The Fight Like a Girl tournament is running for the sixth time later this month, and founders Kari Toyama and Tasha Pettengill need your help to make it another tournament to remember. Last year’s tournament raised over $7,000, and we want that record smashed.

There are five different Halo: Reach events — 2v2 Slayer (Double Elimination), FFA Slayer (Single Elimination), 4v4 Team (Single Elimination), Team Firefight Score Attack and Solo Firefight Score Attack.

Here’s the event schedule:

Friday, October 21 – Team and Solo Firefight Score Attack

Saturday, October 22 – 2v2 Slayer, Team and Solo Firefight Score Attack continued

Sunday, October 23 – 4v4 Team, FFA Slayer, Last chance to submit scores for Team and Solo Firefight Score Attack

How do you participate? By signing up for events at http://www.flagtournament.com. All events are $10 per person, so for instance, a four-person team event will cost the team $40.

Have questions? Visit the website, or contact info@flagtournament.com.

GamingAngels: So what attracted you to working as a 3D artist?

Deanna Nygren: It was my interest in technology, videogames, problem solving and love for fantasy/sci-fi that initially helped steer me towards a career as a 3d artist.  Additionally, I was attracted to working within a collaborative team environment, having artistic freedom and the portrayed culture of game development studios.

Have you always wanted to create games?

I knew I always wanted to be an artist.  Before my decision to get into games I wanted to be a fashion designer, but the real world has gravity limitations and high fashion models don’t tend to be giant nerds and gamers.

What games made you think that this is what you wanted to do when you grew up?

The game that really made me want to work in games was Final Fantasy X.  I really got into that game and absolutely loved the character and monster designs.  The in-game 3d models looked fantastic for the time and the cinematics were pretty.  Halo also helped my determination because I had so much fun hosting 16 player LANs at my house and got in with the hardcore gamers. The more games I played, and the better their art became, the more I wanted to work in games.

Do you play video games now?

Yes!! I would say fantasy style action and/or rpg are my favorite genres, but I like a wide variety of games.

What are you playing currently?

Currently I am playing From Dust, Monster Hunter Tri, League of Legends, Halo, Rift, DC Universe Online, Killing Floor, Bastion and Smash Bros Brawl (when people are brave enough to face me).

What have you used as your inspiration?

The Minneapolis Institute of Arts Museum was one of my favorite inspirations with its extensive Classical Greek/Roman/French sculpture, ancient sculpture from Japan, China and India.  I am daily inspired by many concept and 3d artists from games and forums that I follow and movies like LOTR, Starwars, Avatar, District 9 or even random indie movies.  I really admire Hollywood FX artists like Steve Wang; he has especially fantastic sculpts and interesting casting processes.  I also am inspired by deep sea creatures, crazy plant life and bugs that we don’t often see just sitting in our offices everyday!  I often carry a camera around with me and am inspired by textures and color.

What has been the most difficult thing you had to do at work?

The hardest thing I have done at work was to move onto a new project where I had to create types of artwork which I did not have much experience with before.  It was difficult modeling huge buildings because I lacked prior architecture art experience.

What was the easiest?

The easiest thing I have to do at work is making art assets from really fun and interesting concept art.

What was something in particular you contributed to Crimson Alliance?

I modeled and textured many 3d environment art assets using 3ds Max, zBrush and Photoshop, usually modeled after concept art.  Specifically I made a lot of the props and consumables/pick up items.  One of the more iconic assets I modeled was the Vendor’s Cart in the player shopping areas.

Can you tell me a few things about the game that you are particularly proud of?

I am proud to have worked on such a fun XBLA game as my first game credit.  I really like how you can interact with the barrels and throw them in Crimson Alliance!  In the end this game came a long way visually since I first started, and I think it has a unique cohesive style.  I am passionate about character art, so I was ecstatic I had the opportunity to model the Leader Elite’s armor set that player characters can purchase.  It is pretty fun to run around with the shield/spear I made! You can see a render of him at www.crimsonalliance.com

What other games, besides Crimson Alliance, have you worked on?

After Crimson Alliance I worked on Halo: Anniversary, which comes out this fall.

Any games you are currently working on?

I am currently working on an unannounced project!

Any words of wisdom you’ll like to give to future female game designers, programmers, etc?

Follow your passion, be honest with yourself, draw/program/design all the time and put in the extra effort.  Know you are going to be working with a bunch of dudes, so have good humor.Do not stop playing games when you get your job.Go to networking events and places that will connect you with professionals.  I was given the opportunity to do an art test for Certain Affinity because of a connection I made at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. Know what’s out there and what is expected in your portfolio.  Do not be afraid to ask people to review your portfolio and give you honest feedback.  I randomly emailed some companies while I was a senior in college to ask for advice on what to do for my 3d portfolio, and the studio art director at Volition responded giving me great feedback.

