Sorry for the delay in news today – seems it’s been busy for all of us! Let’s see what I can get through. First up: Manditory Reck has posted music for The Package over at Rampancy.net. It was done by ear, but sounds pretty good!(Louis Wu 19:37:02 UTC)

So for anyone wondering how they might get that mysterious Star tag on the Halo Reach Gamertag tile, urk sheds a little light. Hop over and check out Bungie’s brand new “Bungie All-Stars” program, which will highlight what I’m sure will end up being some pretty awesome community content. Go lookie!(GrimBrother One 19:28:21 UTC)

We’ve had so much fun with our theme weeks lately, we’ve decided to continue the trend. This week I bring you “Race Week”. We’ll be covering Achievements in NFS, Crazy Taxi, Hydro Thunder, and probably some other stuff too. This guide for getting the “Electrically Charged” Achievement is our opening salvo. Enjoy!

Good timing.

Why does this tank have six pedals if there are only four directions?!

I’ll see you on the moon.

Still counting down the kills.

Phat stats!

Do you truly understand the power of patterns?

Sorry for the late post. I haven’t fallen asleep, so it’s still technically Saturday.

If you couldn’t guess from the title, this week’s Deals of the Week is focused on everyone’s favourite shambling undead creature, the zombie. These tasty brains, I mean deals, start today on the XBox Live Marketplace and will be available until January 17th. With game add ons, Arcade games and Avatar items at half price or better, now’s the perfect time to practise your zombie plans.

• Left 4 Dead – Crash Course – 57% off at only 240MSP
• Left 4 Dead 2 – The Passing – Also 57% off at only 240MSP
• Borderlands – The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned – Half price at just 400MSP
• XBLA – Zombie Apocalypse – A full apocalypse for half price at 400MSP
• XBLA -The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai – Samurai price, sliced by 50% down to 400MSP
• Avatar – Borderlands Zombie Mask – Look the part for just 80MSP
• Avatar – Zombie Prop – Give your Avatar an undead playmate for 160MSP

As always, thanks to Major Nelson for the heads up!

So I don’t know how many of you have Halo Waypoint’s website on your regular visit list… but if you’re a Halo fan, you really should. As usual, there’s a Weekly Wrap-Up post that lists all the goodies they’ve posted this week (highlights from there, for me, included the Cryptum Glossary Update (really useful for this content-rich novel), the Master Chief Pyrography (Kassie’s got way more skillz than me!), and the MC Sneakers (gawjuss). There’s plenty of other stuff there, though, that doesn’t make the roundups – Chris Burke covered the World Cyber Games Holiday Heroes tournament, and (as This Spartan Life’s Damian Lacedamian) interviewed Frank O’Connor and bs angel. Mr. Vociferous returned to his Vintage Fisticuffs series, with a piece called Grand Canyon, looking back at Halo’s Two Betrayals level and a critical battle therein. (Glorious.) And Chairleg Productions (search our news for some of their past work) focused on the question “Should Games be Considered Art?” – the resulting video is a really fun 8 minutes. This is really just a small sample of what they’ve offered in the past week or so – so go explore!(Louis Wu 23:14:33 UTC)

MaxRealflugel sent word that Halo: Revolutions (last mentioned in October) is finished. This fan-created story collection has been ten months in the making, and contains art and fiction contributions from at least 15 people. We’ve put up a local copy of the PDF (29 mb) – go grab it!(Louis Wu 17:45:17 UTC)

Taco Power stopped by with word of ‘Flicker‘, his Reach montage. Definitely some nice gameplay in there!(Louis Wu 17:44:17 UTC)

Arithmomaniac… scares me.(Louis Wu 17:42:46 UTC)

Computer and Video Games has posted an article describing what they’d like to see in the next Halo title. Give it a read, and see if you agree!(Louis Wu 17:41:48 UTC)