Rampancy

On May 15, 2003, Project Magma will be releasing the first major update to Myth II in several years when they present version 1.4. Among its features are:

... over 100 enhancements, bug fixes and new features to Myth II: Soulblighter, in the areas of: graphics; interface improvements; elimination of plugin lag; elimination of chat lag; elimination of the 'walking bug', new mapmaking features; AI improvements and bug fixes; optional vTFL (virtual TFL) gameplay, which effectively brings both games and communities to the same program; and much, much more.

The update will be released approximately two months from today, which also happens to be the day that the team released version 1.3.2. 1.3.2 fixes numerous performance issues with WindowsXP and also brings OS X compatibility to Myth II.

Much more information can be gathered about version 1.4 from the Project Magma site (particularly the downloads section). Everything sounds extremely promising (TFL gameplay in Myth II!), and we can't wait for the final release.

Several major websites reported earlier this month Bungie's revelation that Halo 2 would not be released in time for the 2003 holidays as many had expected. The news even went as far as major mainstream sites such as Reuters and BBC News.

Matt Soell made the original posts at Bungie.net and the HBO forum, and it was soon picked up by Louis Wu in the HBO news. After the news started to reach other sites, poena.dare compiled a list on HBO's forum.

There is no release date other than 2004 at this point.

The Bungie Store is taking pre-orders for Halo: The Flood . At 6.99 USD it's a bargin! Also please order from the Bungie Store since their profits go towards fan gatherings.

OK, since we hardly ever update around here these days, maybe this will slip by and no one will notice. Maybe not.

Anyway, this has to be about the strangest Halo reference we've ever seen. And before anybody complains, the text and images in this story we're about to link to are of a decidedly sexual, some might say odd-- nature. So be forewarned.

Game Girl Advance ran a story last October on a Japanese game called Rez for the PlayStation2, which ships with a peripheral called a trance vibrator . Lord knows how this escaped our notice til now.

And yes, that means exactly what you think it does. Pervert. And if you weren't thinking that, you're probably too young to be reading the story anyway. Whatever you do, don't ask your parents what it means and then mention we told you about it. That would be bad.

At any rate, the Halo reference comes in here (pun intended):

Now, let me confess that this is not the first time that I've used a game component to, er, stimulate myself physically. Ever since they invented the whole rumble pack/vibrating technology in controllers, it's been on my mind, and sometimes in my practice (fellow game girls, you know what I'm talking about). The thing is, though, it's often frustrating since the vibrations are not nice and steady, but sporadic. Also I found it's tough to actually play the game and use the controller in nasty ways at the same time. I did discover that Halo was a pretty good game for this (although for not much else), because as the gunner in the Warthog, you have unlimited ammo and you can just park yourself somewhere and rat-tat-tat to your heart's content. Another issue, and one not solved by the Xbox controller, is the shape of the device - less than ideal.

Unless somebody can do better than that, I vote this the strangest use for a Warthog ever. Randy Glass, move over.

Thanks to Mikey-San for pointing this out on RHL.