The guys over at Rooster Teeth have released the much anticipated Season Five of the Red vs. Blue series. It's available for sponsors now, everyone else will have to wait until the weekend's over to grab it. w00t!


If you're as smart as me, you'll click the link for the movie about ten times before you log in as a sponsor and are able to download it, so don't forget to do that.

Bungie was pretty busy yesterday in Barcelona, not only with the two big announcements but also in showing off Halo 2 Vista. Today we've added the screenshots they released to the Halo 2 Vista section of the site, so go check them out!

Oh Vista, you so fine, you so fine you blow my mind!

SketchFactor writes:

Frankie and I are over in Barcelona for Microsoft's X06 event but we still managed to throw together a little Humpday Day challenge... with a twist. Some things may change, but some things will always remain the same.

As everyone knows by now, the X06 event is underway in full force and last night the Halo community was blasted with a double-header of new announcements including the new Ensemble RTS "Halo Wars" and our new partnership with Peter Jackson and Wingnut Interactive for future Halo experiences. It's been a whirlwind of excitement to be sure, but amidst the press and frenzy Frankie and I found a little time yesterday to throw together an impromptu Humpday Challenge of a slightly different variety.

On the outskirts of Barcelona in a very odd building known as "Hesperia Tower", the Microsoft PR team has transformed a generic conference room into what can best be described as a mini E3 event. There are literally dozens of playable games on the floor and yesterday we had the opportunity to play around a bit before the event officially got underway.

So, naturally, we decided to take our mad skillz we've acquired through thousands of hours of Halo pwnage and apply them to other games.

Game One : The Shadowrun Challenge
First up, Frank and I ended up in a challenge match against some of the guys from Fasa studios in their upcoming title, Shadowrun. I know many people have a love hate relationship with this new iteration of a classic franchise but I can tell you that the game we played offered a ton of promise and looks to raise the bar in quite a few areas of gameplay and strategy. A few of us were playing on Xbox 360s and the rest were playing on PCs - a nifty new feature afforded by the advent of "Live Anywhere."

Much to my surprise, we completely destroyed the Fasa team at their own game, our first time ever playing. It was astonishing really.

Ok, so that's not at all what happened. We were demolished. And, we were pwned hardstyle by BOTS. Yes, bots. Vicious, mean bots that showed no mercy despite us never having touched the game before. We only had a short time to play but for fans of heavy strategy games along the vein of Counterstrike who are looking for something new and fresh, this could very well be the game you are waiting for.

Final Score:  Bots Win. We Lose. 
Tone: Overwhelmingly Embarassing

Game Two: Gears of War

Later in the evening, we came back to the same venue to show our new partner-in-crime Peter Jackson a few of the new Xbox titles at the show. While they mingled and explored a variety of titles, Frankie and I decided to step into a grudge match of a new kind - a one on one Gears of War showdown.

We jumped into a game and spent the better part of 10 minutes just drooling over the environments and graphics. Words really can't do this game justice - it really looks better running on an HD monitor than it does in screenshots. As Frank oggled the pretty water and realistic gritty textures I managed to find a variety of sniper rifle and promptly delivered a killing headshot. Score one for the Locusts (the 'bad guy' species in GoW).

When round two began, I decided to head for the same rifle but this time, O'Connor was on to me. I took cover behind a wall (an integral part of the GoW experience) and tried to fire off a round to no avail. The downside to this rifle is that it's slow to reload and while that was happening, Frankie flanked me and gave me an up close and personal introduction to his chainsaw bayonet. Score one for the good guys.

Round three began and we engaged in a close quarters firefight, both of us using two burned out automobiles for cover. After trading a few dozen rounds Frankie managed to drop me with a well placed pistol round. We reset positions and entered into the battlefield again, this time things went my way and I managed to flush him out of cover with a well placed grenade to finish the job with my assault rifle. The score is 2-2, next kill wins it all.

When the final round began, we had a better sense of the map and it unfolded in a slower, more deliberate manner. We used cover wisely, sprinting through open spots and throwing ourselves against pillars and rocks to avoid incoming fire. I had Frankie in my sights and laid down supressing fire while I tried to move in closer for the kill. As I took cover on the opposite side of the wall he was hiding behind, Frankie jumped around and greeted me with a shotgun to the face. Game Over.

