Frogblast, a frequent contributor to the Gameplay Tricks section, discovered something pretty intriguing – there’s a link between the blue energy beams that mysteriously fire on the level Halo, and your ability to move around on the top of the level. (The why is completely unknown, and might be something worth discussing on the Halo Story page… but the how has never been noticed before, and can be very useful to Halo Explorers.) It’s been known for some time that climbing above certain areas in Halo will eventually lead to an inability to move – but one thing Frogblast discovered is that there are ‘freeze zones’ that will hold you captive… if you’re in them when those beams fire. Check the latest entry to the Gameplay Tricks section for a passel of pictures and a movie, showing the effect.

Ooh! Ooh! They’re almost ready!

Griffon turns in a desktop image based on his ‘Halo Dude‘ he created back in May of last year. He realizes the helmet’s a little out of date… but hey, it looks pretty good! You’ll find it in our Wallpaper section. And speaking of Wallpaper, Xcruiser has created a 1024×768 version of the wallpaper he submitted yesterday – both jpeg and gif versions are available.

Cybrfrk writes to say that he’s put the Warthog Jump movie up on his site in .WMV format (with permission) – sound quality is pretty low, but for folks having trouble with QuickTime, this might be the way to go – plus, it’s only 8.5 mb. (He’s also started his filmed cutscene collection – the Maw final cutscene (non-legendary), as well as the final credits, are now up.) We’ve added the Warthog Jump link to our mirror list.

Bat 21 and Longstreet also took a Warthog to the Map Room on Silent Cartographer… but when they got there, they played around a bit. Check it out in the Gameplay Tricks section. (The first image throws me a little… are there two jeeps there?)

The second part (of four) of dyoung92’s ‘Halo 2 Story‘ came in today… nice example of cliffhanger writing. Check it out in our Fan Fiction section.

mnemesis single-handedly keeps the Halo Story page alive, bringing you speculation about the various races involved in the game, and how they might be related. (Okay, not single-handedly – he couldn’t do it without your submissions. You know what I mean, though.)

Not fully Halo news… but it’s pretty funny: This week’s Mac Hall comic at Inside Mac Games focuses on the inline safety release built into each Xbox controller from Microsoft. (Interestingly enough, the Mac Hall general response to this feature characterizes them strongly as PC (as opposed to console) gamers – almost every console gamer I’ve talked to about this thinks it’s brilliant, and that every controller should contain this feature. Hell, I thought it was silly… until the first time I backed away from the screen, trying to avoid that charging Hunter, and accidentally knocked my chair over backwards; that inline release saved a lot of equipment that day (as well as my game; instant pause until I reconnected, giving me time to regain my equilibrium.) It’s a good thing, I think… but that doesn’t mean it’s not fodder for the Mac Hall Funny Machine. 🙂 Plus, it gives ’em a chance to take a shot at the size of the Xbox…) Thanks to Vector40 for the heads-up.

Corbantis turns in the next installment of his Tides of War series – Chapter 2 is action-packed! check it out in our Fan Fiction section.

Matt Soell stops in to explain (again) the lack of news on the PC and Mac versions of Halo. Bottom line – he’ll talk when there’s something to say. This was nice, though:

I’ll say this much: the last time I talked to Alex and Michael about what’s happening with PC/Mac Halo – probably about two weeks ago – their answers buoyed my spirits considerably.

Just be patient, and when there’s news, we promise… we’ll make a big stink about it.

Reidbo stops by our forum to give out a new server location for his ‘Dukes of Halo’ video – you can find it here, in both sizes.

Xcruiser turns in a Silent Cartographer-based wallpaper – you’ll find it in our Wallpaper collection. He’s willing to make other sizes, for those who want them.

