saga, part 4, by Robo42786
• Fight for Death, part 1, by Jenova
• The Arden Landings, part 1 (rewritten), by MaxThndr

(The rewritten piece is far enough away from the original that we’re going to leave both for now. That may change. 🙂 )

Movie Madness!! Not one, but TWO new movies have been released – Brian Josselyn, of Blackstar Productions, has created his THIRD Halo Movie teaser (this one’s large-format, and very emotional); you can find it at his site, as well as mirrored at mythica.org… and a team composed of Bluespam, Tarrsk, and OSX2000 (all HBO forum visitors) have put together an intriguing piece which shows a pair of players finishing PoA… with no weapons! This one is also at mythica.org, and on hotline, at the Psyjnir Complex, as well. The movie trailer is 16.6 mb, the PoA runthrough is 11 mb. Go pick ’em both up, and watch almost 30 megs of Halo goodness!

Slacking again… we’ve finally caught up on Halo Screenshots – four new collections have been added to the Screenshots Database. (Time to come up with a less awkward navigation system, I think…) The path to completeness continues.

A boatload of movies have just been uploaded to the Psyjnir Complex Hotline server (in Halo -> Movies) – if you’re having trouble finding a film, this isn’t a bad place to start! (We’ll be adding more as time goes on.) Thanks, Psyrixx and *Ar!

Jason Pridgen drops off a new fanfic which takes a… rather different approach to life after Halo. Check out A Comedy of Peace, in our Fan Fiction section.