Matt’s weekly Halo Update can be found at Rampancy.net this week – as though we didn’t have some idea already how Halo was doing. 🙂 We got names for “here are two people working FULL-TIME on multiplayer” mentioned in the Q&A yesterday – Hardy and Michael – presumably Lebel and Evans, two big names from the Oni team… and we got teasers like this:

Marcus got the lovely gorgeous waterfalls working again and placed a couple of them on the first mission you play after you land on Halo. Of course that will be at dusk and you might be distracted by the enormous structures firing huge bolts of plasma over to the other side of the ring.

Goodness, if that doesn’t pique your interest, you should head over to the Tribes 2 sites, or something. Thanks, Matt! Go read the goodness for yourself.

Thanks to Oliver Heilwagen, who sends in a nicely done desktop image for our Wallpaper page… go grab it! (A little bit o’ green in there, maybe to honor St. Patrick…)

In the interest of sanity, Otokam writes a story of monkeys and quilts. Definitely worth a read. All your stuffing are belong to us.

Thanks to Harry Al-Shakarchi, who pointed out a FiringSquad review of Halo. No new info at this point… but it was encouraging to hear die-hard PC gamers talking about getting the basics of fighting down inside of 5 minutes. Take a look!

fate noticed that the Xbox.com Halo site now has the following comment:

We have a better video coming soon!

There’s also a fun new Halo flash animation at the top of the Games page… but don’t follow the link, it’s showing its PC origins:

http://www.xbox.com/Games/\games\halo

Pax.

A few days ago, we mentioned that Noctavis, of Rampancy.net, had posted a pretty nice analysis of the new screenshots. Soon after that, though, the R.net forum exploded, showering its denizens with shards of broken verbiage, injuring 14, killing 4. One of the casualties was Noc’s analysis post. Luckily, he’s taken the time to reproduce it, and in fact add to it. You can check it out here.

Todd Hansen sent in a couple of theories, which we’ve added to our Theories section: Ring Rotation and Weapons Usage, which plays with orbital bombardment, and Orbits/Seasons/Communications, which looks at weather patterns on the Halo. Have your own ideas about the Halo? Send ’em in! Pax.

Thanks to Char (IMG) for the heads up – MSXbox is running a poll asking what you thought the best game shown at Gamestock was. You know what to do. 🙂

EXCLUSIVE: In response to the comments and confusion surrounding what was expected and what was delivered (to the public, not the press) from the Gamestock event, Matt Soell has answered some questions we’ve put together for him. Read them. If you have more questions that you think should have been asked, send them to the link provided… and we’ll do a second round. Hopefully, this will quell some of the fears expressed over the past couple of days.

Press page updated, with most of the bigger stories from the last couple of days. Also a few that fell through the cracks earlier. Go back and read the GlobalXbox article we mentioned this morning. It’s hilarious.

Someone should hire this guy. Ian McConville, creator of the Gun Models here at HBO, has submitted an entertaining little comic for your perusal. If you like the style, visit the Mac Hall website (soon to move here). Oh, yeah… you can find the comic in our Miscellaneous Art section.

We’ve made a small administrative change to our front page – from now on, the ‘news in brief’ links at the bottom of the page (that refer to yesterday’s news) will point to the actual news item in question – so a simple click will give you our spin on the subject. Following the navigation arrows at the top of the page to previous days (or using the day search on our news archive page) will show the same info. Side benefit – our bungie.net channel will now link directly to the news items, instead of to our front page. Hope folks find this useful! (Thanks, Forrest, for the suggestion.)

Rampancy.net turned up three new Halo mentions around the net this morning: Gamespy’s Gamestock roundup (generic description of the game on the third page, with word that a longer report will be coming), Daily Radar’s Gamestock game rankings (disappointment that Halo didn’t live up to the hype), and another Daily Radar piece in which its editors gave post-event impressions (Halo got pretty universally tepid reviews). Here’s hoping the PlanetXbox hands-on review (the bit Gamespy said was coming soon) is more positive!

Wow. Gamespot UK scored an exclusive interview with Jason Jones this week… there’s a lot of good stuff in there.

GSUK: How has Halo’s focus changed since last E3?

JJ: For a long time we were very focused on a very cinematic third-person network experience on the PC though some people might say those words are mutually exclusive. What we boiled it down to sometime after last E3 was a much more first-person experience because we’re primarily interested in the action and a little bit less in the cinema. We’ve really got down to work on the AI, not only how you’d play against it, but how it would assist you too. Like it’s really fun to drive around with that guy who just hoses people with the chain gun.

Go read the whole thing – it’ll make you happy. (Thanks to Laura Stobart of Gamespot UK and to Massa, of Halo Network, for the heads-up.)

The MSXbox team got a chance to play the Halo mission (and some of the other games) shown at Gamestock, and have put up their impressions… the report should be reassuring to those of us who weren’t there:

Microsoft saw fit to release their own shots and not allow cameras in the event. Whatever their logic was it should be pointed out that you have seen nothing in my opinion. Games like Halo and Azurik are not done justice by the released media.

Their Halo report positively glows – go read it.

A couple of items we noted on R.net, missed ’em first time around: There’s a gushing Halo review (with some interesting multiplayer comments) written in mid-January over at GlobalXbox.com – old screens, but probably worth a read. Also, Mac Halo, IMG’s Halo site, has awoken from its torpor and is back up and running. Easy to lose track of stuff during this media blitz…

Thanks to Char (IMG), who noted on the R.net forum that this thread in the ign.com forum contains another hands-on review of Halo, from a Team 17 member who was at Gamestock. His final summary:

he Conclusion: Everything I thought it would be, and more! It was so visually stunning on the Xbox. The jeep, the player, the aliens, down to the waves, all of it was so jawdropping. I was impressed to say the least.

Questions Answered: The presentation briefly discussed Halo singleplayer and the online features of the game. This should clear up anything with this strange rumor saying that there is no multiplayer. They also mentioned the split screen coop and deathmatch modes if it’s just you and your friends.

Good news,that! Go read the rest – there’s more in his post, and more in the thread, about controller use, among other things.

The third weekly HBO Forum Update from black flag and a red star (earlier every week, it seems – we should call it the 6 Day Update) has been posted. More Jack Daniels is needed.

Thanks to Jonathan Chapman, who sent in a new desktop image using the latest Ring Motif image. Pretty slick! Check it out on our Wallpapers page.

Hawk writes to tell us that HaloCenter has added the second Gamestock movie to its movie archives – and we’ve added them to the mirror list. Go get it!