HBO is running another Seven on the Seventh contest; the prize this time is Marathon: Durandal, the XBLA conversion of the Bungie classic by Freeverse. To enter the contest, draw a picture of the Master Chief having "wacky adventures" in older Bungie games. See HBO for the complete rules.

Australia's PALGN has posted a review of Freeverse's XBLA port of Marathon: Durandal. Their verdict:

Marathon: Durandal is one of the best value games on the XBLA. You could spend more time playing through this than Halo, and at a fraction of the cost. There are aspects of the game that are archaic and it’s not a good game in short bursts, however, it provides a mysterious and lengthy experience for anyone who is willing to immerse themselves.

Over at 1Up, Jeremy Parish is Revisiting Halo, going over the Cortana Letters and pre-buyout screenshots; they promise even a look at the Marathon trilogy will be on tap.

The most recent Preferred Player column over at Xbox.com, penned by KP, is on Freeverse's XBLA port of Marathon: Durandal; specifically, an XBL cooperative game of Marathon the author played with yours truly and other notable Bungiefen Geary11 and ZuP101.

I've been playing the heck out of Freeverse's Marathon: Durandal on Xbox Live. As it's an "old school" shooter missing a lot of the technical features found in more modern games, I had always assumed that the majority of its players would be old-time Bungie fans like myself.

When I saw SniperStealth atop the single-player leaderboard with over thirty million points, I felt here must surely be an old Marathon hand who knows every twist and turn of each level without even glancing at the map.

That's not true, as it turns out. SniperStealth only had a chance to play the original briefly before diving into M:D on XBLA, but that can only be good news for Freeverse if more Bungie fans who haven't played Marathon check in to see where the roots of Halo came from.

SniperStealth was kind enough to spend a few moments to answer my questions about what drew him to this classic game.

Click "read more" from the front page for the transcript of Rampancy's interview with SniperStealth, the leading Marathon: Durandal campaign player.

Bruce "Hippieman" Morrison at Freeverse, the developer that brought Bungie's Marathon: Durandal to Xbox Live Arcade, has been working on a walkthrough of the game. While of course there is always the Marathon Spoiler Guide, which covers all three games, Marathon, Marathon 2: Durandal and Marathon: Infinity, Hippieman's walkthrough includes screenshots of environments, whereas the Spoiler Guide features only maps.