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Thank you so much Deanna for taking the time to talk to us.  Be sure to keep an eye on Gaming Angels, as we attack PAX with a vengeance and I will be bringing you more information on Crimson Alliance and more!

Vegetarians beware! Bungie is playing Halo Reach today and if you beat them, you get steak.  Yes… beef, from a cow.  “You steak us. We steak you.” is the motto of today’s 7/7 Bungie day.  As many of you know, Bungie celebrates the 7th day of July in order to prolong their long standing infatuation with the number seven.  So is not unusual to log on and find them playing today, usually with some swag to give out.

If you want a steak, all you have to do is be in the United States and play the Steaktacular playlist.  If you are not in the U.S.A, they will send you a gift card.  The gaming marathon started at 12:00am (PT) and will go on until 11:59pm(PT). If you see these Gamertags: Humproast, Heavenly Beef, Tender Loins or Porterhaus all you have to do is beat them!  If you are more of a watch the mayhem kind of person, not to worry!  Bungie has a live stream at USTREAM for you to watch; complete with Twitter updates and live chat.  So you can watch it on the go or at work.

The festivities don’t end there, as Bungie has been updating their store with some sweet Halo gear you can’t get anywhere else!

As always, my **GT is Xalaga and I hope to see you guys online!

*gets steak sauce ready

**When sending invites please let me know who you are and that you are coming from GamingAngels.com

Pyramind is responsible for the hefty task of reproducing the original score. They chose several notable groups to help them, including the Skywalker Symphony Orchestra and Chanticleer, a men’s vocal ensemble.

“It was a huge undertaking to transcribe, orchestrate, and produce every note from the original game soundtrack files,” said Paul Lipson, Pyramind Studios COO/Audio Director. “Our team approached every aspect of the music with an immense amount of skill and care, keeping the core Halo sound while updating the production to today’s highest standards.”

Microsoft Studios Audio Director Kristofor Mellroth said, “This wasn’t just a simple remaster, it was a completely new orchestration and recording using renowned talent and top live players. We are striving to create the ultimate love letter to Halo fans.”

That line was a little misleading, since it turns out that we’re getting Halo 4. I guess it’s technically the start of another trilogy, but I was definitely expecting something resembling a new IP.

Halo 4 releases Holiday 2012. Watch the reveal trailer below.

And that’s not all for the Halo universe — a remake of the very first game is on the way. You can reminisce in HD on November 15.

Thanks to Peg for the tip.

Huge convention center to hold it all in? Check

Best group of people you’ll ever hang out with? Check

New and up-coming games from E3 and some PAX exclusives available to play?  Check

Halo fest?  Chec…..WAIT WHAT?

Yes, if it was EVEN remotely possible PAX just got better-er-er-er-er.  During PAX Prime, Halo waypoint announced that a Halo Fest would be happening all 3 days from 10am to 6pm.  Bringing tournaments, panels and sweet prices.

So, if you are still reading and you haven’t passed out do to how exciting this is, I have one more thing to say….IT’S FREE WITH YOUR PAX PRIME PASS!!!

*passes out*

I think we all have the same “expectation funk” after every release of map packs.  We have played Halo: Reach to death.  We have counted every pixel, rock, and blood splatter pattern in our paths.  There are maps that we just outright would not play again! We would rather poke our eyes out with an energy sword than play on the same maps forever.  So when the rumors start that a new set of maps are coming out… our imaginations run wild and so do our expectations, sometimes too far.

Defiant is out…. and I am in a funk.

The Defiant Map pack is 800 Microsoft points, which is roughly $10.00.  In other words, two five dollar foot-longs; or a five dollar foot-long, a drink, chips and cookies.  It is easy to buy them, since it just means that a visit to Subway will not be in your future anytime soon. The map pack comes with two matchmaking maps and a firefight map, and includes 150 Gamerscore achievement points.

Condemned

Condemned takes place aboard Orbital Station Gamma, a massive space station high in orbit above the planet Reach. Prior to the Covenant’s overwhelming invasion, Orbital Station Gamma provided long range communications for UNSC fleets and a vital lifeline between Reach and Earth. During the Battle of Reach, the station suffered terrible punishment at the hands of the Covenant but a few fortified sections remain intact, fully pressurized, and ready for combat.

First of all, Condemned looks like Orbital and Anchor 9 had a baby; a very beautiful baby.  Anchor 9 is extremely symmetrical, while Condemned feels a bit different.   The map at first was a little confusing.  It had far more rooms, and rooms inside rooms, and hallways and passages that I could comprehend.  I called upon my trusty Halo 2 friends, who I have been gaming for a very long time now and we almost ended up playing “Marco Polo.”  It took a few minutes to be able to find them. Our next task was to figure out where the shotgun was, which was futile in the end since we quickly forgot.  The center room in this map is where all the fun is at: very much like Anchor 9, the center room has no gravity and sounds do not travel the same way, so you get an outer space feel to the fight.  This place also houses the coveted Rocket Launcher, which is a guarantee that this room is where all the action will happen.

