Those ads - which made the final cut of 27 finalists - were "Mountain", for the PS2 (by TBWA in London), and "Diorama", for Halo 3 (by T.A.G. in the United States). Neither were able to win, however, that honour going to a Honda commercial featuring cartoon bunnies and flying Honda engines.

It's funny they went with "Diorama", and not the campaign for Halo 3: ODST, which I thought was much better.

As for "Mountain", that's fine, it's a great ad. I'm just happy they showed a little sense/taste and didn't pick that awful Gears of War "Mad World" commercial.

[AdWeek]

The Mongoose is actually a modified Kawasaki ATV, and was used rather publicly during the big Halo 3 launch event in New York City a few years back. Should still be in good shape if the seller's appraisal checks out, but Halo 3 purists please note: no mention is made of whether you can actually snuggle two adults together on the thing or not.

Mongoose @ Craigslist [via Joystiq]

Developed by Microsoft's Halo group, 343 Industries, in conjunction with game development studio Certain Affinity, Waypoint launches in November. It is intended to be a must-visit digital location nestled into the Xbox 360 dashboard.

Waypoint will allow Halo fans to watch Halo videos, track their quest for new Halo gameplay awards, brush up on Halo lore and learn about great Halo players. It will also likely be something that they can someday play.

The gameplay aspects that Waypoint creative director Jason Pace hinted at to Kotaku won't be apparent at launch on November 5. Ideas for it are still in development.

"I think it's safest to say that it would be a game-enhancing experience," Pace said. "It will be a much more deeply interactive one."

Responding to suggestions from Kotaku that Waypoint's gameplay could involve anything from a Halo character running through the Waypoint hub to an interactive Halo timeline filled with secrets, a la the PlayStation 3's Metal Gear Solid Database, Pace said, "My answer to that is that both options are fully on the table."

While Waypoint may become some sort of game down the line, what it will be on November 5 is a nexus of Halo content that, in Pace's words, "aggregates your experience across the Halo franchise."

Waypoint will retroactively pull the Xbox Achievements accomplishments from players' Halo 3, Halo Wars and Halo 3: ODST save files. It will apply those Achievements toward Halo Waypoint Awards. An example of an Award is a Vehicle Specialist, which will be offered in several tiers. The lowest tire might require a player to have just a few of the vehicle-based Achievements in any of the Xbox 360 Halo games. But to reach the second tier of that award, a player would probably need to have and excel at more than one.

Another sample of an award would be a career-completion tracker than levels up as players finish each Xbox 360 Halo game. Halo games that don't support Achievements — the first Halo and Halo 2 — will not be tracked.

The development team is pondering awards that would require group efforts, but none is planned for Waypoint's initial release.

At launch, pride will be the only reward for achieving the awards in Halo Waypoint's first iteration. But that seems likely to change. "Moving forward, absolutely we feel it is important to pin that achievement to something tangible," Pace said. By "tangible," he said he was referring to anything from additional game content to Avatar add-ons.

The roll-out plan for Waypoint at launch involves an offering new content, seven days a week. Mondays are spotlights on people who play or make Halo games. Tuesday focus on non-video-game Halo projects. Wednesday's are days to showcase Halo gamers' best screenshots and saved films. Thursdays' highlight machinima. Fridays are strategy days. Saturdays are premiere days for portions of the Halo Legends anime series. Sundays are days for delving into Halo lore.

All of this content and the award-tracking is intended to feel like it's being presented as taking place within the Halo universe. Pace said he doesn't want to mess with the established fiction and go so far as having, say, Cortana doling out Achievements to players, but the team's intention is that "the information being presented to you on the screen is coming from a UNSC source."

The launch of Halo Waypoint is not a shutdown of Bungie.net, the longtime hub for Halo info and deep stat-tracking administered by the now-independent inventors of Halo at Bungie Studios. That site will continue, and Pace said that Waypoint won't be trying to duplicate what Bungie's site does best. "They do stats so well it would be silly for us to re-invent that wheel," he said. "There is such a wealth of information there I wouldn't imagine we would look at changing that for Halo 3."

