Despite a strong turnout, the Bungie team was decidedly massacred by Electronic Gaming Monthly, who spanked them 3-0 on the strength of two no-radar Team Slayer games, and even obliged Bungie in the usual Zanzibar CTF game only to win that 3-0, too.
Joystiq has a whole slew of rumors regarding Xbox 2 and Halo 2.5/3 today from an unknown individual or individuals claiming to have special knowledge. Toss some salt over your shoulder and get out your asbestos underwear. (A lot of these predictions are waaaaay out there --Ed.)
The big news in this week's What's What Weekly Update by Frankie over at Bungie.net isn't who's playing Halo 2, it's who won't be playing Halo 2 anymore. Frankie says that Bungie has just banned thousands of players for cheating, network exploits, foul language or player abuse.
And on a side note, the latest Halo Babies comic explains why some of those people might have been banned...
No doubt smarting from serious wounds to their pride from previous Humpday Challenges, Bungie this week decided to knock down some senior citizens trying to cross the street on walkers challenge the Geezer Gamers to some Halo 2.
You want the news? We can't handle the news! Wait, that didn't come out right...
Lots of things going on at Bungie.net this week; more themes and avatars for Groups, requests for fan strategy tips from SketchFactor, and Stosh's birthday.
New Bungie fans who wanted to experience Bungie's earlier science fiction shooter classic, Marathon, up until now were out of luck. The vast majority of stores simply didn't have it for sale, and only a few copies turned up now and then on Ebay. And although a marvelous new project, Aleph One, would allow the game to run on modern operating systems, you still needed the data files from a retail copy of the game to make them work, and only the files from Marathon 1 were available online, in the form of the M1A1 scenario download.
... that there aren't more items in a day than we have minutes (to say nothing of hours) to post them. So here's what happened when I wasn't looking:
Frankie bursts this bubble right off the bat, as well as giving an update on technical and administrative progress in curbing online cheating, in the latest What's What Update at Bungie.net. The Rumor Control column at GameSpot turned out to be right; they considered this rumor bogus.
At the Halo Story Page, Mnemesis interviewed Bungie's Joe Staten on the Halo storyline, setting to rest some old debates, such as who really released the Flood, where the other SPARTANs are and whether or not it's important, the relationship between the Forerunners and the Flood, and time travel. Joe also adds some information about the HSP Timeline. A must-read.
TeamXbox has an editorial up on how Bungie implemented stat-tracking, leaderboards, and RSS feeds for Halo 2, and why more gaming companies don't use XML.
The guys at TeamXbox have delivered Bungie their first major defeat from a wholly external group in a Humpday Challenge; read all about the suffering at Bungie.net.
Vector40 notes the winners of the Bungie Tribute Poetry Contest over at The Junkyard; kudos to DarkTyrant, Murph MacManus and Raven3509, the #1, #2 and #3 winners, respectively.
Mjolnir Mark IV has submitted the Marathon's tenth anniversary to the games section of Slashdot, with links to the Marathon Story Page, the Halo Story Page's area on Marathon connections, and Aleph One. So if any of those sites go down today... you'll know why.
Between Marathon's tenth anniversary and this Christmas thing coming up, there's lots to do, necessitating Yet Another News Roundup:
