Cloudchaser Microsoft has put up part 4 of their Halo impressions – this time, it’s a fan-written commentary on the level known as ‘Flawless Cowboy’. It’s interesting, given that it’s written by someone who has either never seen Halo before, or is pretending that they’ve never seen Halo before:

Well, this lady told me over a radio or something that a enemy dropship was approaching and that I should cross some tubes or pipes to the other side of the river to escape being detected. I promptly ignored the command and starting scanning the horizon for the enemy. I wanted some action. I got it pretty quick. The drop ship arrived along with two of those personal fighter like thingies. I was instantly under heavy fire. The drop ship dropped about 6 bad-guys (Covenent right?) and then took off in a flurry of gunfire.

A fun read, in either case. Check it out!

Ooh… nearly missed this. Narcogen, at Rampancy.net, noticed a story at Wired News with the following subhead:

Rumors of the Xbox’s shaky stability have been greatly exaggerated.

The story notes that Xboxes in use at the Xbox Unleashed event have been running for 12 hours straight, with no crashes. (There are more than 50 consoles at the event.) There haven’t been any more net stories about kiosks crashing, either – seems the software upgrades distributed last week really did solve the problem.

Konard’s in trouble, in Ashley Power’s ‘Running, Part 1‘, available on our Fan Fiction page. Be sure to let her know what you think of it in the comments section!

Forum wrapup: op_ivy passes along commentary on the Xbox Unleashed event in Los Angeles – event flavor, Halo impressions, and a spoiler or two (clearly marked). Funky J makes the new GameSpot movie available on his Hotline server – details about access can be found in his post. And Darkman, annoyed by the commentator in that movie, hacked it up a little to remove as much of him as possible. (Be careful with this link – the movie isn’t all the way up as we speak, and it locked up two different machines during the attempted download. Give it a bit longer.) All this and more on our forum today!

Gamespy has posted a Halo preview a couple of days ago. They were unimpressed with the AI – and they wished for mouse control – but otherwise, they liked it. Can’t please everyone…

Cloudchaser Microsoft has put up a couple of articles about Halo as part of their Xbox Unleashed coverage – the first one is extremely positive about the framerates (looks like just a quick note) and focused on multiplayer, while the second one is a bit more in-depth, and looks at solo player. Their biggest gripe was control of the jeep. (As an aside, the ‘X button to flip’ mode is still in the final release, it seems…) Thanks to Allenthar for the heads-up.

Lots of HBO visitors are worried about spoilers popping up where they don’t want to see them. For those actually LOOKING for spoilers, the Marathon’s Story page has some pretty massive ones in its most recent update… if you decide to look, don’t say we didn’t warn you!

Electric Playground interviewed Seamus Blackley, head of the Xbox Advanced Technology Group – he’s as enthusiastic as usual. He raved about a lot of things – including control:

EP: Halo surprised Blackley. He had concerns about the control of the game, and in fact didn’t want it to be a launch title.

SB: Jason Jones and I are pretty good friends, and he said “I’m going to convince you. You’re wrong.” And I was wrong. The editors of three of the biggest game magazines in the United States have all said that they wish they had the controls in Unreal now that they have in Halo.

The article as a whole is a pretty good read. Thanks to TomeOne for the heads-up.

<sigh> Right about the time we get caught up with screenshots and movies, places like GameSpot have to go and release tons more. There’s an updated preview, a 75 meg movie (!!), and 20-someodd new screens. (They say it’s 30, but there are at least a few repeats – but they can be forgiven, it’s hard work releasing THIS much new info in such a short time.) I can’t tell you what’s in the movie – I’ve only got 5 megs of it so far. My guess is, though, we’re talking MAJOR spoiler action. Media overload…

A couple of weeks ago, we mentioned that Score Central was putting together an interview of Marty O’Donnell, the sound guy behind Halo, and was asking for fan questions. Tonight, they’ve posted the result – and overall, it’s a lot of information. A snippet:

SC: How has sound and music changed in the gaming world from say 5-10 years ago.

MO: I think it keeps getting better, both sound quality and aesthetically. We?re moving away from the concept of music that plays constantly throughout a ?level? and towards the more movie scoring approach that music should underscore the feeling of a scene or event. That means figuring out how to respond dynamically to what the player is doing without calling attention to the fact the player can control the musical events. It?s not easy but it?s starting to work. Having the ability to record players from the Chicago Symphony for example and have that kind of music played in Dolby Surround while you play the game helps a bit too.

Go read the whole thing, and learn a little more about Marty as you do!

Well… this probably means we’ve caught up for a day or so… but we’ve added 75 screenshots to our Screenshots section. (They’re all in the ‘Sites‘ pages, and come from the 5 new articles published in the last few days.) Whew!

IGN Xbox has put up the first of a three-part special on Halo – this part contains the prologue to Eric Nylund’s book, ‘Halo: The Fall of Reach’. While the text is identical to the excerpt put up by Random House a few days ago, visiting IGN gets you an extra bonus – a PDF file containing the front and back covers, and what looks like galley proofs of the prologue from the actual book. Go get it! Thanks to Frank Machado for the heads-up!

TeamXbox has put up the first part of their Xbox Unleashed impressions – words from the event floor in New York where Xbox fanatics try to stay alive for 48 hours of non-stop gaming. Crashing eggs and monster lines… it’s a fun read. Sol also managed to throw in his Halo impressions… he liked it:

Halo, single-handedly, helped the Xbox, as a gaming platform, meet my extremely high, two-year, expectations of it.

Go read the rest! (Thanks to TomeOne for the heads-up.)

Uriel points out a new review at Gamestar.de – it’s part of their print review, and it contains a couple of new screens. Uriel promises a translation soon, too. 🙂

They’re pouring in… DarkSkies ran his wife over last night, and dropped in to tell us about it. (He’s also, after playing for a bit, decided to hold off on buying an Xbox – he’ll rent one, then buy the PC version.) Read his post for details!

Another fan impression post – Caerdwyn didn’t seem to like it at all. His final summary suggested it was ‘a solid title’… but each point made it clear he wasn’t impressed.

Sam has taken our request for gameplay feedback to heart, and posted a pretty in-depth look at Kiosk Xbox (no, it’s not the same as Living Room Xbox – read his rundown to see some of the reasons why). Read the rest of the thread, as well – lots of good followup info.

Final Solution has put up Day 2 of his Halo coverage – this includes three things you SHOULDN’T do while playing Halo. Take a look!

Halo’s Universe (in France) has put up a Halo preview (they say it’s the first) – my French isn’t good enough to translate this, but for French speakers, this might be a good place to get info!

In response to a request to see what the Halo DVD actually looks like, Matt Soell popped one in front of the Bungie Webcam. Is that cool community relations, or what?