Gamasutra has an interview with Bungie Senior Graphics Engineer Hao Chen – it’s a technical look at how Bungie is trying to solve problems for their next game, and how they’re approaching graphic challenges. Their experience with Halo drives many of their investigations – a great read! Thanks to PsychoRaven, over at NeoGAF.(Louis Wu 18:27:01 UTC)

Halo Waypoint has a Stride Championship match – a 2v2 match, Clutch and Cloud (Believe the Hype) vs Hysteria (Triggers Down) and Heinz (Dynasty). Great gameplay!(Louis Wu 18:24:31 UTC)

CyReN announced a huge (15 minute) Halo montage from Jeenyus – 3 years of original Halo LAN footage, boiled down to a quarter hour. Check it out!(Louis Wu 17:02:26 UTC)

hezekiah told us about Fails of the Weak Episode 67 (AH.com | YouTube) – last Fails of the year!(Louis Wu 16:57:35 UTC)

Check out AssaultGodzilla’s newest Halo Music Video, this time set to Linkin Park’s “My December“. Some really nice editing as always, and a meaningful feel to the whole piece. Take a look!(GrimBrother One 16:54:47 UTC)

Ty_Coker stopped in yesterday to announce SYNAW Season 2 Episode 5 – plus a bonus teaser!(Louis Wu 16:54:17 UTC)

Kermit wants to help you ring in the new year with two new panoramas. That frog knows beauty! Check them out!(GrimBrother One 16:51:47 UTC)

Grumpy let us know about a new (yes, new) variant on the ‘get the Scarab Gun from Metropolis, get down alive’ Halo 2 trick – congrats to DrBizz. He got up to the top in single-player, grabbed the gun, then corner-rode all the way down to the bottom (with the help of a Rocket Launcher). No checkpoints! Killer. There’s a B.net thread, or if you just want to see the action, a YouTube link.(Louis Wu 16:50:13 UTC)

This past week, yours truly was teaching a winter break camp on video game design for a group of middle school students. Many of them were big Halo fans, and one of them decided to bring in a collection of Halo weapons he had created using Legos. In the images you’ll also see a Mega Bloks Halo Covenant Energy Sword for reference. Pics can be found here, here, and here. Check out this young fan’s very cool interpretation of some of our favorite tools of destruction! (GrimBrother One 16:21:13 UTC)

On a site note, everyone here at HBO wants to wish the Halo Community and beyond a very happy and safe New Year. 2011 was an exciting year to be a Halo fan, and 2012 looks to be no different. We plan on being there every step of the way, just like always!(GrimBrother One 16:16:02 UTC)

343 Industries posted a video today featuring 11 of their favorite user-submitted clips from 2011. It’s a fun collection to look back on; some you may have seen, and others you may have missed. It’s a quick view though, at 3 minutes and 43 seconds (an accident I’m sure), so go check it out!(GrimBrother One 16:13:28 UTC)

The Tyrant let us know that 343’s Verohime is featured in the latest Women of Xbox video – short, and in fact not gaming related at all… but Virohime is an important part of the Halo franchise team, and the information she imparts might save your life one day… so we’re going to let this one go. Go watch – it’s less than a minute!(Louis Wu 19:32:20 UTC)

We got word from a Halo fan who created some very cool Forge art for her dad – it was a birthday/Christmas present, but we were late finding it. (Sorry about that!) You can go see the original artwork, and the Forge recreations, on this page – and be sure to explore both Amy’s FileShare at B.net and David’s website for more cool stuff! (Louis Wu 17:09:18 UTC)

MASSAIKUR stopped in with word of Halo Reach Z over 9000 – you can never have too many memes in your machinima.(Louis Wu 16:58:29 UTC)

CruelLEGACEY let us know that the end-of-the-year wrapup Waypoint Community Modcast Episode 8 is now online – 2 hours of Skyrim discussion, with a hint of Halo.(Louis Wu 16:52:12 UTC)

At PAX Prime, back in August, 343 Industries showed off a concept art trailer for Halo 4 that ended with a sequence that was hard to see – but fans immediately separated it out into its component frames and compiled it into a coherent image. And that’s where things stood… until Leviathan pointed out a YouTube vid he just stumbled across that makes a pretty good case for where the teaser image might have come from. The only problem… the source seems to be some fan art HE (Leviathan) created! (And back in February, to boot!) I’m sure the teaser image will turn out to be something completely different – but it’s pretty amusing, all the same.(Louis Wu 15:11:27 UTC)

Prime999r stopped in to let us know that Decline Part B is live. (We mentioned Part 1 back in November.) It’s in French, and though it has English subtitles, the translation… leaves something to be desired. It’s pretty hard to follow what’s going on if you don’t speak French. Cinematography’s pretty nice, though!(Louis Wu 14:52:45 UTC)

After two weeks of totally empty Fan Fiction submission queues, there is a single piece available for your reading pleasure – check it out!(Louis Wu 14:46:04 UTC)

Be careful how much time you take to express your feelings, if you’re playing Halo multiplayer! Paul Maestri is back with a new Halo Heads which made me laugh.(Louis Wu 21:24:57 UTC)