Final Score: Frankie 3, Sketch 2
Tone: Tense, and crazy pretty

So, there you have it - another loss for Team Bungie (shock) and even more surprising, an actual WIN for Frankie (if only it were Halo).

Today I'll be out on the show floor happily pwning press on Halo 2 for Windows Vista, trying to regain some composure.

Cheers from Barcelona!

The Gallery and Voting Booth Forums are back with a vengeance today. Select few have been given privileges in both forums to revive them. Just now, something's been posted in both, so go check them out and expect more in the future!

Thank the Overlord, Achronos, for giving a few people access to those forums, and for putting up with my constant breaking of his site.

I also updated the News forum by checking "Also post news to forum" in this news post. Take that, inactivity!

Today's Weekly Update showcases the process of creation and finalization the Halo 3 logo. Thanks to Stosh, who spent some time this week making the logo into a wallpaper, you can now use it as your desktop! You can find all four versions of the wallpaper on the wallpapers page of our Halo 3 section.

Here are the wallpapers, if you don't fee like clicking the above link to the wallpapers section.

1024 x 768

1280 x 1024

1280 x 720

1600 x 1200

inSaneELF writes:

Game-Spectrum.com recently had the honor of interviewing Bungie employee, Kevin Paul, more commonly known as KP.  After threatening to stab me in the face, the interview went pretty well.

To read the entire interview, go to http://game-spectrum.com/kp_interview.

Great_Pretender writes:

The largest and most popular endurance coop in the Myth community just got a huge upgrade! Mazzarin's Demise VI has been released!

Download it here! Note that if you still have 1.5.1, you need to upgrade to 1.6. The public beta is available here!

I can personally vouch that this plugin is rather fun, especially in a large team who knows what they're doing. Want a large team? No doubt everyone at PlayMyth.net will be playing it! Join in the fun!

It has been brought to our attention that someone is sending fake emails form "bungie.com" (we're actually Bungie.net and we never email you about your account details or security.) and we have to assume the sender of the mails, often with a zip file attachment, is up to no good. Simply delete and ignore them and never, ever open a file from a sender you don't know or trust.

The content of the email may look like this:

Dear user frankie,

It has come to our attention that your Bungie User Profile ( x ) records are out of date. For further details see the attached document.

Thank you for using Bungie!

The Bungie Support Team

Again, these mails are not from us, they're from some jackass. Ignore them.

Today, I had to deal with several users trying to get access to other's Windows Live ID accounts. The culprits were simply tricking some of you into giving your password away. While this particular case has been dealt with, I thought a simple security refresher was in order.

There are three simple things you need to do to remain secure on bungie.net.

1.  NEVER give your login or password to anyone who asks.  Nobody at Microsoft or Bungie needs to know it, ever.  That's the point of using Windows Live ID / Passport.  If someone asks you for it, tell them you've forgotten it, and never talk to that person again.  You'll be better off.

2.  Windows Live ID / Passport will not ask for your login or password without you clicking on the "Sign In" button.  If you click a link, and then a page comes up asking for you to login, there is a high probability someone is trying to trick you into getting your password.  To be safest, you can do two things.  First of all, simply don't trust a Windows Live ID / Passport sign box unless you've clicked on the Sign-in Button yourself.  Secondly, don't click the box that says "Save my email address and password."  That's just asking for trouble. 

3.  With regard to groups, make sure you're only giving people permissions in your private groups to those that you trust.  Pay attention to the security role editor's warnings about which security permissions can allow other users to completely take over your group.  Bungie and/or its representatives generally cannot help you if something goes wrong - nobody hacked your group, you just gave someone permissions who wasn't trustworthy.   On that point, by the way - from now on, if I see any group that is participating in the act of taking over other users' private groups, I will delete it without notice. 

Wasn't that easy?  Please follow the above guidelines.  I'll watch this news post's discussion thread for on topic questions, and answer as best I can.  On that note, anybody who attempts to post offtopic stuff to that thread, like "First post" and such gets banned for a week - I think you'll agree this is a serious topic, and we don't need that kind of idiocy around here.

For several years, HBO has been accumulating dialogue from the two Halo games in their dialogue databank. Unbelievably, they continue to add significant batches of clips on a regular basis. Drop by and check out another of HBO's vast resources.

Just thought I'd mention a lesser-known resource that a lot of people could potentially take advantage of. A nod to Captain Spark and Hellhawk for their extraordinarily high volume of submissions over the years.