Well, maybe Stuntmutt will have to modify one of his new characters in One One Se7en, as it appears that Mac Halo doesn't suffer from the same performance bottlenecks that PC Halo does-- at least not according to Corey Tamas of Macgamer, who rated Mac Halo 99 out of a 100.

The bad news? Tamas drops a note that "Alas, Mac Halo lacks the Xbox's cooperative mode and no plans exist to add it in the future." Actually, last we'd read coop was still a questionmark for a future patch for the PC version, which would then open up the question of putting in the Mac version, but perhaps that's already gone by the boards.

Thanks Louis Wu of HBO.

Brandon "vector40" Oto has written a tutorial on flying the Banshee called Banshee Handling in our Halo Articles section. Maybe this will help me a bit; frankly, I've been on the side of the argument that says that Banshees are unbalancing Halo multiplayer, but that may be because of lag... or lack of skill. Yeah, definitely lag... or lack of skill.

Several IMG reader reviews, as well as the IMG review itself, have listed as a con that FSAA (full screen anti-aliasing) is broken in Mac Halo. However, a quick turn around the forums at Gearbox that ported Halo from the Xbox to the PC will turn up the fact that Halo does not support FSAA. The Halo PC Performance FAQ at HBO covers this under point 1.3.1. The IMG review claims that MacSoft said this was due to a "bug in ATI's drivers", however, Halo on the PC doesn't support FSAA on Nvidia cards, either, so I doubt this is caused by a bug in ATI's drivers. And I don't see how Mac Halo would support FSAA if PC Halo doesn't, unless something about DX9 compared to OpenGL is responsible. So while the lack of FSAA support might still be considered a strike against the game for those who are used to it, this isn't a bug in the game or in anybody's drivers-- it's just not there, and turning it on will reduce your framerate.

Jean-Luc Dinsdale from InsideMacGames has (predictably, if also accurately) gushed about Halo on the Mac, calling it "the most advanced, the best produced, the most amazing first-person shooter to have ever graced [the] Mac". (All you Half-Life fans, make sure you read that last part carefully.The four-page review is quite thorough, but overall they give the game a 9.25 out of ten (what are they using, the Richter scale?) The review also ends with an important note for those who haven't yet gotten over the Microsoft buyout:

And, before our readers start sending the inevitable torrent of angry emails flooding my way, I urge any and all bitter and ungrateful gamers who still carry their grudge against Bungie after all these years, to stop for one second, put your emotions aside for a moment, and take a fresh, unbiased look at this game. Underneath the blue and white Microsoft logo you'll find a game that was the heart and soul of the dedicated, talented, and extremely hard-working Bungie Studios team whose games you've enjoyed and relished for years. And for that reason alone, Halo is worth buying.

Sound advice. On the con side, IMG does note the "repetetive design" criticism (hopefully no more of this after Halo 2) and the high system requirements.

According to SketchFactor, there's another edition of Ask The Cananimators up at Bungie.net; I think this is the third installment. It's about bacon again. And hockey. Well, what do you expect, they're Canadian.An interesting note in this is that both the Cananimators use Maya to make their animations. The animation package used to make mods was a sticking point for many Mac users, because Gearbox said that to import models into the Halo editing tools, you'd need to use 3D Studio Max or its free younger sibling, gMax. Both packages run only on the PC. Maya, of course, runs on the Mac OS. So Bungie animators, developing for the Xbox, are using a program that can run on the Mac... while Gearbox's porting team developed a version of the editing tools that apparently can't work with Maya because there's no filter. Hmm.

Halo for the MacOS platform (MacOS X only) has now shipped in North America; news has spread around the Web from MacCentral, Blue's News, Break Point Halo, and, of course, HBO. Halo for the Mac was ported by Westlake Interactive and published by MacSoft.

MacCentral has two notes on the Mac gaming scene, which will certainly be getting slightly more attention from the gaming press as Halo finally "returns home" to the platform it was originally announced for more than four years ago.First, Duane Johnson, formerly of Westlake Interactive (the company that ported Mac Halo, as well as countless other games) is becoming the fourth programmer to join the newly-formed internal development team at Aspyr. Aspyr previously only published games that were either developed or ported by other studios. Johnson worked on Halo, MOHAA, Elite Force and Elite Force II, among others.Next, IDG has announced that the Macworld Conference & Expo will have a Macintosh Gaming Area this year. The conference is being held at the Moscone Center in San Fransisco, CA. Mac gamers will be able to sample Halo, Unreal Tournament, Age of Mythology, Splinter Cell and others on a selection of G5s and 17" iMacs.

Louis Wu at HBO passed on word from RavenEA that this week's MacGamer Giveaway features five copies of Mac Halo; the subject of the contest is creation of an image of the Master Chief on vacation. The five funniest win.

News of the Mac Halo Gold Master spread everywhere over the past few days; it seems the disc went to duplication on the 5th and is expected to hit store shelves on or near the projected target date of December 11; news broke at HBO, Subnova, Bungie.net, MacCentral and Blue's News. If you haven't already, you can preorder through Amazon and support Rampancy at the same time.

Under the headline "The Circle Is Complete", MacSoft has put up a page on Halo for the Mac, which will be released on December 11. In addition to the official release date, as well as information on the new maps and weapons (same as in PC Halo), the page has the Minimum and Recommended system requirements:

• Minimum: Macintosh computer with 800MHz G4/G5 or faster processor, Mac OS X v10.2.8 or higher, 256MB RAM, 32MB AGP Video Card (GeForce 2MX/ATI 7000 or better), 1.4GB hard disk space. Internet or LAN connection required for online play.
• Recommended: 1GHz G4/G5 or faster processor, Mac OS X v10.3, 512MB RAM, 64MB AGP Video Card (GeForce 4ti-ATI 9000 or better).

Gholsbane tipped us off at RHL that Michael "Blades" Bagnall of MythDevelopers will appear on The Gamesome Mac, a show on MacRadio.com. It will be broadcast tonight, between 9 and 11 PM Eastern, and will be available on-demand after that.

Listening requires QuickTime 5 or better and a minimum 28.8 Kbps Internet connection.Further details can be found at MythDev.

Louis Wu at HBO, tipped off by Toxicoman and Howie, posted that there are system requirements for Mac Halo listed at the Apple Store. Look on the right hand side, in the "New to the Store" column, or do a search for "Halo". Nevermind that MacSoft's Al Schilling said only yesterday they weren't determined yet. Here's what the Store says:

• Power PC G4 700 Mhz or faster
• Mac OS X 10.2.5
• 256MB RAM (iMacs req. 512MB)
• Radeon 8500 or Geforce 2 MX with 32MB

A couple of interesting notes there. Despite the much-vaunted "Megahertz Myth", and the difference between OpenGL and DirectX9, the requirements for PC and Mac Halo are nearly identical. That says to me that either the video card is more important to Halo than anything else, or these system requirements are really just a copy of the PC requirements.

MacSoft's Al Schilling told IMG that although the hardware specifications for Mac Halo aren't known yet, the boxes are going to be printed very soon.

Shades of Marathon? Hmmm.... Thanks HBO.

SketchFactor posted at Bungie.net about a note sent to him by Destineer. They claim they've had a breakthrough in performance, netting about a week's worth of improvements in a major late-night session. Beta 4, with network play, is supposedly coming soon.

As of this moment, trying to load the Mill's url, http://fileball.net/mill/ just redirects you to Fileball's front page. Looks like it's gone, perhaps for good this time.

The Lh'owon Ar'kives, containing files for players of Bungie's earlier shooter, Marathon, also hosted at Fileball, is still there.