Halo3.com notes that the first way of getting into the Halo 3 public beta-- the web registration form that offered any and all comers in the U.S. a chance to be chosen-- has closed. Winners will be notified sometime this week.

Those who don't make it can still get in by buying a specially marked box of Crackdown, or entering the Rule of Three promotion the first three days of February by playing 3 hours of Halo 2 multiplayer between Feb 1 and 3 and being one of the first 13,333 to register at Halo3.com afterwards.

You know, because of the layers. Layers of detail, like the layers in Frankie's latest Bungie Update. Between those layers are morsels of information: like the fact that every campaign level is now in the game, which is playable "from end to end"; like the fact that the usual levels of difficulty: easy, normal, heroic and legendary, are in the game and being tuned; like the fact that Robert McLees just found Ling Ling.

Okay, it could be cake. Everybody likes cake.

Don't call it a gun. In fact, don't even call it a rifle. It isn't even a weapon. It's a system. The MA5C Individual Combat Weapon System. If I didn't know better, I'd say that KP made that up himself when he penned the description of Halo 3's default spawn weapon, that hybrid of Halo 1's loveable bullet hose the Assault Rifle and Halo 2's pistol replacement the Battle Rifle.

One useful tidbit:

Fully shielded Spartans can take two blows from the rifle before dropping.

Granted, that's at close range, but that seems to indicate that under certain circumstances, the new AR might be just as, if not even more powerful, than previous "go-to" weapons.

UPDATE: For clarification, "two blows" mentioned above refers to melee strikes and not bullets fired, as the comparison to other weapons might seem to suggest. My bad.

Due to one thing and another, including chetz, h4x, modified weapon spawns, beastly brute spiker dual-wielding, and the fact that Ferrex rulz and Staten droolz, the Halo 3 Multiplayer Team defeated the Bungie Community Team 2 games to 1 in the latest internal humpday. See KP's writeup on Bungie.net for details.

Not even two weeks into the new year, and real life plus other circumstances have already conspired to let far too much Halo and Bungie material slide by without a mention. So here's a quick list of what's been going on:

Community Shuffle
Due to spam attacks, HBO's forum has had to require users to register. Registration consists, currently, of just entering a password and a nickname when you post, and then remembering that password for future posts (or letting your browser do it for you). Currently no email address or captcha is required, so it's a lot easier than registering here at Rampancy. If you haven't already, there's no excuse not to, and in retrospect it's amazing Louis Wu was able to keep the forum so open, including what is essentially anonymous posting, for so long.

Changes are also afoot at HaloGrid, which is closing its forum for reasons too lengthy to summarize here, so just read the note from imSuck on the front page. There's also a discussion thread about it in the HBO forum.

Two Seats, No Waiting
The quick and nimble Mongoose ATV, due to appear this year in Halo 3, gets a discussion cum dissection at Bungie.net courtesy of KP, complete with in-game examples of possible uses, specializing on Valhalla.

Cross-Dressing For Success
Rumors swirl that Halo 2 Vista players can compete against Xbox players on Live, but Bungie quashes it.

Bungie's Post Of The Year
The post of the year award goes to KP for the post, Bungie.net Year in Review, which was the only post that met the criteria for this award by summarizing all the Bungie related news during the past year. Despite being an employee of Bungie, KP was eligible. As a bonus, this one includes a year's worth of Mister Chiefs, which is probably the scariest thing on the Internet this side of the average MySpace page.