As Bungie moves beyond making Halo games — it's last announced one is next year's Halo Reach — and Microsoft continues to make them, it makes sense that a Microsoft-backed Halo nexus would be built. The teams involved in Bungie.net and Halo Waypoint will coordinate with each other to ensure the ideal content is available at both virtual locations, Pace said.

Waypoint will launch for all Xbox Live users for free on November 5, before switching to premium Xbox Live Gold-only access later in the month. As to whether there could be a mobile version for a Zune or iPod, Pace said he couldn't comment other than to say "mobile is very important to us."

Pace said Halo fans can expect the Waypoint team to "continue to push new features and content all the time."

As of the time this post was written, ODST's 24 hour figure for total players was 949,306; the 24-hour total for games played was 5,708,031. Divided out, that's six games per player, on a school night/in the middle of a workweek. And you know there were some out there blowing the curve and staying up all night with this.

For comparison's sake, Halo 3 saw 1,340,550 games yesterday, so, ODST more than quadrupled that. Some have tried to hazard quick guesses on ODST's first day sales; we'll wait for NPD. But if this is any indication, yeah, it's probably gonna do land office business.

Halo 3: ODST Logs Over 900,000 Players in One Day [Joystiq]

The level had its first outing at Cologne's Gamescom this week, drawing crowds to Microsoft's booth to spend ten minutes each with the game in a four-person coop firefight.

ODST's firefight mode is Bungie's answer to Gears of War 2's horde mode, throwing never-ending waves of enemies at the four Orbital Drop Shock Troopers controlled by players.

The walled-off ODST area took up the largest section of Microsoft's Gamescom booth, allowing 32 players at a time to check out the game.

When I swung by this weekend, the main line into the area had a 45 minute wait. Xbox Live gold members were able to sign up to wait in a shorter line and after playing were giving a free hat or poster. Players who scored more than 15,000 points in the timed firefight were also given a Halo 3 backpack.

My ten minutes with the game netted me a mere 5,000 or so points and two deaths, but I didn't manage to bring down the Wraith that spent the early part of the firefight peppering us with plasma mortars.

As with the three other firefight maps already shown off in ODST, Rally Point is drawn from an area in the single-player campaign. Because the maps have the potential to weaken the single-player experience if seen early, Bungie has been very tight-lipped about how many there are in total.

Rally Point is set in sector 10 of New Mombasa. This piece of the city forms a natural crossroads, making certain parts of the relatively small map killing zones. The spawn point for players is in a bunker of sorts that opens up onto the map near a series of plateaus leading down to the ground. There are also some rooms higher up on the map where covenant troops can spawn and flank what initially appears to be a relatively defendable position.

The bunker spawn point has areas for grabbing extra ammo and grenades. There are also mounted weapons that can be manned or pulled off to help mow down incoming troops.

The initial wave of enemies come from drop ships, but as the level progresses enemies begin to spawn in those rooms at the top of the map, forcing the four players to move back and forth between the high and low ends of the map to prevent getting flanked.

It's a map perfectly suited for the four-player coop mode, providing enough cover and enough enemy access points to create a difficult, but not impossible challenge.

The key to survival, as with any map in this mode, is to remember to stick together, something that becomes increasingly difficult as enemies begin to spawn at different ends of the map.

I've only played two of the Firefight maps so far, but this was my favorite because it felt a bit more like an arena than a big rectangle with a monster closet on one end.

Check out our Bungie-guided tour of the three other maps if you're interested in the coop that ODST has to offer when it hits the Xbox 360 in September.

How popular? According to Bungie, on average, every single day, there are over 1,000,000 unique Halo 3 users. Over one million. Every. Day.

Nutso.

Halo 3 Still Popular [IGN]

The new Heretic map revisits Halo 2's Midship map, allowing players to plasma grenade each other all over the interior of the Pious Inquisitor. From purple reign we move on to the Forerunner Citadel, which features tight spaces where communication is key. Finally we make a stop off at Old Mombasa in the Longshore map, built for large scale battles over control of this strategically important port.

The maps and Halo 3: ODST will be out this September.

Video Games | Halo 3 | Citadel Map Gameplay

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

Video Games | Halo 3 | Longshore Map Gameplay

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

Video Games | Halo 3 | Heretic Map Gameplay

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

Thanks Casey for the tip!

