Fresh from the rumor mill: Harry Al-Shakarchi, on a mission to translate this photo, with a caption that reads:

One of the “open” rooms. Small but still-present bugs in the PC version of Halo are currently being gotten rid of.

The original article is Mark Levin, who noticed the writeup at Blue’s News, and to Harry, who took it one step further. (From what I can tell, though, that picture was taken in July, during a tour of the Bungie facilities… it seems really unlikely to me that anyone at Bungie was working on the PC verison of Halo in July.) Update: maggi points out that the date in question (7.11.2001) is more likely November 7 than July 11 – my American bias is showing. Still… Bungie was saying as late as mid-December that work on the PC version hadn’t started yet… sorry for the confusion.

Andreas den Hertog writes to say that his site, HQ Halo, isn’t really dead – he’s having trouble uploading pages to his ftp server. He’s been updating the site faithfully… on his local drive. Every time he goes to upload, though, he gets disconnected. He’s hoping this problem will be fixed soon – but he wants to assure the Halo community that the site is NOT dead – in fact, it’s been completely overhauled.

genohunter dropped off a picture of Halo, between Threshold and Basis. Created with Photoshop 5.0, it’s called ‘Halo: Space Ring’. You’ll find it in our Miscellaneous Art section.

A couple of days ago, Skeletor discovered that if you shoot the arms off a flood-infected fighter (covenant or human), they’ll simply follow you around like puppies. (Ugly puppies… but harmless.) Well… he’s taken it one step further now – read about it here, then look at the pictures here. Merry Christmas.

Well, the GotY poll at VoodooExtreme is over, and Halo came in second – 432 votes behind Max Payne (out of a total of 12,769 votes). There’s a new one up, though – ‘What is your most wanted PC game of 2002?’ Halo is currently trailing Warcraft III and Duke Nukem Forever – can you fix that? Thanks to Gunship for the heads-up.

Bullseye writes in about a ‘review’ of Halo over at Aquaflux.org. I had trouble taking it seriously after reading this line:

I didn’t really get a chance to play any single player, so I won’t evaluate that. I did play some heavy multiplayer, though, and really that’s all anyone really wanted out of this game.

Because of the limited gameplay involved, I’m not adding this to the Reviews page… but they gave it an 8 (presumably out of 10). Maybe when the PC version comes out, they’ll do a real review.

Tis the season… DangerMouse sends in another Christmas image. It, too, can be found on our Miscellaneous Art page.

Merry Christmas, from Razorback – check our Miscellaneous Art page.

Apache reminds us that today is the last day to vote for the 2001 Game of the Year at VoodooExtreme. Halo is currently trailing Max Payne by nearly 500 votes (out of 12,000) – if you haven’t voted, get on over!

Brad Custer created a new Halo desktop for Inside Mac Games last week… we missed it. Check it out, in all its green glory, here. Thanks to Harry Al-Shakarchi for the heads-up.

Team Xbox has put up a Viewer’s Choice poll for Xbox Game of the Year – Halo currently has 60% of almost 900 votes… but don’t get complacent! Go vote today.

Gamer’s Voice has reviewed Halo – they considered it the ‘Cadillac of platform shooters’. I especially liked this comment:

There won’t be many of the standard PAUSE-POUND A PEPSI-PEE breaks when playing this one.

They gave it a 5/5. We’ve added it to our Reviews page.

Live, from the Shaft floor… it’s Thursday night! Shovelface and Finn, of Team 7HR33, made it to the bottom of the Shaft… and made a movie. The lengths (or depths) some folks’ll go to…

Angel writes to tell us that Bungie.de is now online. Currently, Halo is covered, but a Myth site will be coming online in a few weeks. Except for taking our misc art and concept art sections whole hog (with no attributions to the original authors), it’s a pretty nice site!

Halo Center, once a major Halo fansite, has finally gone offline after a long static period. A moment of silence…

Nice – Hamish Sinclair notices a new job at Bungie – 3D Environment Artist/Designer. Check the job description for a peek at the ideas Bungie is playing with for upcoming games… and drop ’em a resume if you think this could be you!

The plot thickens in the case of the Starhammer trilogy. (Get it? ‘The plot thickens’? Plot? Story, background…? Never mind.) Jon Chang points out that the three books he called the trilogy are listed that way here – so something is screwy. I guess we have to wait for more definitive info from someone who’s read the series… or for all 7 books to arrive here. 🙂

Heh – bonus screenshot! Max tells us we’re confused – a short update on the T&R site:

You imagined that duplicate screenshot. Go check for yourself. Us, slipping? Never!

(He’s referring to a comment we made last night…) Upshot – everyone gets a surplus screenshot. It’s a pretty nice one, to boot! (We’ve added it to our Screenshots database… but the original is still there, to remind those guys to keep on their toes…) Thanks to mnemesis for the heads-up.

Argh! Bravehamster =PN= writes to correct this morning’s info from Jon Chang – Starhammer IS part of a trilogy by Chris Rowley… but not the one we thought.

It actually looks like Starhammer is part of a trilogy, but it’s not book 3, it’s book 1. It’s called the Vang series. Check it out here: http://www.scifan.com/series/series.asp?SR_seriesid=947 The other two books you named are actually part of a different series by the same author, the Fenrile series. http://www.scifan.com/series/series.asp?SR_seriesid=946Ê® Hope nobody ordered all 3 books expecting to have a complete series ;0

Methinks Chris Rowley is gonna be selling a lot more books than he expected today…

ESCMag has reviewed Halo – and it’s a pretty solid review. They liked what they liked, they didn’t like what they didn’t like, they backed up their opinions with examples.

So what’s missing? Some of the more tired clich?s of the FPS world are erased. There’s no big Boss at the end of the game to outwit. You won’t be required to leap across pits, swim, climb walls, hunt for keys to locked doors or flip switches in the middle of nowhere. Your character gets two weapons at a time, period. Scavenging the battlefield is important, as is perseverance. The emphasis is on action, period. You against the AI. Crank up the difficulty and you’ll be muttering to yourself.

Open-eyed praise (for the most part)… worth a read. They gave it a 9/10. We’ve added it to our Reviews section.