Rampancy

Clem has posted in the MythVillage forum, saying that The Mill's current absense will not be permanent:

Recently it was taken down for private reasons known to a few people and the who owns it.

It served the myth community since 1999 and has a current archive size of 4.44 Gig. What we feel is one of The Mill's points of differentiation is that the authors of each work had complete control over whether their work appeared or was removed from The Mill. We simply provided the resources for authors to make their work available.

It is not currently available to the community, but will be making it's reappearance ASAP. All content that it had at the time of going down will once again be available when it comes back up.

Currently there are only rumors about what those private reasons are. If there's more solid information available, we'll post it here.

An article at Wired is putting a slightly different twist on the console wars this shopping season. They say don't get the GameCube or the Xbox.. at least not yet:

After testing each console for a couple weeks, Wired News' advice is: Don't get out your credit card just yet. Wait a few months before you make your decision. The Box and the Cube -- two names so similar it makes you wonder whether the companies share a marketing department -- each have their plusses and minuses, and neither system trumps the other.

One hates to be so wishy-washy in a review of products that ought to be easy to figure out. These are video game systems, after all, not literature; they're each identified by a list of specs that, through a simple line-by-line comparison, should tell you all you need to know.

They admitted that while the Xbox looked better on paper, they felt some games looked better and loaded faster on the GameCube.

But what about Halo? Alas... Wired didn't even play it:

Halo, the most anticipated game for the XBox, is a first-person shooter. Although game reviewers have called it [GameSpot review] one of the best shooter games ever released -- and while there's no reason not to believe them -- it's still just a shooter, which is not the type of game enjoyed by everyone. (But that statement is made with a slight bit of reservation; Wired News could not, alas, get hold of Halo, and it just might be that Halo is so good it makes XBox head-and-shoulders better than Cube. While this is doubtful from what others have said [Salon.com], it's nevertheless possible.)

Got money burning a hole in your pocket this holiday season... but not TOO much? Wired has a radical piece of advice:

The XBox, at $300, is $100 more than the Cube. But if it's price you're concerned about, buy a Sega Dreamcast, which was reduced to $50 this week.

Of course, where you'll continue to get new games for it I guess is left for the reader to determine.

Jim Ripclaw Broach at Gamer's Pulse has written a review of Halo, and his was as enthusiastic as any. In fact, he concludes by saying:

If you have read this far into my review sit back and think about two things as we conclude the article. First off, the information disclosed and discussed above is only a fraction of the story, the gameplay, the power of the graphics engine and the fun factor found in this title; and second, Why the hell are you still here and not out getting this game?!? Halo is the must have title for this year - end of story!

They gave the game an overall rating of 96. All areas, including concept, gameplay, graphics, and sound were given ratings of 95 or better. The sole drawback was the 85 rating for replay value. Thanks to Blue's News for the heads-up.

HBO's Louis Wu has posted two news items about Halo-related bits at GameFAQs. The first is a reader review section. As of right now, there are 18 reviews, mostly 9 or 10 points out of time, with only three bad reviews, ranking 4, 5, and 6 out of 10 respectively. Some of these are also inaccurate, claiming (yet again) that PC Halo is cancelled.

The other item is a walkthrough, which is a work in progress. Caution... it contains spoilers, obviously.