"I've always been a fan of video games, and my wife told me that Halo 3 is the best game on the 360," Aramaki stated in the most recent Famitsu. "I just sort of got addicted after that. It's a very intricate world. It's hard to do such an epic story in movie form these days, but it's easy to get into it as a game. There's just enough humor in it, too. It's a great piece of pure entertainment."

Aramaki, best known for directing the Appleseed anime, is one of the noted anime bigwigs working on the Halo Legends animated series of seven short films. Aramaki worked with Halo franchise development director Frank O'Connor to select seven plotlines from the ten or so stories Aramaki hammered out about the Halo universe.

The five production houses involved in creating these Halo anime shorts are some of the biggest names in the industry: Bones, Casio Entertainment, Production I.G., Studio4 C, and Toei Animation.

"I wanted to develop the world of Halo from many different angles in the anime," Aramaki said. "I gave each studio the episodes they're most suited to develop and told them to add whatever unique touches you like. The resulting variations you see turned out very well, I think."

Halo Legends Wouldn't Have Happened Without Director's Wife [1Up]

Cole used commenters' responses to his post, The Impact of Homophobia in Virtual Communities, to drive discussion among panelists Caryl Shaw (Senior Producer at EA's Maxis), Dan Hewitt (Senior Director of Communications & Industry Affairs for the Entertainment Software Association), Stephen Toulouse (Program Manager for Policy and Enforcement, Xbox Live), Cyn Skyberg (Vice President of Customer Relations at Linden Lab) and Flynn DeMarco (founder of GayGamer.net). Read on to see if you made the cut.

First up was McLuvin's comment about flaunting sexuality. Next was GameBuddy, continuing the discussion. Then came bLaZINcOdE3's comment about the "gay mafia" forcing companies to hold "token meetings." OrigamiNinja's comment about how harassment makes the game less fun made it in, as did Nnooo's about whether or not gamers can expect Mario to save a prince instead of a princess someday. User saulpimpson's comment steered talk toward developers refusing to make games based on gay or gay bashing content. Then DanoruX's tongue-in-cheek "this is so gay," statement got a discussion going on "innocent" slurs. Phydeaux's comment on "play to file" introduced the topic of abuse reporting in online communities. Lastly, ach77 made it in as part of a general statement that gay gamers just want to have fun like every other gamer – and to introduce the founder of gay-centric World of Warcraft guild, The Spreading Taint who happened to be in the audience.

Aside from being shamelessly proud of Kotaku commenters, I was interested to see how Kotaku alumnus DeMarco reacted to comments from his ex-audience. He did almost half the talking at the panel and demonstrated the most gaming expertise. Whenever an issue was raised, DeMarco could name at least two games in response whereas everyone else just fell back on their own games (like Shaw's Spore and Skyberg's Second Life) or defaulted to Halo.

The other big talker was Microsoft's Toulouse, but I think he was being targeted. At the beginning of the panel, Cole presented a video that outlined the issues facing gays and lesbians in online gaming. All of their in-game examples seemed to be from Xbox Live – most specifically, Halo multiplayer. To his credit, Toulouse responded to almost every issue raised by Kotaku comments and admitted that Xbox Live hasn't got it right quite yet – but they're committed to making their community a safe place to game for everybody.

The quietest panelist was Second Life's Skyberg. It takes all types to make a virtual world like Second Life and I know they've had issues that prompted developer Linden Lab to create an adults-only space. Skyberg did pipe up at one or two times to talk about anonymity making it easy for people to use gay slurs in online communities – and made an excellent point that as people invest in their online identities more, this anonymity goes away.

The only dull part of the panel was the Q&A. I'm not sure if it's because the two hour time limit was almost up and everybody wanted lunch, or because the audience was the choir being preached to – but nobody asked anything that hadn't been addressed. One lady asked if the "dehumanizing" aspect of violent games like Halo brought about gay bashing and DeMarco responded that the problem wasn't that the game that engendered homophobia, it was that the audience that the game tended to attract was immature and ignorant of gay issues.

In sum, this is what I took away from the panel: Don't hate the game, hate the player. Or better yet, don't hate anybody.

