Heh – Xbox365 has written a rather confused review of Halo: The Fall of Reach. While it’s nice to see the book get some press of its own, it would be nicer if the reviewer got the facts straight…

Ever wondered where the cool storyline in Halo comes from? Did you really think that the dudes at Bungie & Microsoft came up with the Covenent, MasterChief and the curvy Cortana? Think again. Halo, The Fall of Reach is the original book from Eric Nylund that introduces Halo, and it’s amazing powers.

(As a matter of fact, the dudes at Bungie and Microsoft DID come up with those things… and Eric Nylund worked closely with members of the team to flesh out parts of the storyline and create a complementary novel. A pretty good one, even.) The rest of the review suffers from more of the same confusion… but again, it’s nice to see it being hyped at all. Thanks to Miguel “I was only joking” Chavez for the heads-up.

Wonga – looking for new WinAmp skins? Christian Bender, of halo24.de, just submitted 10 of ’em. Browse ’em (and download ’em) here.

A pretty gruesome new entry has been added to our Fan Fiction collection – Kyo has sent in Part One of ‘Prince of Angels’ for your reading pleasure (or horror, as the case may be). Don’t forget to let him know what you think!

Dink!… Dink!… Dink!… The Halo SETI Marines lose three MORE positions (down to 60) in the Battle of the Teams… and we’ve just been challenged by an upcoming team! Doesn’t help when high-unit crunchers like SpudNYC jump ship… but that doesn’t explain how the SETI servers lost another 600 of our units. Hang on, Jim, she’s goin’ down! Check out the carnage on the 7 day stats page.

The Reviews page just got a little easier to navigate – an alphabetical popup at the top of the page will bring you to the review you’re looking for. Seemed reasonable, since the review count hit 40 yesterday…

Ghost ramping… a new sport? From daedulus1187:

To play you need a ghost and some stuff to ramp over. The scorpion tank works the best. All you do is just go over the ramp and hold a direction and you can do all kinds of tricks, like barrel rolls and back flips. And to get extra air you can press A.

I can say from experience (during the first meeting of the HBO Junkies, yesterday), that this is, indeed, a blast. Other fun tricks? Let us know!

Lost Hours, a column on the Coming Attractions website, has reviewed Halo – loved the gameplay, hated the lack of a ‘boss’ (and didn’t like the fact that the main character had an ‘uncanny resemblance’ to the main character in Doom), and wished there was a level editor – the game got a 9/10. (It was also rated as 20 lost hours.) For comparison, the last 4 reviews on the site ranged from 4.5 to 8.5. We’ve added it to our Reviews page. Thanks to jeremedia for the heads-up.

Feeling a little depressed at the end of Halo? Looks like Bungie did its job right – you cared about your Marine buddies. A thread on our forum about the weight of fighting completely without human help in the second half of the game elicited this response from Marty O’Donnell:

I just want you to know that I was pushing for one of the marines to make it out with you at the end (maybe the Aussie) but was called a “Pollyanna” by Joe. There are so many dark and disturbed people at Bungie…

Marty – if wanting to save just a single human makes you a Pollyanna, I’m with you. Leave the depressing stuff to Darth Staten.

IDMT13@aol.com sends along a new desktop (in three sizes) made from the Joypad cover last month – you’ll find it in our Wallpaper section.

Hot on the heels of our link-culling, firfin sends word of Halo Game, a French Halo site. take a look!

It was about time. Our Links page was getting rather long in the tooth… so today, I went through and pulled all pages that either 1) don’t exist any more, or 2) haven’t been touched in a while. (‘A while’ was defined, rather arbitrarily, by me, to be one month.) Makes for a much shorter page… All the pruned links were simply shunted to a different page, so nobody can yell that they’ve been deleted. Side benefit – the official (Bungie and Microsoft) pages finally get representation.

Oh, man… Catachan, of Battleground: Halo, got his copy of PC Zone magazine today… and it contained some eyebrow-raising news:

Our guess is that Halo for the PC will be out next autumn, probably to coincide with the announcement of Halo 2, which is already being worked on and a cert to arrive on Xbox first yet again.

This is the part where I remind you that until this is confirmed by someone at BUNGIE, it’s just a rumor… and an unlikely one, at that. (I’m not gonna flat-out ridicule it, because other, stranger, things have come to pass… but recent comments from the Bungie team would suggest that the ‘already being worked on’ bit was created from whole cloth.) More as we learn it… thanks to Halifax for the heads-up.

GiXeLz sends in a nice muted-tone desktop image, in three sizes, for our Wallpaper collection. Think of this as a nostalgic look at what Halo might have been (though there’s an awful lot of what Halo is, in there, too…).

Knight Premier writes to suggest that there’s a clear relationship between the 7th Column logo and 343 Guilty Spark, a character from Halo. (As well, of course, as the obvious relationship between Sparky and the Marathon logo…) You make up your own mind. (He’s modified the 7th Column logo a bit, to help you out.)

Halo crushed the competition in the last VoodooExtreme poll, ‘Your pick for 2001 console game of the year?’ (47% of 4140 votes, more than the next 10 games combined) – but it’s currently in third place in a new poll, ‘Which game released in 2001 had the best graphics?’ (Max Payne and Return to Castle Wolfenstein are both ahead of it). If you haven’t voted, get over to VoodooExtreme and do so! (Thanks to Aginor for the heads-up.)

Thanks to Razorback, who noticed that Halo snagged the #9 spot in IGN’s Hot 25 contest. Take a look, and enter to win the console of your choice!

Fall of Reach details… Eric Trautmann drops an interesting tidbit into the Marathon’s Story page forum – there’s been some discussion, on and off, about the outrage felt towards Dr. Halsey, and her involvement in the ‘recruitment’ of children for the SPARTAN project. The moral offense of replacing a child with a flash-clone (so that the parents wouldn’t know he or she was gone) seemed (to me, at least) to be less relevant in the 26th century… but Eric’s explanation of the left-out backstory clarifies things a lot:

Though not explicitly stated — and as such, this is completely “non-canon” — my intention was to have the clones be defective in some way; mental retardation, previously “undiagnosed” illness (Parkinson’s, most likely), or other such defect. That’s why they use the original kids, not the second generation dubs. ;D

As I say, though, we didn’t come right out and say that either in the game or the novel, so that notion may be revised to something a trifle less, uh, dark.

Had that been included, the moral outrage would have been COMPLETELY justified… one more example of how cutting-room floor material can make hard-to-understand plot points clearer. Thanks, Eric!

Matt Soell dropped into our forum with a status update about the fan-conducted Jason Jones interview:

He’s trying to give in-depth answers – many of the questions are not the sort of thing he could answer quickly without being glib, which he doesn’t want to do. So he’s taking the time he needs to answer with the depth they deserve. It looks like we’ll have to run the interview next week, but I think it will probably be one of the most illuminating interviews he’s done.

That definitely sounds worth waiting for…

Aargh! Just when you thought it was safe to go to bed! ActiveXbox posted their Halo review today… but I missed it earlier. Graphics and Sounds took high honors, Manual and Price (??) were the low votes… overall rating was 95%. The Reviews page continues to grow. (Thanks, Blue’s News, for the heads-up.)

Oops, we missed one – PC Magazine reviewed Halo on November 15. Short but sweet (appropriate, since it’s on a platform the magazine doesn’t cover)… they gave it a 5/5. Yes, it’s on the Reviews page.