According to Voodoo Extreme, Halo 2 was the #1 best-selling console title in November. Oh, and the #2 title? Halo 2's Limited Edition. GTA San Andreas, despite the huge installed base of the PlayStation, ranked third.
Obviously showing off in front of the Frag Dollz took away whatever humility Bungie might have developed as a result of being beaten by the forum mods; triumphant in the latest Humpday Challenge against OXM, the egos run rampant.
1Up has a Bungie retrospective up, covering in detail Pathways into Darkness, the Marathon trilogy, and Halo 1, with a tip of the hat to earlier games as well. Interestingly, the Bungie-published but not developed side-scroller Abuse gets a mention, while the numerous Marathon licensees and the unmentionable Weekend Warrior do not. Thanks Louis Wu at HBO.
Achronos noted yesterday morning that Bungie.net's forums are back up; maintenance took longer than expected because of the size of some of the forums. "New Mombassa alone has 51,541 total topics and 623,614 total posts," said Achronos.
[image:8886 left hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0] Given the recent release of the Pathways Redux mod for Doom 3, it seemed appropriate to look for more old school Bungie news, and Izual delivered it: box art for Minotaur, Bungie's dungeon-crawling game, in Halo multiplayer levels: Foundation, to be exact. You can find it in our Halo 2 Tricks Database under Multiplayer.
Mat "shunji" Noguchi of Bungie noted on his blog that he'll be giving a speech at GDC in 2005. No word yet on topic.
This week's Bungie Weekly Update is another question and answer session; this week covers the party system, future Halo 2 maps and the next Halo novel. The issue of the "sword flying" bug, where players are able to use the sword under specific conditions to make longer-than-usual lunge attacks (sometimes dramatically longer) is also addressed:
Sword Flying is a real and occasionally fun phenomenon. However, in multiplayer games, its practical applications are pretty limited. We'll be keeping an eye on that situation however, to ensure it doesn't become a common in-game exploit.
That's all except for the Mister Chief art.. which for your benefit we will not include.
A special detachment of Bungie's best calling themselves the Frag Doodz took on girl gamers the Frag Dolls in the latest Humpday Challenge and were as gracious in their (narrow) victory as we're ever likely to see them. This is what happens when geeks try to impress girls. Both sites have blog entries from various participants about the match.
Cananimator bentllama has put up a few early sketches of Elites he did shortly after joining Bungie, along with this advice: always sketch on paper first before booting up that PC.
Earlier this month, Brendon Chung released a mod for Doom 3 called Pathways Redux based on Bungie's 1993 adventure-shooter for the Macintosh, Pathways into Darkness, known widely to Bungie fans as simply PiD. The gameplay was a mix of what eventually became traditional run-and-shoot gameplay, interspersed with text interactions with non player characters-- in this case, dead German soldiers-- that had preceded you into the subterranean depths of a Mayan pyramid on the Yucatan peninsula.
The updates to Halo 2's Xbox Live playlists have arrived; the Team Slayer only list is now there. If you were online when the lists were updated, you'll need to disconnect and reconnect to see the new lists. Lots of changes here, and you can see a list of all the changes at Bungie.net.
Too much stuff, and so little time. Add those things together and you get news roundups.
A lot of new stuff over at Halo Babies: not just the usual fan art, but also some flash work by CompassGhost and a video of Halo 2 cutscenes by zero. Editor's Note: Warning, the movie (quite obviously) contains spoilers. Thanks mrsmiley.
Frankie's finally given in to reality and posted about Bungie's loss in last week's Humpday Challenge; The Bungie.net Mods team of Shishka, Yoozel, Stoshy and (sort of) Payneful defeated Frankie, AGDTinman and Negabyte. Thanks to akba for the heads-up.
UPDATE: Stosh added a comment to the earlier item about this particular Humpday Challenge; he's also put up an account at his Mob of Angry Peasants chapter page. Editor's Note: We knew peasants would be back in the story at some point; must be Case's influence. As for the Challenge-- Frankie puts the blame on the Bungie loss to Payneful playing for the Mods team, while Stosh says he entered a game and then left after a few seconds.