Forensic proposes a new rating scale to replace the (in Halo’s case inapplicable) StC (‘Start to Crate’) system for rating shooters: MPB (‘Minutes Past Bedtime’):

You measure how long you stayed up past midnight playing, despite having to go to class or work the next day, and you’ve got your rating. In this case, Halo earns a respectable score of 120.

A few days ago here, Halo earned a 220…

op_ivy noticed a Yahoo story on Xbox sales that contains this line:

Word-of-mouth recommendations and stellar reviews are driving gamers to the great games available on Xbox, including “Halo,” which earned the highest accolades from Electronic Gaming Monthly, securing a rating of 10 from all reviewers.

As soon as we can, we’ll put the article up…

Thanks to bullseye, for pointing out that two of the screens in this week’s ConsoleDomain Halo Review hadn’t yet been posted. They’ve now been added to the screenshots archive.

Lorraine Reyes steps in to a discussion on the disappointments of Halo with some information about the physics model (Halo gravity is the same as Earth’s) and a tidbit about the sniper rifle (there’s no aim-assist, as the other weapons have), as well as some basic common sense about playing games. Sometimes, though, it’s hard to decide if it’s worth getting involved…

Another walkthrough page goes up… IGN has posted their walkthrough of The Library in their Halo Strategy Guide. Thanks to Aida-kun for pointing it out seconds before I could write this… 🙂

Deco drops a note on our forum about the poetry in 343 Guilty Spark – and upon reflection, I’d have to agree with him that the hectic feel of the level was pervasive; I never felt like I got a break. (In fact, I got fatigued near the end; I really WANTED a breather. 🙂 ) The Flood, though easy to kill, were used to their best advantage on this level – they showed up in tight corridors, they showed up in dark corners. Though there were more of them on the Library level, I felt as though the fear factor was higher on 343 Guilty Spark… and it seems Deco feels that way too. If you have a special level where you were most frightened, or in some other way impressed, add it to his thread!

Anthony Tilford dropped off a new desktop using some of the cool new concept art and screenshots at Bungie’s Tru7h and Reconciliation site. You’ll find it in our Wallpaper section.

NaliGun noticed a review at Blueyonder of the Xbox Xperience tour currently in the UK. While they hated the event itself, they loved Halo:

Even the poor LCD screens in Nutopia had difficulty disguising the sensational visuals.

Worth a read – gives props to Marty and the Sound team, as well!

A couple of days ago, TeamXbox mentioned a rather absurd eBay auction – someone was auctioning off a PICTURE of an Xbox. The auction closed Monday, and the listing was gone yesterday – obviously some eBay rules were violated by selling a printout of a game console for roughly what the console itself should sell for… however, thanks to bungie.org’s own Doughnut, we’ve been able to reproduce the listing here, for your own edification. All links have been removed – it’s just a static page. It’s here to show you why you should be careful and read EVERYTHING before you buy.

Skeletor had to crow this morning – he tells a fun gameplay story on our forum. No spoilers… but he did come up with something interesting. In many reviews, people have disparaged the Covenant Needler as a useless weapon… but Skeletor discovered an extremely valuable aspect to it; if you can keep the targeting reticule focused on a single victim, the needler can take down a fully-shielded Elite on Legendary in a single clip. Thanks, Skeletor!

The Xbox names just keep pouring in… Some people have noticed that the Seven Dwarves names show up as default player names, so it’s not clear whether they’re ALSO machine names, or if folks are just reading the wrong line. Also, in several cases, the box had already been renamed, so some of the names aren’t original any more. For this reason, we’ll probably stop taking submissions of names now, unless 1) you KNOW you’re reading the correct line (it’s ABOVE the picture of the Xbox, not below it), and 2) you haven’t renamed your box. The existing list will not be shortened, but new, non-official names will not be added.

Heh – people see funny things. 🙂 A month ago, we wondered whether Captain Keyes (as rendered in the game) might bear some resemblance to Joe Staten… now septimus prime, over on the Marathon’s Story page forum, is wondering if the storyboard version of the Captain (visible on Bungie’s Tru7h and Reconciliation site) might not be modeled after the Story page founder, Hamish Sinclair, himself.

You be the judge.

All right, you greenhorns, listen up! Bungie has made the introductory movie they showed at the fanfest (Sargeant Johnson introducing the crowd to Halo) covertly available on their Tru7h and Reconciliation site. (There’s an article on the Launch Party – they mentioned the movie when it first went up. Recently, a link to the movie was added within the article.) Go grab it – it’s pretty funny! (And 35 MB…) Thanks to Strider for the sharp eyes!

Just a heads-up… another page has been added to IGN Xbox’s Halo Strategy Guide; level 6 (343 Guilty Spark) has been made available.

At the request of The Shrike, we’ve begun a list of all Xbox names. (When being used in multiplayer games, each Xbox identifies itself with a whimsical name.) We’re going to do our best to compile all of them – if you want to help, send in the name of your Xbox! (See the list for details on finding it.)

drunkgamers.com have put up a Halo review. It’s a pretty funny read…

While I can not recommend taking a Ghost head to head against a Scorpion I suggest you try at least once…if only to see how far your body flies when you explode.

They say they don’t have a rating system, but if they did, they’d have given it a 9.5… thanks to Gustavo Sorola for the heads-up.

Raymond Makowski drops off a newly-captioned screenshot… I think he’s captured the feeling pretty well. You’ll find it in our Miscellaneous Art section.

Bungie’s Tru7h and Reconciliation site has been updated again – new screenshots, and Part 2 of the Multiplayer Guide. Check it out! (Screens will be up in our database shortly.) Update: 13 new shots have been added to our Screenshots section.

To all the people sending us links to other sites posting about the thread on the IGN boards concerning playing Xbox online – thanks, we know about it. We are also pretty sure that getting it to work is non-trivial – we chose not to post about it because at this stage, it’s hype only. (And, in our opinion, unlikely to happen… at least not in any way useable by the vast majority of Xbox’ers.) Read this post by Bungie’s Ferrex for a slightly more sobering viewpoint…

Thanks to dyoung92 and Brad Peterson, who pointed out the same review (at different URLs) today. ConsoleDomain has put up their Halo Review… and it’s a solid read. They keep the wild-eyed fanaticism to a minimum, and focus on the merits of the game. (They DO get a bit hyperbolic at times… but it seems well-thought-out hyperbole, at least.) The bullet list was amusing:

Pros:

• Everything

Cons:

• Red eyes
• Sleep depravation
• Nightmares of Elite troops sporting active camouflage

This is also available at CD’s UK Mirror, and linked from their parent GamesDomain. We’ve added the US Mirror link to our Reviews page.