If the above image seems familiar, that's because the new Heretic map revisits Halo 2's Midship map, allowing players to plasma grenade each other all over the interior of the Pious Inquisitor. From purple reign we move on to the Forerunner Citadel, which features tight spaces where communication is key. Finally we make a stop off at Old Mombasa in the Longshore map, built for large scale battles over control of this strategically important port.

They seem like a lovely trio of places to get killed in, and that's what I'll be doing when Halo 3: ODST drops this September.

Bungie has a thing for the number seven, documented by the research team at Halopedia, and so they picked July 7th (7/7) as the date for their annual celebration of all things Bungie and Bungie fan related. To celebrate, they'll be taking on all comers all day long, with Halo 3 Recon armor up for grabs for anyone who manages to beat them at their own game. To make things a little easier, they've created a Bungie Vs. The World playlist, consisting of 35 user-created maps, placing them at a very slight tactical disadvantage. They'll probably still destroy you, but they won't be at all comfortable doing it.

Other Bungie Day festivities include the launch of their Bungie Pro Video service, formerly known as Render-to-Video, the Bungie Pro Podcast, the return of Roger's Recon Hunt, and a first look at Heretic, Citadel, and Longshore showing up on their website later today.

It's not too late to call in sick, Halo fans! If you are already at work, I've often found that unraveling a cigarette and swallowing a pinch of tobacco gives you an excellent temporary green around the gills look, and if you time it right you could hurl right in front of your boss, guaranteeing you a one-way ticket to Halo 3 in your underwear.

Bungie Day Begins [Bungie]

The radar monitors your outside temperature. The player indicators are links. The grenade icons launch programs. The ammo counters in the top-right show your unread emails and rss items. The health bar shows whatever music you're currently playing.

And neatest of all, the ammo counter on the battle rifle itself displays how much juice is left in your battery, should you use it on a laptop.

Rigging one of these desktops up isn't as hard as you think, so if this takes your fancy you'll find a how-to guide over at Lifehacker.

The Halo 3 HUD Desktop [Lifehacker]

Kotaku has been following this story closely since it began in early 2008. 16-year-old Daniel Petric, angered at his parents for taking away the copy of Halo 3 that he had purchased against their wishes, shot both of his parents in the head with his father's 9mm handgun, after requesting that they close their eyes because he had "a surprise" for them. While his father, minister Mark Petric, survived the shooting, his mother did not.

Defense lawyers argued video game obsession as a motivating factor behind the killing...that Daniel didn't think the deaths would be real due to his immersion in Halo 3. While the defense was not enough to save the teen from being convicted in January of this year, it did have an effect on the sentence that Petric received this morning.

Instead of the full life sentence prosecutors were aiming for, Daniel Petric was instead sentenced with 23 years to life, with the possibility of parole after 23 years have been served. Lorain County Common Pleas Judge James Burge addressed the video game issue during the sentencing itself, claiming that it was a factor in his final decision.

I suppose the question we have to ask ourselves now is how heavily does the opinion of one common pleas judge weigh on the court system as a whole? We've seen the video game defense fail time and time again in courtrooms across the country, and while it didn't get the defendant off the hook on this occasion, it certainly had some impact. Does this sentence validate the game addiction defense, or is it simply an isolated event?

Update: Clarified sentencing terms.

Teen Who Killed Mother Over Video Game Gets 23 Years to Life [Fox 8 Cleveland]

That's all great. But some games don't quite work as intended when played from the hard drive. Games like Grand Theft Auto IV and Halo 3 don't perform up to par, because they were designed to be streamed from a DVD. And Microsoft may be addressing that problem when it launches Games On Demand.

Microsoft reps said that any game planned for a Games On Demand will go through a "rigorous" QA process to make sure they work precisely as intended when played from a hard drive.

And mega blockbusters like Halo 3 and GTA IV may need to be "fixed" to become a Games On Demand, something Microsoft seems willing to do.

Oh and one other thing. Those Xbox 360 games you can buy as Games On Demand downloads will be available for purchase via the Web Marketplace, but not through Amazon.com.

Bungie Studios has suggested that Halo 3 ODST won't be as long as Halo 3. So why will it run the cost of a full game?

