Small Halo snippet in Jim’s E3 Post-Op at Daily Raider. Halo is the game other developers are now trying to beat! Mark Rein (Unreal 2) was reported to have said:

But Rein simply hinted at the amazing things around the corner (vehicles, super-high poly character models), and we were desperate for any niblet on Unreal 2 for the PC or Xbox. He claimed that the next big thing coming from them was going to put Halo to shame.

Halo is the yardstick to beat other games with! 😉

Thanks to Allenthar, who has submitted a new wallpaper for our Wallpaper page, and a new banner for our Banners page. Tired of that old stuff? Grab some new stuff!

Kudos to HiddenTalon, who found yet another E3 wrapup at Outpost D-34. Here’s the Halo article. They got a couple of things wrong (they described the test machines at e3 as “PIII’s with GE Force 2’s”, while in reality they had TNT2 Ultra’s in them), but the “Tribes on crack” comment is probably right on. 🙂

Couple of Halo sightings around the net, courtesy of Rampancy.net… first, All Games Network has a couple of Halo-related films (although none of them seem to be viewable on a mac, and only the First Impressions of Halo seem to be viewable on a Win98 box with the free version of RealPlayer installed), and Playboy had a small e3 section in which they describe Halo as having “the best-looking graphics ever seen in a PC game.” I think you should all hit Noc up for the source of that tip…

Halo Network continues to scan in the E3 press kit… today’s installment contains pages 14 and 15. These two contain frequently asked questions… nice to see official Bungie answers to some of these, even though we’ve gotten unofficial answers along the line. Check it out! (Thanks to the Marathon’s Story page for the heads-up.)

Blam!… The Halo SETI Marines bump another team in the Club Rankings. Top 50, here they come! Today’s climb is thanks to Ashley Frost, who brought 1632 units with her when she joined. Welcome,Ashley! 139 other marines added units today… were you one of them? Check the 24 hour stats to find out!

Thanks to HiddenTalon on our forumfor pointing us to an another E3 wrap-up piece this time at Heat. Here’s what they had to say:

Halo – the graphics and physics engine of this game have already created quite a stir. Bungie still needs to get a full demo for users to truly appreciate it’s qualities. We’ll have more on this in the coming months – count on it!

Short and sweet.

The theories page has seen a couple of new additions; Mostafa Sadraii posts a discussion of some observations he’s made from the various films released to date, and Rony Sanchezspeculates on the Jjaro logo and its relevance to Halo. (Note: Many of the ideas presented here were first brought up on the Marathon’s Story page (check What’s New for February 8 and 9 of this year), and were summarized on this page.)Thanks, guys!

Seen at Marathon’s Story: Gamasutra has an interesting article, originally presented at the 2000Game Developer’s Conference, on ways to use cinematic techniques, developed over the past 75years, in games that need cinematic sequences in order to drive the storyline. It’s an interesting read, all by itself, and relevant here because Halo has positioned itself (or its fans have positioned it) as a game with a rich, complex backstory, and will most likely require some cinematic sequences to further the solo play. (And the E3 trailer has made it clear that Halo is quite capable of producing such sequences.) Go take a look!

Bungie.net has a new poll up… “What platform do you use for gaming?” Interesting results so far…

Is Bungie planning on licensing the Halo and Oni engines for installment games? So says Computer Games Magazine, as reported by Myndreach on our forum. Give it a read!

Major kudos to Massa of the German Halo Network site for scanning in another part of Bungie’s E3 press kit. This one has a pic of the marine and the backstory of Halo. Go take a look see. Nice scoop Massa. 🙂

Apple’s Quicktime Trailer page lists four Game Trailers. One of these is Halo with a big [NEW] following it. Unfortunately this is still the old MacWorld Expo movie from July 1999. So why is it called new?

The Halo SETI Marinesare now only 2000 units behind the next team in the SETI rankings. Got to keep the pressure on. The last 24 hours sees Jjaro tech return to true form and DwK frogblasts nice marines? Find out if you got frogblasted last night on the 24 hours stats page.

In aSpecial post-E3 RoundupIncite PC offer what they claim to be new Halo screenshots. While we’d all like to see new Halo screenshots these are not new. Sorry guys. 🙁

Thanks to Bagman for pointing us to a two page E3 Halo previewat FiringSquad. The preview offers a description of the Halo movie. There’s also a piece on Oni.

YA Poll… Gamedesign.net has ANOTHER “Best Game from E3?” poll. Halo is currently leading the pack… but there aren’t many votes. Tired of polls yet? (Thanks to BoySinister, at R.net,for the heads-up.)

Interesting post over at Rampancy.net… SiliconDream has provided a transcript of one of the panel discussions from E3; the subject was “What makes a good license?” and one of the questions got an intriguing answer from Peter Tamte, Executive VP of Publishing for Bungie. Remember the rumors that Bungie was working on a game from The Matrix? Read this.

GameSpy’s Best and Worst of E3 Awards are up… and Halo takes Best Action Game! Nice job.

GameCritics.com posted a photo journal of E3 today. Halo caught the reviewers eye, even though he was focused on console games… nice shot! (Tip o’ the hat to Blues News, who posted the journal link.)