First I would like to say how happy I was with the turnout for this contest. We had almost 50 participants submitting at least 1 poster. I can’t thank you all enough for making this such a fun and successful contest. So, without further ado, let’s get to the important stuff.

The first winner is Kohato with “Bubble Shield”

As soon as I saw this picture I knew it had a chance of being one of the 3 winners. The angle, and shear hilarity factor of the picture made me laugh for a good 10 minutes after I saw it.

The second winner is klammy with “Evasive Maneuvers”

Again, framing of this screenshot was key. I love the fact that you got the Warthog on the wall with all 4 wheels touching.

The third winner is chromeratt with “Aerial Insertion”

While I didn’t care to much for the font, the name for the picture was perfect.

Congrats to all 3 winners. You will be sent your codes in an E-mail and PM on the ATF site later on today. Use them wisely and go buy the Legendary Maps if you haven’t already. Hope to catch you online sometime. Again, thank you to everyone who made this contest so successful. Hopefully, we can get some sponsors so we can continue to hold contests like this in the future with bigger and better prizes.

Last but not least I had to include some Honorable Mentions.

Here is one from our very own Goose called “Driving”

Here is one from Xasrai called “Rockets”

Here is one from ArFo SaUcE called “Saving the Flag”

Finally, here is one from Bones_153 called “The Javelin”

The one and only Bryan Simon is back again with another Halo song! This guy is awesome!

Arm The Flag prides itself on the fact that we are a very diverse group of gamers that all love to play. Due to the fact that we are so diverse we have 2 main categories of players: Laid back players, and Hardcore players. Both of these classifications of gamers means that they have very different mindsets. Laid back players like BTB games, they don’t care if they really win or lose, and they’re playing to have fun. Hardcore players love competitive gameplay such as MLG or BR starts, they strive to get their 50s, and they hate to lose. In order to serve everyone’s interests we have created (they’ve actually kind of been there for a while) 2 divisions. We have the Easy Company Divsion which is the laid back division. Most ATF members fall into this division. The new(ish) division is the Flagtacular Division. These are our hardcore “MLG type people” that love to win. Running this division as the General will be our very own Preacher. We haven’t decided on a captain yet so stay tuned. If you are interested in joining ATF hop on our forums and let us know!

Well not you, but Halcylon can. Hawtty bs Angel put on a contest before the birthday of Halo 3 where you could submit a Halo 3 screenshot that depicted a scene from Halo 1 or 2. The prize? The Recon armor set! Normally I wouldn’t point out the winners of other sites’ contests, but after seeing his screenshot I have to!

[Thanks Hawtty McBloggy]

Check out ATF’s very first radio show! AnTi, Destiny, and Shadow talk about Bungie’s big announcement as well as the Halo MMO news that has been floating around.

I think I just came….

Seems like Mr. Super has indeed come through. Bungie has released a trailer for their new project. Strangely enough it did say Halo 3 at the end which means 1 or 2 things. 1. Maybe Bungie was lying to us when they kept insisting that they weren’t adding new campaign content. 2. From the looks of the trailer it looks like their project is based on Earth so it might be a different story line involving Earth somehow. If this is true why add a totally different storyline to an already existing game? Knowing Microsoft I believe they’ll come out with some game like Halo 3: The Chronicles (I made that up….so don’t think that’s what it’s going to be called.)

Call me hard headed, but everything Bungie has come out and said in the past when they busted rumors have been true. I doubt they will add to the campaign of the existing Halo 3. Think of the HD space that would be taken up by that kind of content.

From the posting of this story in 10 hours Bungie will be up to something…what that something is could be anything. When you visit Bungie.net you are greeted with the same splash screen that they had up back at E3 where they didn’t get to announce their new project.

Last week I posted a story saying that Bungie and Microsoft were going to announce Bungie’s next project this week and I think it’s going to happen! They’ve been teasing us all week. 10 hours and it will all be over.

In the fallout of the Ensamble closure (don’t worry they’re finishing Halo Wars before they’re gone) some details have surfaced of a Halo MMO game they were working on. That’s right…a Halo MMO. In the first leak only 3 pieces of concept art were released, but late yesterday a whole TON were dropped on the public.

From what I’ve seen I’m impressed with some things and I’m a bit confused about others. First off the classes, armors, and most of the weapons look like they belong in the Halo universe. They do go along with something that you would see in the previous Halo games.

It starts getting weird when you start looking at some of the other concepts such as the mount. This is 2552 or later…no one rides an animal around. If Microsoft follows through with this project in the future I hope they realize that. Any “mount” if you would even call it that should be a Warthog, Mongoose, or similar type of vehicle. You also shouldn’t have to train to use it. If you know WoW you don’t get a mount until a certain level and even then you have to train to use it. I think you should be able to drive anything you want period. Training should come in when you reach a certain level to fly vehicles. The vehicles and ships that were included in the art all looked pretty legit.

Some of the opposition also look weird. There’s a warthog type animal in the screenshots that shows 2 levels of the beast. One looks fairly normal while the other has many glowing eyes. Where the hell has anything like that ever been mentioned in the Halo universe? The same goes for the demon like creatures. If you’re going to make a Halo MMO you need to have it Humans vs Covenant (Alliance vs Horde) and have similar NPC enemies.

Expect a roundtable discussion on the possibility of a Halo MMO in ATF’s first podcast…wait…podcast? Yes.

Hit the jump for the concept art!

Read the rest of this entry »

Hey every one, just a reminder that tomorrow is 9/25/08. It is the anniversary of Halo 3’s Release, and the day slotted for the Halo 3 Boycott hosted by Lower the Guns. This is a last ditch effort to try and get Bungie to realize how important lowering weapons over XBL is to Machinimakers. You can check out This Video made to help rally the cause, which also shows a comparrison between Lowered and Non-Lowered Machinima. So, see you guys on other games tomorrow!

Sorry Security Users lol

Fyrewulff has confirmed on HBO that if you raise your gamerscore above 1000 with the new achievements you will in fact unlock the Security helmet as well as the katana. Good news for people out there that couldn’t quite make it!