Here's a list of the included content according to information released by Microsoft to the press today:

-Halo 3 ODST Campaign, which puts the player in control of different characters in New Mombasa during the events leading up to Halo 3.
-Halo 3 ODST "Firefight" mode, "a new cooperative multiplayer* mode where up to four players can assume the role of an ODST squad and fight together to take on increasingly challenging waves of enemies." Also: "As an ODST squad, you will face increasingly challenging waves of enemies together, striving to earn the highest scores possible, while various "Halo 3" "Skulls" are progressively activated." (It sounds to us like Gears of War 2's Horde mode.)
-Three new Halo 3 multiplayer maps on a standalone disc
-The more than 20 downloadable maps previously released for Halo 3 in the Legendary, Heroic and Mythic map packs.
-A key to the forthcoming multiplayer beta for the fall 2010 Bungie game Halo: Reach

(The new game is said to support all of Halo 3's main features, including four-player co-op, campaign scoring, screenshots and Forge multiplayer map editing)

In addition, Microsoft will sell a $99 Collectors Edition of Halo 3 ODST that ships with the above elements and an exclusive ODST Xbox 360 controller.

When you record a video in Halo 3, it doesn't take up much hard drive space. This is because the video is encoded in game date instead of actual media. When you playback a video, the game renders it in real-time. This is great for sharing your favorite moments with your Xbox Live buddies, but not so good for those wishing to broadcast these moments to the world. Enter Bungie's render-to-video service. First announced in October of last year, the render-to-video service does just what it says. It takes the game data and creates an actual, downloadable video from it. Bungie has wired together a number of rendering systems, lovingly referred to as the Hydra Contraption, which are dedicated to creating such videos for paying customers of their Bungie Pro storage service.

Of course video rendering and file storage aren't free.

On top of the cost of maintaining a Bungie Pro account, those wishing to use the Render-To-Video Feature will have to pay for their files using Bungie Points. Prices and availability are still being determined, but they are leaning towards giving Bungie Pro subscribers a set number of points per month, with high-definition videos costing more to process than standard definition, which certainly makes sense. Users who wish to upload more than their standard point allocation will be able to purchase "point packs".

Bungie is also looking into obtaining enough bandwidth to allow for public video embedding, but for now the service will remain a download only affair.

So how do you get into the beta test of the service? You had to have been a Bungie Pro subscriber as of Monday, May 11th in order to qualify, so needless to say if you aren't in already you probably won't get in. Luckily Bungie only expects the beta test to run until July, so it won't be long before every paying Bungie Pro customer can get in on the action.

Render-to-Video Public Beta [Bungie - thanks Smidget!]

Agent B and B Miggs are back on the case, whipping up this first class homage to sixth-rate design. It looks like 12th century religious iconography drawn by Mrs. Dudley's 4-year-old kindergarten class. Which is to say, it's hilarious.

Mega Man Box Artist Commissioned to Remake Halo 3 Cover [GameSpy, thanks Bialia and others]

Arguably two of the console's most defining game experiences come together in the Xbox 360 Game Of The Year Bundle, available in limited quantities beginning next month. You get an Xbox 360 Elite console complete with a copy of Halo 3 and a copy of Fable II, which should cover the bases for anyone who likes to mix their first-person shooting with a little inventory management and character leveling. Best of all, the games add nothing to the price of the console, with the bundle retailing for the normal price of $399.

Not a bad deal for someone eager to see what the Xbox 360 has to offer all in one fell swoop. As for those of you who've already purchased an Elite recently...oops.

That statistics comes not long after the announcement that Halo 3 fans have played one billion multiplayer games, another indication that Halo is, like, pretty popular with the kids.

Billions of things are a little harder to wrap one's brain around than, say, dozens or thousands. To wit, Bungie's breaks it down in more digestible terms: "Crude math places the estimate of daily Halo 3 Covenant kills, launch-to-date, at over 17,500,000. That's 730,000 killed per hour or 12,000 Covenant troops killed per minute."

Congratulations, you little genocidal maniacs.

Campaign Kill Count: 10,000,000,000 [Bungie]

They're not just doing it out of the kindness of their hearts, mind you. Microsoft obviously wants you to experience the benefits of going Gold and maybe sell a few more Mythic map packs, just recently added to the Halo 3 multiplayer menu, along the way.

The free Halo 3 multiplayer weekend ends on Monday, April 13th at 9AM PST. Go on, get!