Gasmask has turned in not one, not two, but THREE more installments of his ‘Journals of the Doomed’ series. You’ll probably find it easiest to simply read them in one shot – but you’ll find the individual stories in our Fan Fiction section. Comments work again (I managed to break them for part 2). Warning: There are major Halo story spoilers in the last entry.

Two of the new reviews mentioned recently contained new screenshots – we’ve added them to the Screenshots database (now up to 538 shots!). The Xbox Hotgames pics are right at the beginning, where new shots usually are… but the GamerSquare shots are farther in (since we missed the review when it first came out). Enjoy!

Thomas Barbee dropped off a very nice Bryce image, Halo-fied… we’ve added it to our Miscellaneous Art section, but it’s a decent size for a desktop image, as well.

Wow. Dan Rudolph pointed out this page at Game Rankings, containing a list of 40 Halo reviews, a whopping 11 of which weren’t on our Reviews page. We’ve added them now… and placed a running aggregate score at the top of the page. (Halo currently holds a 95.2% rating over those 55 reviews.) Later tonight we’ll add some extra screenshots, and a pair of movies, found on the new pages.

Reuters reports that Sony is dominating the video game market at the moment – after the rush of buying spurred by the release of the Xbox and the GameCube, people have gone back to buying for their existing products, it seems. 12 of the top 20 best-selling games for the first half of December were for Sony’s Playstation and Playstation 2, 7 were for Nintendo products (4 Game Boy Advance, 2 GameCube, and 1 Game Boy Color), and one – Halo – represented the Xbox. Three of the four November Xbox best-selling titles, and both of the November GameCube best-sellers, disappeared off the charts. (The two GC titles for December were not on the list in November.) Halo, then, becomes the only game for the new consoles to hold on to its best-seller status through the middle of December – not bad! Thanks to Jeremy Roush for the heads-up.

Gamespot has put up their Best and Worst of 2001 awards… and Halo did pretty well. Best Shooter, Best Xbox Game, Number 3 in the Top 10 Video Games of 2001 (beaten by Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 and Grand Theft Auto III), and nominated for Best Sound. (Strangely, it wasn’t even in the running for Best Story or Best Graphics.) You can vote for yourself in their Reader’s Choice Ballot. Thanks to Razorback for the heads-up.

Doesn’t usually happen quite this quickly… but Gasmask has submitted Part 2 of his Journals of the Doomed series (Part 1 was posted 12 hours ago). You’ll find it in our Fan Fiction section…

Thanks to David Allan, who pointed out that the UK magazine ‘Computer and Video Games’ reviewed Halo in their January 2002 issue. They gave it a 9/10, and had nice things to say about gameplay:

Awesome in both single and multiplayer, this pushes console shooters to an all-new high and even gives the finest the PC can offer a run for it’s money.

But even more interesting than that was a small interview with Halo Product Manager Steve Fowler.

CVG: But what of online play?

SF: We have all sorts of aspirations of getting Halo, of some sort, online – whether that means this current Halo, a Halo 2, or some sort of additional disk we send out.

This review (and its accompanying interview) is not yet on CVG’s web site. Still, the info is tantalizing…

Deimosâ„¢ points out what happens when you take a Banshee where it shouldn’t go… and flip it. Yes, that guy’s on the wrong side of the glass.

In what might be the last fan fiction of the year, Gasmask sends in the Journals of the Doomed, an account of the landing on the Halo. Check it out in our Fan Fiction section… and be sure to leave feedback!

Ouch – Penny Arcade has put up their Surly Aftermath to their Awards Ceremony for 2001… and Halo wins… well, go look. Thanks to Uriel for the heads-up.

VoodooExtreme picked their ‘official’ Game of the Year (as opposed to Apache’s top 10 of 2001), and while Halo got the nod for Best Console Game, the overall GotY went to PC title ‘Dark Age of Camelot’, mostly due to Halo’s weak Internet multiplayer showing. Thanks to Brizzle for the heads-up.

Heh – The Seattle Post-Intelligencer put up a shot of Ed Fries, as he

its in front of a photo of Munch, a character from Halo, one of the games made for the recently released Xbox.

Um… no. Thanks to Devin O’Reilly for the entertaining heads-up.

A couple of days ago, we added a desktop image ot our Wallpaper page from Alain Couët – but it seems it was really created by Germain Couët – we’ve fixed the error, and added his latest image, another mural. Check ’em BOTH out in our Wallpaper section!

M E R R Y   C H R I S T M A S !



(Okay, okay, so we stole it from Bungie – but hey, they’ve recycled it themselves!)

From the HBO crew and our families, to you and yours, we wish you the merriest of holiday seasons. Pax.

We’ll be back updating on Wednesday, the 26th.

Carl “B.O.E” Cline dropped off an animated, burning Halo logo for our Logos section – take a look.

Skeletor has transcribed all (?) of 343 Guilty Spark’s dialog on the Library level, and posted it (nicely organized) on our forum. Worth a read, for those who may have missed some of the tidbits while trying to simply stay alive… (Now where’s that Story site?)

Thanks to RedFoxTX, who points out that Gamespy has put up their Game of the Year Awards – Halo snagged Xbox Action/Adventure game… but was beaten out for overall Game of the Year by Madden NFL 2002. Ouch!

If it hadn’t been for some inconsistent level design, Halo probably would have been a strong contender for our overall “Game of the Year.”

Madden, of course, doesn’t ever have to FACE a charge of inconsistent level design – that gridiron just doesn’t change at all. 🙂

A beautiful Halo mural, from Germain Couët… check it out in our Wallpaper section.

Team Xbox put up some wallpaper that features our favorite lone marine, The Master Chief. You can get it here in three different resolutions. Pax.