Xbox.com, the official Xbox site, has posted a short Meet Bungie Studios feature as well as an Overview of the Mjolnir Armor from Halo.

Louis Wu at HBO sifted through Blue's News and found a couple of reviews that escaped attention earlier:

Game Revolution gave Halo an A grade in their review; about the only thing they didn't like was the lack of bots.

Game Nation gave Halo a rating of 96, and strangely enough cited lack of story involvement as a con. Interesting.

XboxWeb put up another review, although their rating remained the same. However, Louis warns that the screenshots that accompany this version contain spoiler content.

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.

Well, Louis Wu and the concept of time zones have conspired again to beat us to the punch, this time with regard to the impressions of Halo at Xperience posted by fAt1 at MPZ.The content is largely the usual: the game sounds great, the AI is very good, the controls are OK if not a keyboard and mouse, and, of course, the graphics are phenomenal:

It's one thing to look at a high resolution screenshot or grainy digitised video, it's a completely different thing to see Halo rendered in realtime for yourself. Cumulatively the effects are so effective and powerful. It also highlights the brute force of the Xbox. If only I could describe to you the way Ice is rendered and bump mapped, and how it deforms as your jeep slides across it tearing fragments out of it; it's awe inspiring.

When it comes down to brass tacks, though, fAt1 says he won't buy an Xbox for Halo. He'll wait for the PC version.

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.

Someone named TheDuke1213 posted in the HBO forum that he'd heard a rumor there would be a huge add-on product for Xbox Halo coming out next year, including new multiplayer levels. He went on that it would supposedly be confirmed in the next edition of OXM. Matt shut that down pretty quickly:

Trust me: just because something is printed in a magazine doesn't make it true.

If we wanted to ship such an ambitious product in Q2 2002, we'd have to be working furiously on it right now. But we're not. And we're still not planning any add-ons for Xbox Halo.

Let's hope that's because they're busy figuring out how to bring Halo to the Macintosh and the PC.

XboxWeb has reviewed Halo and gave it some serious props. Similarly to the Electric Playground review, they also loved the controls. They went insofar as to suggest that Microsoft [could have] specifically designed the controller to suit first person shooters such as Halo.

XboxWeb didn't stop there - not when they felt the audio needed tremendous commendation:

Something that has been overlooked by the astounding gameplay and the breathtaking graphics is the incredibly composed audio. Halo was not degraded by hardcore rock tunes, or cheesy rap motifs. Instead Bungie Software filled Halo full of mesmerizing Gregorian-ish chants. It's amazingly hard to explain how or why the music does such a good job of setting the mood for each and every scene that you are presented with, but it does, and does it very well.

Clearly another victory for Bungie and Microsoft. (Thanks Ferrex)

Jason MacIsaac has written a Halo review for the electric playground, and it's glowingly positive. In fact, they even liked the controls:

Halo has the best control of any console shooter I've ever played. I can't quite put my finger on what it is. Maybe it's the responsiveness of the controls, maybe it's the joystick placement on the Xbox controller, I don't know. In just about every console shooter I've played, I've always been conscious of the controls, because I was always fighting with them. After about 10 minutes with Halo, I forgot all about it. I could track enemies with ease, picking them off from different elevations. The only challenge in tagging them came from their slippery moves, the control always remained precise. I could easily switch weapons, toss a grenade, reload, jump, crouch, zoom in with a sniper rifle... I have never, repeat never, felt this level of comfort with a console shooter.

The reviewer gushed over the vehicles, the graphics, the attention to detail; about the only thing he didn't like was the lack of bots. Still, the overall rating was only 89%. Tough grader.

Will White at Cloudchaser Microsoft has reviewed Halo, and while they admitted that the graphics were gorgeous, they found the story less than innovative, the controls sometimes frustrating, and the water effects unrealistic. In addition:

In the end Halo is, without a doubt, the Xbox game to own and will be for quite some time; however, it does have its flaws and therefore is not as wonderful as the hype has made it out to me. Plain and simple, Halo is Perfect Dark taking place on a different world with a slightly modified story. The lack of multiplayer gaming over the internet with Halo makes the title even less desirable.

The review itself is extremely positive in some parts, and extremely negative in others, but overall they gave the game a 9 out of 10. Thanks to Louis Wu at HBO for the heads-up.

CoreMagazine's Brendan Sinclair has written a review of Halo. As many others have, he compared it favorably to Half Life, lamented the lack of bots, and thought the audio was even better than the visuals. Overall he gave the game an 'A' grade:

The Xbox could have launched with only Halo and people would still call it a success. Not since Half-Life on the PC have I played a first-person shooter this good. The single player story mode goes beyond functional and is actually engaging and almost clever. Multi-player mode is even better. A few gripes keep Halo from being an A+ title, but that's why they make sequels.

Perhaps we should start a Halo 2 countdown...

HBO's own Louis Wu posted a note that Adrenaline Vault has finally put up their own Halo review; and shock of shocks, they thought it was great, giving it 5/5 overall.

If you'll excuse the pun, playing Halo is akin to a religious experience. To start, the story rivals the quality of anything you've ever seen in science fiction, including a strong protagonist, complex character interactions, and enemies who manage to avoid the cookie-cutter syndrome of being just plain evil. The first time you hear a Covenant foot soldier run away screaming He's EVERYWHERE! you'll realize that the enemy might have their own reasons for fighting to control this ring world. The story weaves in and out, often leaving you mystified but always wanting to unravel the next plot twist, and this careful sense of timing drives the game at a near-frantic pace. In part, the level design aids this facet of the pacing as well, since there's a constant sense of progression and absolutely no backtracking to look for the mysterious key or switch.

Nice to see a positive comment about even the indoor gameplay, rather than just an indictment of levels as repetetive .

Louis Wu pointed out at HBO that the IGN Halo Strategy Guide has added a new level. We won't mention the name, since it's potentially a spoiler, so needless to say don't click the link unless you really want to.

Mehve (aka Lorraine Reyes, Bungie artist extraordinaire) put her calm and reasonable two cents into an ongoing thread about whether or not Halo was disappointing over in HBO's forum recently. In the process, she pointed out some physics info from Chuck The Bear Gough on page 7 of a Halo Party feature at Invisible Dream that was posted last week and that somehow we missed.

Thanks to Louis Wu who put up the news item that led us to it.

The movie Bungie used to open the Halo launch party with the drill sergeant yelling at the scrawny dorks has been made available at Truth And Reconciliation on the launch party recap page. The movie is a 35 MB MPG file. (Thanks HBO)

guS at Drunkgamers.com, a site I didn't even know existed until right now (although the niche it fits is obvious) has reviewed Halo. While upset at the lack of Internet play, occasional framerate drops, and the opinion that the Needler is slightly less useful than a few sharp rocks, there wasn't much bad they could say about it:

If we here at drunkgamers had a rating system I would give Halo an outstanding score of 9.5. If they had included Internet play I would have probably ventured to give it a 9.8, but I'm saddened by the fact I can only play with up to 15 other people on 3 other Xboxes on a LAN. I'm going to close with this statement. Halo makes owning an Xbox worth it. Even if it costs $470 to get an Xbox, 4 controllers and Halo, I say do it if you have the money. There is no going back once you play Halo.

Thanks to Louis Wu at HBO who posted the item.