The first few times we played in matchmaking, it was fun to watch as the other team was just as clueless as we where to where the cool guns where.  “WHERE DID HE FIND THAT AT?” was the battle cry of my teammates as they fell to their death.  “AH HA!!!” [insert evil laugh] was the other battle cry, as now my team mates had the power gun and the other team did not.  This went on for a while and then we got used to it.  As I suspected, the center room is where the fun was always at.  Oddball was complete chaos and madness all in this little room.  I started to feel like Ender in “Ender’s Game” playing the war game.  I pushed, jumped, and got behind the enemy for a much deserved stabbing, or tried to run away float away as fast as I could with the ball.  This made the map actually feel small at times.  Strategically, you’ll take the ball out of this room to one of the nearby rooms in order to throw off the other team’s plan. The maps play better than expected after the original walkthrough.  The locations of the guns became more obvious the more you play it.  It hosts 6 – 12 players and it does require a lot of people to be a fun game on this map.  It lacks internal beauty though.  Things are dark and almost repetitive inside but if you look outside the window, it is just breathtaking.  Incredibly beautiful, but when do I get to look outside when playing?  Never… unless I’m on the floor dead.  Nothing new in game play when it comes to comparing between Anchor 9 and Condemned.

Highlands

Highlands takes place on the top-secret Military Wilderness Training Preserve on Reach. The Preserve is a large, wooded area where Spartan super-soldiers trained long before the war with the Covenant began. During the Battle of Reach, the Preserve was the site of key battles between the alien invaders and a group of Spartans who used their familiarity with these UNSC training grounds to significant tactical advantage…but not everyone who enters these woods makes it out alive.

“Just wait till you see the pretty one,” my team mates said when we got to Highlands.  They were not wrong, Highlands is breathtaking. Beautifully designed, with tons of places to run and hide.  Yes… I said hide.  Highlands is one of those maps that begs for you to bring your Hershey chocolate, your graham crackers, and some marshmallows to make yourself some really good S’mores while camping.  This map is a lot of fun for people who love to snipe; not so much for those of us that would rather not fight with 8 other teammates for a chance to play with the sniper gun.  It’s packed with teleporters, vehicles, caves, mountains, high land, low land, just everything!  The map also calls for teamwork to be a major component for your team; something that, regretfully, Halo is short of nowadays.   With Highland everyone seemed satisfied.  While my team ripped apart Condemned, Highland was clearly the favorite and one that I am almost certain most people will not veto.

Unearthed

Unearthed takes the battle for Reach to a large Titanium mine and refinery located in the Viery civilian sector of the planet. This particular mine was built to take advantage of the exposed titanium inside a massive meteor crater. The titanium produced here is used in much of the UNSC hardware, from the chassis of the Warthog to the meters-thick armor plating of capital ships like the UNSC Pillar of Autumn. While this facility was quickly abandoned when the Covenant arrived on Reach, it still has significant tactical (and economic) value and it won’t be long before both humans and Covenant return to battle for control.

This map felt a bit too familiar in a lot of ways. It looks like High Ground, Last Resort, and Boneyard; and plays very much like Beachhead.  Sadly, this map suffers from the same things Condemned did in the déjà vu department.  I, for one, was happy to see another firefight map to add to the list, but felt let down when the map itself was yet another prison cell to defend.  You do have a lot of advantage against the Covenant due to the many places you can set up to defend and a conveniently placed ammo box in the middle of the map.  The map was fun, but visually not very appealing.  I wish they would have been a little more creative with the layout and the Covenant positioning.   If your team is fine tuned, this map will make firefight fun and easy game play for everyone.  If you have the fuel rod gun, prepare to have uber amounts of fun!

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Defiant is misleading, as 343 Studio’s first map pack was not a bad one, but one where they decided to play it safe.  Overall they delivered, the maps, for the most part have very pretty environments, fun game play and are tailor made for snipers.  At the price of two footlongs, it is correctly priced, unless you are really hungry.

In the spirit of 5, we have 5 codes for the Defiant map pack to give away. All you need to do is in the comments below tell us your most “DEFIANT” moment in Halo: Reach in order to win. Links to pictures of said moment always a plus!

I saw the story of Julias Jackson [Zombie Kill67] as I was watching the Simpsons and my local news did a promo.  I searched for “Autistic Vs Microsoft” and the 1^st match was a video talking about the incident.  In the video it’s made to sound like this soulless corporation [Microsoft] has robbed the poor autistic child from the privilege of playing Halo and he had received the dreaded banhammer.   Microsoft replied to the incident saying that the kid’s account was found logged in a different city and had been able to receive the “recon armor” off-line, something that cannot be done.  Microsoft had a clear case for why the achievements were stripped and why the account was labeled as a “cheater.”

