Aaron Suhr stops by our forum to point out that he’s upped his ‘ultimate vehicle collection’ by several – he’s added another 7 shades, and one more ghost (albeit a broken one). There’s a new movie which shows off the collection better. The time this guy has… we’ve updated his Gameplay Tricks page with the new info. (This info is also available on Aaron’s mac.com page.)

An old friend returns… and so does the MC, in Gasmask’s last segment of the Strange Tale saga. Check it out in our Fan Fiction section!

Doum and Pat, a pair of Halo fanatics from Quebec, have made a series of movies to show how to get down to the bottom off the first bridge of Assault on the Control Room – it requires some tricky timing in coop mode. The films were encoded with DivX 4 – I found that they were viewable on a Mac with the newest DivX decoder (the Windows decoder has never been a problem). Quality is somewhat low (it was filmed off a TV screen), but you can certainly see what you need to be doing. Movies are hosted on Doum’s server.

• Part 1 (2.83 MB) – how to get under the bridge
• Part 2 (2.06 MB) – how to get on the edge near the ground
• Part 3 (4.28 MB) – where to go down
• Part 4 (3.16 MB) – how to go down

Using this trick, you avoid triggering any baddies – you’ll be traveling through a totally unpopulated level. You’ll need to use the Banshee on the ground to head back up to the bridge, since the door at the bottom is locked. Nice job, guys!

The Gameplay Tricks are pouring in… and the collection was getting pretty hard to navigate. We’ve made it a bit neater, hopefully easier to find what you’re looking for… and we’ve added three new collections. (All are mirrors of the creators’ collections elsewhere… but we’re hoping this becomes the central repository for this sort of thing – it makes it much easier to compare techniques if you don’t have to hunt all over the net.) You might notice, as well, the link to the One-Shots page… this, hopefully, is coming soon. Thanks to Cal and Aaron Suhr for this evening’s submissions – go check ’em out!

Massive new content to Bungie’s Tru7h and Reconciliation site: two new Gallery sections (one of which was seen last week, in the Marcus Lehto article), the first cutscene, and some way-cool concept art. Check it out!

A sniper battles it out against unpleasant odds in carrim’s ‘I am Sniper‘, newly added to our Fan Fiction section. Take a look!

With the huge influx of new tricks footage and pictures comes a new breed of website – the Gameplay Tricks and Tips collections. Currently, there are two that we know of (well, three, but one’s not ready for prime time yet) – if you know of more, we’d love to hear about it! In the meantime, check our Links page for the existing collections.

Whoa! Aaron Suhr has put together the ‘ultimate vehicle collection’… check out ‘Master Chief’s Quality Used War Machines‘. 12 Ghosts, 2 Banshees, 1 Wraith, a Warthog, and a Scorpion… plus 13 Shades. (Don’t even ASK him how long it took.) Pics, plus a 5 meg flyover ‘test drive’, can be found on this page. This can be beaten… there are vehicles missing. Can YOU top it?

French site XboxManiac has posted a movie from a Xbox Diagnostic CD that is used to test hardware. At the beginning you see quite a bit of Halo footage. Check it out (Windows Media Player plugin/player required). Pax.

Vector40 bursts back on the Fan Fiction scene, with a different sort of story. ‘What Drives Us‘ is a tale of love and betrayal, courage and vengeance. It’s pretty good. Read it in our Fan Fiction section.

Halo Online has put up a point/counterpoint discussion of their favorite levels – up tonight, Silent Cartographer vs. Two Betrayals. You’ll have to stop by to see who wins…

Woohoo! mmemesis goes on a posting spree at the Halo Story page; more than enough to chew on, for now! In addition, Ape Man is back – seems he (or more precisely, his internet connection) was the victim of an overzealous backhoe operator… but he’s back up and running now, so we should see some new material soon. (Anyone jonesin’ for those Level transcripts yet?)

Dunno about the rest of you, but for me, the Reviews page was beginning to get unwieldy; too many entries to load smoothly. Accordingly, it’s been redesigned; it now shows 20 reviews at a time, and you can choose to see only the one you’re interested in. Now back to the Gameplay pages…

To all those people sending in reports of the Halo movie rumored on this Dutch site (among other places) – please, no more. It just ain’t true. Matt Soell, on our forum, succinctly denies that a movie is being discussed. (As I told a few of you via email, I was planning on ignoring this… but a flat denial by Bungie seems worth the post.)

Two more submissions for the Gameplay Tricks page – Cal drops off a passel of pics showing the tippety-top of Damnation… and Phear X shows you how to get on top of the base beacon pole (which stands on top of the base) on Sidewinder. What folks won’t try…

Apologies to all who’ve been writing to the Halo Story page – the crew seems to have run into time issues. Never fear, though, things will be back on track soon! mnemesis added another tidbit last night from Alan Wu – that Marathon link just won’t die, and now there are other options for the bigger picture! Check out the Story page news… and don’t hesitate to send along your wild ravings; nothing’s being thrown away, so it’ll be there when the team gets back to it.

silverx10 writes to say that a new Halo fansite is up and running – The Cole Protocol has been ensuring the safety of the planet Earth since 2552. Currently, they have gameplay tips, character descriptions, and a couple of level walkthroughs. Content is going up quickly… check it out!

Dueling Cartographers! Two different collections have been added to the Gameplay Tricks section – Team 7HR33 submits a movie showing a beautiful dismount from the top of Silent Cartographer… and Randy Glass gives us a cookbook movie that will have you driving the heights in no time. (Randy’s page contains multiple mirrors for his film – thanks once again to the Psyjnir Complex for their hotline hosting!) If the submission rate ever slows down, I’ll even get around to making the page more navigable! Followup: Randy has posted a pretty hilarious bloopers film (1:25, 4.8 MB), showing a bunch of the times it DIDN’T work… the last one had me in tears. (Where’d it go?)

Vector40, of the Junkyard, points out a newish Halo review over at Monolithic Illusions. Reading the text, you might get the impression that they weren’t too impressed… but the final score was a 9.5/10. Go figure. We’ve added it to the Reviews page. (You know… while you’re over at the Junkyard, checking out Vec’s review news, you should take a gander at his newly remodeled Weapons Guide, the first step in a total overhaul of the Halo section. Lots to see!)

Another stunt movie: Phear X has created a 13 mb, 1:41-long clip showing how to rocket jump to the top of Sidewinder. It’s currently being hosted by Brian Towne, of mythica.org (Brian, you da man!) – grab it! (Looks like it’s also on the Psyjnir Complex’s Hotline server – you guys rock, too. 😉 ) Eventually, this’ll be added to the Tips and Tricks page. (Currently, we’re swamped like you wouldn’t believe.)