Mike Riess, of H3Press, reminded us that the music video contest they kicked off in early August is closing in seven days - and they’ve only got 3 submissions so far. There are over $100 in prizes - your chances are pretty good if you submit something!(Louis Wu 15:02:19 +0000)

The folks at CrunchGear have put up a video walkthrough (er, runthrough? wanderthrough, with dying?) of one of their guys playing the new map while at PAX. Go look! Thanks go to DMFanella for the heads-up on the forum.(mnemesis 03:34:07 +0000)

The Bungie WWU is available over on B.Net. An introduction to a tale about Bungie’s Ultimate Frisbee team, a copy-and-paste of the PAX booth info we reported on earlier, and a bunch of pictures of Assembly. What’s Assembly, you say? Just a new map (remember the code name Purple Reign?) that folks who attend PAX get to play on this weekend. Curse them all!! Go check it out, the pictures are beautiful. Dilly noted it first on our forum. Update: Whoops, forgot to add this: Dilly also posted the images from the B.Net article, in case folks can’t get there to see them. Pretty…
(mnemesis 03:25:40 +0000)

Here’s one of the more unique uses of the Halo 3 lobby I’ve ever seen. TruthPastor SBG holds a pair of bible study classes on Monday nights, for his clan members (and anyone else interested) - obviously, only fifteen other people can participate in a single lobby at once, but in fact he’s run a pair of Xboxes, with a pair of mics, to bring together 31 people total (15 slots per box, plus his own presence). If you’re interested, they have a web page with information. Halo 3-enabled bible study… who’da thunk it?(Louis Wu 16:01:01 +0000)

Weta’s taking preorders on their Cortana Statue - $225 US, with the statue actually shipping 2nd quarter 2009. As an incentive for tying up your money for the next 6-9 months, they’re entering all preorders before September 30 into a drawing - win the drawing, and you might be flown down to Weta Studios and given a ride in the Warthog they built. (You can enter the sweepstakes WITHOUT preordering - full details are on the Sweepstakes page - but they’ll do it for you if you commit to buying something.)(Louis Wu 15:16:55 +0000)

Bungie President Harold Ryan denied claims by Microsoft’s Don Mattrick that he laughed and acquiesced with the publisher’s decision to indefinitely postpone Bungie’s E3 announcement.

In an interview with Eurogamer, Mattrick once again explains their reasons for delaying the event, with no mention whatsoever of why it was made on such late notice– less than a week before the event for their exclusion from the press conference, and less than 24 hours from their separate announcement before that, too, was cancelled.

Mattrick described Bungie as “disappointed” rather than angry and tried to suggest that Ryan laughed and agreed with the decision. After the interview was posted, Ryan remarked to Eurogamer that he neither agreed, nor found it funny:

“Keeping things clean, I certainly didn’t agree with the decision to delay our news until sometime after E3,” Ryan told Eurogamer today.

“Bungie is always concerned first and foremost with our fans. Whenever we are prevented from exceeding their positive expectations it is not a laughing matter.”

Nice to see Ryan sneak “keep it clean” in there. Now if only MS could keep things clean…

The Escapist is usually a cut above other gaming sites when it comes to content, especially long content. They’ve done a short review of Wideload’s Hail to the Chimp, and the long and short of it is, they didn’t like it much.

The Treeskunk crew has put together Outpost: Isil Episode 9 - Full Frontal. You have to wonder how the two teams actually still have living members left 9 episodes in… lots of death and destruction here. You can download it in a lot of different formats, or watch it streaming (in a lot of different places) from the Treeskunk website.(Louis Wu 11:15:37 +0000)

Last night, Bungie released a brand-new podcast - it’s a monster 80-minute piece of work full of jokes, interviews, and bears. Paul Russell is the special guest, Shishka discusses the playlist changes coming up next month, and security expert Jerome Simpson comes by for a mini-interview. Shishka puts up with ribbing from Sketch and Luke, Paul talks about the evolution of Halo in the last ten years (guys - ask Rob McLees about the origin of ’seven’ in Bungie games, and say thanks to Hamish Sinclair), and Jerome discusses protecting the Bungie offices from any and all comers. Great stuff! Avateur was the first to notice on our forum.(Louis Wu 10:16:03 +0000)

Over at NeoGAF, Kibbles pointed out a YouTube video containing footage of a fan-made mod of Crysis, showing off Blood Gulch. The environment itself is gorgeous. The gameplay… I wasn’t so impressed with. You can discuss this on our forum in this thread.(Louis Wu 10:40:08 +0000)