GameDaily has posted an Impressions article about Halo Wars - short version, they liked it! Go read.(Louis Wu 11:25:51 +0000)

The last time we checked in with the Halo Corpse Alphabet, it was just getting started - there was exactly one letter. Now it’s four weeks later… and it’s nearly complete. There are three letters remaining - and some additional characters and symbols have been added. Check it out!(Louis Wu 15:56:58 +0000)

Halo0001 X stopped in last night to announce “403″ Episode 1, the first installment of a machinima series about a bunch of guys playing Big Team Battle in matchmaking. Personally, I found it to be too long for its content - but it seems to have been generally well-received on our forum. Go judge for yourself!(Louis Wu 15:53:46 +0000)

A bit more on the surprise cancellation: Kotaku has a short item that ties the situation to a “high level executive”. There are plenty of forum posters out there willing to speculate who that might be. (On the off chance that the Kotaku piece is pulled, here’s a screenshot.)(Louis Wu 04:35:04 +0000)

It’s a sad, sad day for Bungie fans - swing by Bungie.net for full details. The short version: the announcement many have been waiting for eagerly - a new game, new Halo content, whatever it was going to be - is not going to happen tomorrow. Plans have been changed - no new date is announced. Update: we’re getting a lot of mail from people who are speculating that this is a stunt (to build excitement for an announcement tomorrow), or that Bungie.net got hacked - I can confirm, after speaking to more than one Bungie spokesperson, that this is no stunt, no joke. This is real, and they’re as unhappy about it as we are.(Louis Wu 02:03:06 +0000)

Tied the Leader has some fantastic new ‘Planetoid’ panoramic shots, over in its Haloramics subsite - this post has the details. And OboeCrazy has put together a montage of Gunslinger Plays of the Month for June - fun stuff! Thanks, XerxdeeJ.(Louis Wu 10:11:48 +0000)

There are a couple of gameplay vids showing off what Halo Wars looks like actually during play - Stormwing found one, and Spartan Jag pointed out another. Decide for yourself what you think!(Louis Wu 09:59:41 +0000)

DHalo noticed an article on Halo Wars over at the 360 Magazine - it contains a nice writeup, and a bunch of new screenshots. (Most of the new ones are concept art shots like this one - but there’s also this shot, which was just added (in a larger format) to the Halo Wars site in the last couple of days. (It wasn’t there on the 10th, when the last update was mentioned.) You sort of have to wonder about that pattern on the ground…)(Louis Wu 13:27:37 +0000)

Over at High Impact Halo, slYnki has released a video showing off what might be the first live launch of a Halo 1 grunt - 7 years down the road. It was originally part of a large montage of Halo 1 tricks - I told Ducain that it was cool, but a little long. He talked to slYnki, who agreed to refilm the grunt launch (with some nice permutations) as a standalone. It’s pretty amazing that you can blow this guy to kingdom come… and he’ll still shoot at you when you reach him! Check it out. Thanks, FooFoo. (And apologies to slYnki for the painful title of this newspost.)(Louis Wu 13:20:44 +0000)

TrueDarkFusion let us know that ForgeHub has a new edition of Musings of the Truth - he discusses the phenomenon of minigames (created in Forge) and looks at possible reasons for their recent decline. Check it out!(Louis Wu 16:42:17 +0000)