There is something in us, something primal in nature that we want to protect the weak.  Julius is autistic and this is devastating to him. At the same time, there is always another side of the story.  We all know that things like tampering or giving away your password to anybody is something you just don’t do.  Apparently Julias wanted that recon armor so much that he gave his password away to another player in order to get the armor.  He violated the number one rule of online life involving gaming, email accounts, banking, shopping; anything that requires the use of a password. You don’t give your password away!  Did Julias know what he was doing?  That might be a fuzzy line due to his condition, but he knew enough to give his password away to attain the recon armor.  Is Microsoft right to label the account as a cheater and most likely ban it from playing online?  Yes, yes they are.  Cheating is a huge problem in the gaming community, giving honest players and achievement seekers an inexplicable rage when in the middle of a game someone uses an exploit or mod to win the game.  We have poured hours of game play trying and getting used to the game in order to get better at it and someone decides that is better to pay or device a method to void all restrictions made by the game in order to win.  I can’t tell you how many times a full team of 8 on a Halo match has ended with us saying, “we would have won that game, if it wasn’t for that guy glitching everywhere.”  These types of situations are frustrating and will make people stop playing the game.  That is why Bungie’s banhammer is merciless; as it should be. That is why Microsoft has an eye on it’s community and tries to eliminate this type of behavior.

It is unfortunate that an autistic boy was caught in the crossfire, whether he knew what he was doing or not. Julias’ mom later admitted that they were wrong when they said that Microsoft had banned the account unfairly and for that, I applaud her.  Trust me, if he had been unfairly banned, I would have been right there with her, but with the proof that Microsoft had provided, there was nothing more to do.

The problem remains that we have huge modding and cheating communities.  People who think that they are above the rules and regulations of a game; and the company that makes the console. That because they bought the system, they think they have the right to mod, cheat, and make the rest of the gamers’ lives miserable.  People that after a game of “Call of Duty” send you a message telling you that if you send them 1600 Microsoft points, they will get you to a higher level.  Kids that will glitch a match to get experience points faster.  Gamers that will prey on kids like Julias to get their password.  I blame whoever did the exploit more than Julias himself.  If that gamer wanted to be nice, buy Zombie Kill67 a 2 month XBL card, send him the code as a message on Xbox, and we all will be happy.  This all seemed harmless at first, but it never is.  We too pay for the game and the console to enjoy and we, the non cheating gamers, do have the right to enjoy the game as it was intended.  We, the gamers, have the right to be able to win or lose a match due to our awesome skills or lack thereof.

As always, there is another side to modding as well.  There is the modding and changing a particular product for the good of the gamers.  Let’s look at John Yan son, a four year old autistic boy.  Kyle Yan have difficulty playing games because of the controles, and Kinect has allowed him to use his body instead to play games.  That’s with the system out of the box. Modding communities have spend countless of hours playing with the Kinect since it came out and have been able to achieve wonderful things like 3D video capturing, tracking on arbitrary planes and even been able to control a digital shadow puppet!  And all because people go outside of the rules and regulations of a system.  Imagine what can be done for kids like Kyle and Julias in the near future.  Not all modding is bad, but with great geek knowledge, comes great responsibility.

If you take anything out of this, let it be that it makes you the person that will not buy gold with real cash for World of Warcraft. Let it be you the one that does not answer the Craiglist ad that guarantees to install that chip on the Xbox that is undetectable, making you invincible in game.  Let it be you, my dear beloved gamer reader, the one that will report unlawful behavior in any game, based on actual exploits and not because of the gender of your opponent.  Let it be you, the one that makes gaming a fun and free environment.

This new novel by Greg Bear kicks of a trilogy of novels called “The Forerunner Saga”, the first of which is “Halo: Cryptum”.  Cryptum will be out sometime in January of 2011, so fans of the Halo universe story don’t have to wait long to get their hands on it. Tor will also be publishing an unabridged audio book simultaneously with the novel’s release.

From the press release, here’s an idea of what kind of story fans have to look forward to, and what secrets about the universe the trilogy might reveal:

Halo: Cryptum will begin the first deep exploration into the time of the Forerunners, the creators and builders of the Halos. Almost nothing is known for sure about this ancient race. Worshipped by the Covenant as gods, their engineering relics pepper the galaxy, and their connection to humanity remains unanswered. Devoted fans of both the books and games will finally get to delve deep into the era of these enigmatic beings, and discover for themselves the epic story behind one of the great mysteries of the “Halo” universe: the complete disappearance of the Forerunners from existence.

Along with the trilogy, Tor has also recently announced a new series for Halo that delves into the post-Halo 3 universe that will be written by experienced Halo novelist, Karen Traviss.