Neowin.net

While having my mid morning read of "/.", I found this story, pointing to an excellent review of the first person shooter for the Xbox, Halo, over on Voodoo Extreme.

Halo's visual prowess is unparalleled in today's crop of first person shooters; the power of the Xbox allowed Bungie to go wild in the graphical department, spending polygons like pennies on detailed character and vehicle models with all the other bells and whistles you'd expect from a game optimized to run on a GeForce 3 based graphics accelerator. The massive outdoor levels come stocked with near photo realistic textures with water and sky effects even more beautiful than what the Unreal engine currently offers.

After playing through Halo a couple times I can safely say with no repentance that it's one of the most engrossing games I've ever played in my entire life. Prior to Halo, I'd have to give the nod to Half-Life as the best first person shooter ever. But now, that award goes to Halo, as the game is masterfully presented and offers a rich gameplay experience until the very end. Truly, no other current first person shooter can match what Halo offers. Visually, the game is splendid, aurally; the Xbox has better sound support than the PC can match, and other than a few rare occurrences where the frame rates become somewhat choppy in wild firefights, it's perfect. Not many games with multiyear development cycles live up to fans’ expectations, but I think that Halo is one of those rare exceptions. If you love sci-fi themed first person shooters, Halo is a must buy even if you have to wait for the PC or Mac version. If you have an Xbox, you must own Halo. It's just that simple.

News source: Slashdot
View: Voodoo Extreme Review: Halo on Xbox

Here is a list of what is included and some details on each individual file:

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bgswitch.exe - Background Switcher Powertoy
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This powertoy was included with the last beta version of the Powertoys Set. Whenever a user right clicked his desktop and chose properties he could see a new tab which allowed him to enable a "Desktop Slide Show." This would automatically change the Windows Desktop at an interval specified by the user.

This actual realease was ported by me and may or may not work well on all machines. I hope that you have luck with it. If the setup doesn't do anything for you then please let me know so that I can include some fixes in the next release!

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shplayer.exe - Shell Audio Player
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This powertoy has been thrown around on sites ever since the final came out. I would guess that this is the most controversial powertoy that was removed from the final. However, the version that most people have floating around, "SHPlayerInstall.exe" actually came from the very first beta of the Powertoys Set, and was a lot less reliable than the version included here. The version I include is from the last beta version of the Powertoys Set. It also includes the much desired "Show Volume Button" option.

You access the Shell Audio Player by installing the file, right-clicking on the taskbar, choosing toolbars, and enabling the "Audio Player" bar. Then if you wish you can enable the "Volume" button by simply going to the Options menu and choosing "Show Volume Button."

I also created the install for this one. However, in this case if you have tried the actual install file and Shell Audio Player doesn't load, all you have to do is simply browse to the C:WINDOWSSYSTEM32 directory, find the file "shplayer.inf," right click it and choose install.

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iefind.exe - Internet Explorer Find Bar
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This powertoy adds a toolbar to Internet Explorer that is equivalent to the Edit menu's "Find on this page..." (CTRL-F) option.

Though this powertoy was given a lot of negative responses, I included it just in case there was somebody out there who wanted to get their hands on it. Since this version was only included within the first few beta releases of the Powertoys Set, and it was decided that it would not be included early on, I was able to actually use the setup files supplied by MS for this release.

Simply install the file, go to IE, right click on your toolbars and choose the "Find" toolbar. There it is!