The Junkyard has put up a spotlight on Matt "Viper" Anderson from Battleground: Halo. Thanks Ryan "Mhaddy" Matthews.

People just can't seem to resist tricking Cortana into talking dirty. Captain Spark passed on to HBO what you could call Porntana Strikes Back, a sequel to the original Porntana clip. Apologies to Jen Taylor (if she's offended, that is). Thanks Louis Wu.

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.

SketchFactor has posted at Bungie.net that in response to some "issues", the Halo PC 1.03 patch is itself... going to be patched. The patch will cause users to lose saved checkpoints within levels.

HBO has followed up on their September story about a video showing the Halo50K Tournament finals featuring TDT vs DM playing CTF on Battle Creek. (Who says the military has a monopoly on alphabet soup?) Video CD Productions had a streaming version back then, but now there are QuickTime and Windows Media versions, hosted at Mythica and files.bungie.org. Links are in the HBO news story. We're also mirroring the QuickTime version here at Rampancy, which is 33.5 Mb, 400 x 300 pixels; it's in our Halo Movies section and available for download from RHL. It includes player commentary.

SketchFactor sauntered into the HBO forum and laid down links to three high res screenshots suitable for wallpaper-making. Thanks Louis Wu at HBO.

The past few days have seen installments three and four of Rams Report over at Battleground: Halo. There was a considerable gap between issue 2 and issue 3, as the first two came out before PC Halo was even released, and the last two came out only recently. Issue 3 covered the Halo CE rumor and a plea for a Real Mod; Issue 4, the latest, talks about the departure of Dave "Alpha Male" (or is it alpha male now) Mertz from Gearbox, the near-but-not-quite-simultaneity of the PC and Mac Halo releases, the profligation of Halo comics, and a few other items.

Since Rams was nice enough to bring up some of these subjects before we did (hey, we're lazy, too, try us) it seemed appropriate just to comment on some of them. Not the least of these is the effort required to continue to run an oft-updated gaming site, especially in the face of stiff competition and amid the myriad demands of Real Life.

This rather long-winded piece, which I'm probably going to have to break up into a few installments in a new feature I'll call Narc's Retorts, is called:

Is There A Halo Community?

A site called IceTeks (Technology Made Cool, for those who aren't advanced students of sloganology) has reviewed PC Halo and concluded it to be one heck of an awesome game. Put the accolades on the pile over there, boys, and the bar is around the corner. Welcome to the party. Thanks Blue's News.