Junkyard news: Vector40 writes to say that the Halo Weapons Guide has been updated with Strategy information for each of the weapons. It’s well-marked for spoiler info, so you don’t have to avoid the Weapons Guide if you’re avoiding spoilers. Additionally, Ryan ‘Mhaddy’ Matthews, the JY’s head honcho, writes to explain some of the slowness you might be experiencing there – it has nothing to do with an overloaded connection; it’s a runaway mySQL process (the database that handles all the back-end stuff). They’re working on it… but please be patient.

Major multiplayer tip for Sidewinder: This was discovered (apparently by accident) by Nemesis_007 – but I’ve made a film of it, to prove it actually works. 🙂 If you strafe sideways in a Ghost towards the grate where the invisibility and shield powerups are sitting, a well-timed dismount will actually get you pushed THROUGH the grate by the still-sliding vehicle. (Nemesis_007 says it works with the Warthog, as well, but it’s harder to time right.) Jump too early, you’ll get crushed like a bug. Jump too late, and you’ll exit the wrong side of the Ghost. Time it perfectly, though… and through you go. What’s more, the Ghost sits there, next to the grating… if you walk up to it (from the other side of the grate, mind you), you’ll get the ‘Press X to enter Ghost’ message, and pressing X will cause you to magically pass through the grate. CTF in Sidewinder just became a whole new ballgame. If you want to see this in action (and have QuickTime 5 installed on your computer), grab this short movie (750k), showing the pass-through in action (in both directions). Yowsers.

Ouch. Seems XboxGate ripped the Halo Legendary Ending (included on the last Official Xbox Magazine DVD) into RealPlayer format, and have posted it, in its entirety, on their site (5 mb). (Interestingly, the blurb with it says

“Do you think Halo is to hard in legendary? Do you still want to see the end movie? Well we made it possible.”

Yeah, sorta…) Remember, you won’t feel right about watching this unless you EARNED it… Update: Seems this scene (in its entirety, rather than just the critical difference filmed last month) has been available in .wmv format at Cybrfrk’n for a couple of weeks. It’s 10 megs, instead of five… but some people are allergic to RealMedia. Plus, it was recorded by the sitemaster, rather than ripped off a DVD. (If you check the front page of that site, you’ll notice a small .wmv showing a quick way to the top of Silent Cartographer, single-player, no explosives, as well.)

Merciless turned in a set of pics showing the progression of a jeep down below the Silent Cartographer level, to the map room itself. No, it’s not the first time it’s been done… but it’s the first time it’s been documented like this. (The images aren’t great, but you can tell what’s going on.) Check it out in our Gameplay Tricks section!

The Screenshots database has been updated with the 25 new shots that go along with the Legendary walkthrough of PoA – there are spoilers in here… but some of these shots are just amazing.

Whoa. No7orious has written a Legendary Walkthrough for the first level of the game, Pillar of Autumn… and Bungie liked it enough that they put it up at their Tru7h and Reconciliation site (along with 25 screenshots illustrating some of the finer points). Very nice! Check it out if you’re having your… um, head handed to you on a platter when trying to play through this level on Legendary. (And as Yeroen says in this news item, maybe this will start a trend!) Thanks to Acrappa, of Rampancy.net, for pointing this puppy out.

At long last, our Press Scans section comes online. Here you’ll find 40 print magazine articles, collected from a variety of countries over the past two and a half years. Larger articles are available for convenient one-shot downloads, or can be read page by page online. (Smaller articles are not bundled up.) Quality, in general, is pretty good, though a few are hard to read – use this resource as a way to see what’s been said about Halo in the past! (Translations of foreign-language articles, where available, are included.) You’ll find some treasures in here, as well – for example, the January 2002 article from the Official Xbox Magazine contains a full walkthrough of Halo… Feedback on useability is always welcomed – if there’s a feature you’d like to see implemented, drop us a note!

Jesper Nielsen, of the Danish Xbox site X-Byte, let us know of a review of Halo there. They liked it – 9/10, which Jesper says is very good – this site is pretty discerning. (We thank him also for the quote translation – there aren’t a lot of good Danish translators out there on the net…) We’ve added this to our Reviews database.