Too much laughs to handle!

The Podtacular staff aren’t only crazy about everything Halo, but we are also college students working to our careers. It takes a good amount of time and effort to stay up on current events in the Halo and Xbox communities, and it takes even more to produce a podcast and manage a community. A lot of time has been pulled away from Podtacular recently because of the approaching end of the school semester. As a result of all of these factors, we aren’t able to keep you up to date with the latest and greatest all the time. This is where you come in.

News happens very fast today primarily because of the internet. Once a story pops up in one place, it usually propagates to other similar news sites within an hour. People are able to keep up some of these developments, but they usually appear on obscure or not-so-popular news sites. On top of that, there are few people who can actually digest a story and create a comprehensive summary in a short amount of time. Now we’re not asking for anyone to be a fantastic journalist: if you were, you’d probably seek an actual job (we would appreciate you anyways). With that said, our first opening to take on writers has come with the Noble Map pack. We are looking for a couple of good reviews (since everyone else has one). This is just one of many opportunities and more will come. If you are interested in becoming a writer for the site, here are the criteria:

• Must be 18 or older
• Must submit at least two news stories a week during the evaluation period
• Articles may be of any topic relating to Halo, Xbox and other gaming news significant to Podtacular.
• Articles and summaries must be of adequate length reflecting the size of the original content. For example, reposts of articles from other sites should be around 100 words, summaries between 200 to 300, and articles between 400 to 500.
• Articles should maintain an adequate level of professionalism and be free of spelling and grammar errors.
• Articles should be send to duststorm@podtacular.com. During evaluation, articles may be posted on the Podtacular news feed, at which point the content becomes property of Podtacular. Author will be given due credit for the article.

This set of criteria is not final and may be revised.

Things to consider for the Halo: Reach – Noble Map Pack Review

• Layout and visual aesthetics of the maps.
• Uniqueness of maps
• What games types best suit each map and how do map characteristics affect gameplay?
• Areas of the map that are of significant interest or important for game play and team dynamic.

Deadline for the Map Pack Review is Friday, December 10th.

A few of their favorite things!

Sometimes you wish you’d gone in alone.

Cracked has a collection of 6 Video Game Heroes Made Useless By Supporting Characters – and Halo’s Master Chief is #1 on the list. You may or may not agree with their logic, but it’s a fun read. Thanks, Sl’askia.(Louis Wu 17:25:39 UTC)

FoxmanFX stopped in with word of a new Noble Map Pack Achievement Guide at Halo Reach Daily – as well as the HBO edition of HRD’s daily Challenge guide. Check it!(Louis Wu 17:01:57 UTC)

MelkorTheGreat is back with the latest from DWT Productions – Halo: Reach E.O.A. Episode 4 is full of new glitches and tricks. Once again, some amazing stuff!(Louis Wu 17:01:32 UTC)

DeathMcGunz has been making a machinima series for about a month now – there are 8 episodes so far. Kevin and Roger are a pair of players in Reach that Forge stuff. Understated humor – I liked ’em! (Louis Wu 17:00:54 UTC)

Morpheus brought us a bunch of G4 links that reference Reach in various ways – always nice to have summaries! (Louis Wu 17:00:28 UTC)

Lars Bakken had a message about the Firefight Versus playlist, for folks who might not grok the whole idea – thanks to MoltenSlowa for bringing it over to our forum.(Louis Wu 16:59:29 UTC)

Bungie’s written up a Noble Map Pack FAQ explaining some of the nuances of how the DLC works, in terms of when you’ll see the maps in Matchmaking, what happens if you’re trying to play with people that don’t have them, and so on. Give it a read! (Louis Wu 16:58:31 UTC)

Immersion is underway. We just released episode 2, “Online Gaming Distractions” with special guests Mega 64! We had a blast making this and we hope all of you enjoy it. Keep tuning in this week for more videos featuring Mega 64. For Science!

A little light learning.

I’ve got two videos for you today, both from a “secret” game called ilomilo. The first is for “The Musician”.

And the second is for “You’re In The Way”. Keep playing and look back soon for more guides.

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So this podcast is about a week overdue, but better late than never we suppose. We have the whole gang here this week along with JakFireDragon from Cyberline Films talking about making custom maps in Halo: Reach, or so we think. Discussions start out on topic and derail all over the place after we read our only submission (our fans don’t love us anymore?). There are still plenty of laughs as always. Enjoy

Giant Bomb has a half-hour video Quick Look at the Noble Map Pack – if you’ve got the time, go see what they thought! (Standard matchmaking, with voiceover commentary.)(Louis Wu 21:11:25 UTC)

Minime637 was touched by the beauty of the new maps – there are 6 new panoramas up in his DeviantART gallery, with previews in his forum post. Nice!(Louis Wu 19:26:44 UTC)

Kotaku has a few videos taken from outside the playing areas of the three new Noble maps – the skyboxes that Bungie has created for these playing spaces are AMAZING. Go watch. (Louis Wu 16:00:01 UTC)

Hedgemony has posted the next batch of Halo: Guard Duty pages – start here for pages 8-10, then follow his links for pages 11-16! (Louis Wu 15:59:34 UTC)

Adam Dorsey sent us word of the latest episode of Multiplayer Singleplayer – and his review of the Halo Reach Noble Map Pack. Not your typical review… (Louis Wu 15:58:45 UTC)