From Wintergore:

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

12 Days of Halo 4 – A Halo 4 Holiday Song

We’ve updated the Halo 4 Statistics app on Halo Waypoint. To navigate to the Halo 4 Statistics app, click on the “4” logo on the top navigation and log in with your Microsoft account credentials. Check out some the new features below.

Challenges
In the Challenges section of the app, you’ll find a new Waypoint section that contains challenges supporting the Virgin Gaming Tournament.

Upcoming Awards
At the top of your Service Record, you’ll now find upcoming awards for your next rank.

Stats by Map
In War Games (both matchmaking and custom), you can now view your stats by map.

Spartan Ops: Bests, Weapons, and Enemies
You can now view your Bests, stats by weapon, and stats by enemy for Spartan Ops.

Medals
We’ve improved how you view medals.  Now you can see them all in one place, including medals that you haven’t earned yet.

Stats for Other Players
You can now view War Games, Spartan Ops, and Campaign stats for any player.

K/D Timeline
It’s now easy to see the kill/death progression throughout a game. In game details, you can view the K/D timeline for all players.

To check out all of the new features and improvements, head over to http://app.halowaypoint.com!

From HaloFanForLife:

I’m proud to announce HFFL’s Halo Holiday contest. So what is the contest going to be? It’s a classic Christmas song rewrite, with a Halo theme!

The song must include at least two verses and a chorus. Extra thought will be given to entries including artwork. Extra EXTRA thought will be given to those who submit the song as a YouTube video.

I will take submissions for the contest from now until December 23. The grand prize is a Halo Mega Bloks 10th Anniversary Warthog, the second place winner will receive a Mega Bloks Halo Covert Ops: Battle Unit set, and there will be three third prizes. Click the link below for additional information and to enter. Good luck!

Happy Halodays – A New HFFL Contest

From Diego:

Malukah made a new song, and it’s a tribute to Halo and Cortana called “Frozen Sleep”. It hits me right in the feels.

Frozen Sleep – A Halo 4 / Cortana Tribute Song

Halo is a fictional universe. However, sometimes we catch sight of things in real life that remind us of our favorite science fiction video game franchise. This particular series, titled Halo in Real Life, showcases those very moments. Enjoy the subtle Halo references sometimes spotted when out and about in the real world, and if you have a picture you’d like to submit for possible future inclusion, send it to bsangel[at]halowaypoint.com!

As seen and captured by funjon

From Kalbelgarion:

Grifball is now five years old. Celebrate the anniversary of the world’s greatest sport with birthday wishes from Rooster Teeth, Xbox LIVE, and 343 Industries, including Frank O’Connor, Kiki Wolfkill, and THE Kevin Franklin!

We’ll also be running four one-night tournaments this week to celebrate. Check out all the details at GrifballHub.com!

Happy 5th Birthday, Grifball!

From undr zid:

Forge Cafe is hosting its first Forge contest. The deadline will be TWO WEEKS from now, ending December 30th, 2012 at midnight CST.

Rules:
• You will be given a template that can be downloaded from Lit3rly Log1c’s File Share.
• You can add whatever you want to the template, but you are not allowed to edit the template itself.
• How you use the budget is entirely up to you. You could use all of it, or only 500; the choice is yours.
• You can have one partner to collaborate with, or you can work on your own. Note that only one person will be awarded per map.
• The map can support any game type, including mini games, but MUST be functional as a working map.
•Your map must be playable with 16 people, as these will be judged at the Forge Cafe Game Nights.

Disqualification criteria:
• Map was turned in after the deadline.
• Map is not functional. Spawns not set up, spawns off map, trapped spawns, game type not set up, etc.
• Offensive map title or description.
• Stolen map or manipulated map (plagiarized, hacked, or any other means of cheating).

Judging criteria – Maps will be judged based on:
• Aesthetic appeal.
• Reaction of testers.
• Overall fun and replay-ability.
• Creativity.

Prizes:
[1st] 1600 MSP card + premium user promotion.
[2nd] Halo 4 Avatar T-shirt code (male or female) + premium user promotion.
[3rd] Premium user promotion.

Good luck to all participants!

UPDATE: Template has been updated to fix a minor glitch. Contest has been extended 1 week + 1 day; it will now end Monday, January 7th, 2012 at midnight CST. Search “Lit3rly Log1c”, “undr zid”, or “FC Quicksilver” and download “Contest Template V1.1.”

Wild’s Forge Challenge – A Forge Cafe Contest

From CruelLEGACEY:

The Fails of Requiem is back with more fails, wins, and laughs from Halo 4! Episode 2 features a great example of how NOT to prevent your Mantis from being hijacked, a few show-stopping assassinations, as well as some of the worst melee combat you’ve ever seen!

The Fails of Requiem 2 – A Halo 4 Montage

From firestream:

This desktop is actually based off the shots of the new Play Arts Kai figures coming out next year, particularly the Sarah Palmer one. Feel free to download and enjoy!

Sarah Palmer – A Fan-made Halo 4 Wallpaper

From HT Edge:

This is our fifth Halo 4 Montage, featuring clips from the King of the Hill playlist!

King of the Hill – Halo 4 Weekly Montage 5

We would like to thank all of our loyal fans that helped to make the digital release of Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn an outstanding success. During the film’s first week, it broke into the top ten movies on iTunes for rentals and downloads. The live-action story of Thomas Lasky and the Master Chief beat out some of this summer’s top Hollywood blockbusters. Thank you for helping make this possible!

From DaFrontlineTrooper:

My name is Andrew Cook, and I specialize in propmaking, special effects, and digital design. Check out my newest creation, the Halo 4 UNSC SAW!

UNSC SAW – A Fan-made Halo 4 Prop

From HaloFanForLife:

Here it is folks, the fourth in a series of comic books from Spartan Ops. Spartan Thorne questions Halsey, while being questioned himself…Now in “Spartan Ops Episode 4: Didact’s Hand.”

Fan-made Halo 4 Spartan Ops Graphic Novel: Part 4

From Certain Affinity:

This video covers how to place Ordnance Drops in Forge mode on Halo 4. Descriptions are given for Initial Drops, Random Drops, and Objective Drops.

Halo 4 Forge Tutorial – Ordnance Drops

From Kete:

Podcasters look out, you’re being watched. The first episode of our Spectator Mode is incoming this Saturday night, featuring the Forward Unto Dawn Podcast. We will be recording their Episode 10 live and discussing the first season of Spartan Ops. We will go live at 9pm ET and start the recording shortly after that. Come join us and witness a podcast recording within another podcast recording. What does that even mean? Let’s find out ’cause we don’t know either!

FUDcast Episode 10

From DefendTheHouse:

DefendTheHouse is proud to present the second installment of our Halo 4 Mythbusters series! In this episode, we put some of our most asked questions to the test.

Halo 4 Mythbusters – Episode 2

From HaloFanForLife:

Here is another great fan-made piece of Halo art. Felipe Couto, the artist of this piece, says he created it in Photoshop, freehand, using his Wacom Intuos. VERY COOL piece of art here!

Spartan-117 – Halo 4 Fan Art

From petetehduck:

Forge Quacks are bite-size videos that demonstrate some of the quirks that exist in Halo 4’s Forge editor. If you have a suggestion for a Forge Quack video, use the form on this page to submit it.

Today’s Forge tip: Extraction Targets are solid objects that will vanish when shot and then respawn per their respawn settings.

Forge Quacks 3 – A Halo 4 Video