You may have read somewhere else already that press reviews of Halo 3 (much like Halo 2 before it) are handled in a somewhat different way than other games. Bungie doesn't mail out review copies to journalists in advance; if they did, it's possible the game's ending would have been spoiled by now. GamePro has an article up that details this alternative procedure.

Just as was done previously in Australia and Europe, next week in North America Bungie will be setting up 24-hour gaming sessions on both coasts; one representative from each invited organization will have access to the entire game, but no one will be allowed to publish a word until September 23.

Thanks Louis Wu for the heads-up on this story at HBO.

This week's Bungie Weekly Update-- only two more to go now before the game's out-- is supposedly the biggest ever, at least in terms of kilobytes. Most of the content consists of pictures of Kotubukiya Halo 3 statues and McFarlane Halo 3 figures. The last image is interesting, though, as it seems to show the upcoming revisions to Bungie.net, including the windowed screenshot and recent games interfaces. All the toy images are in our new Halo 3 Toy gallery.

1Up's Halo 3 coverage continues; this time, the Retronauts Blog is traveling further back in time to the colony ship Marathon. There's also an indication from Bruce "Hippieman" Morrison from Freeverse in the comments to that entry to the effect that if there's enough interest, that Marathon Infinity and even the original Marathon can also be brought to Xbox Live, just like Marathon: Durandal has been.

HBO is announcing the winners of their latest Seven on Seven contest. This last competition was to put the Master Chief into an older Bungie game. The seven winners get free downloads of Freeverse's Marathon:Durandal from Xbox Live Arcade.

Japanese publication PingMag interviews Bungie's environmental artist Ken Taya on the cultural influences on design jobs here and in Japan:

Well in terms of semantics the actual word designer and the roles associated with this position differ. Here comes an over generalisation: I feel that the Japanese game developers really focus on the feel of the game above everything else - and the US developers, the look.

A lot of interesting observations on the industry from both sides; check out the entire interview. Thanks Louis Wu for the heads-up.