We want to have a game night on Christmas Eve with you guys to start kicking off what hopefully will be the renewal of community play dates. We’ll be doing an assortment of customs and a little matchmaking mixed in there for about a few hours starting from around 8:00PM to Midnight Eastern Time. If you have any customs you want to play, be sure to bring them or send them to POD Dust Storm on XBL. Spread the word.

The Podtacular staff aren’t only crazy about everything Halo, but we are also college students working to our careers. It takes a good amount of time and effort to stay up on current events in the Halo and Xbox communities, and it takes even more to produce a podcast and manage a community. A lot of time has been pulled away from Podtacular recently because of the approaching end of the school semester. As a result of all of these factors, we aren’t able to keep you up to date with the latest and greatest all the time. This is where you come in.

News happens very fast today primarily because of the internet. Once a story pops up in one place, it usually propagates to other similar news sites within an hour. People are able to keep up some of these developments, but they usually appear on obscure or not-so-popular news sites. On top of that, there are few people who can actually digest a story and create a comprehensive summary in a short amount of time. Now we’re not asking for anyone to be a fantastic journalist: if you were, you’d probably seek an actual job (we would appreciate you anyways). With that said, our first opening to take on writers has come with the Noble Map pack. We are looking for a couple of good reviews (since everyone else has one). This is just one of many opportunities and more will come. If you are interested in becoming a writer for the site, here are the criteria:

• Must be 18 or older
• Must submit at least two news stories a week during the evaluation period
• Articles may be of any topic relating to Halo, Xbox and other gaming news significant to Podtacular.
• Articles and summaries must be of adequate length reflecting the size of the original content. For example, reposts of articles from other sites should be around 100 words, summaries between 200 to 300, and articles between 400 to 500.
• Articles should maintain an adequate level of professionalism and be free of spelling and grammar errors.
• Articles should be send to duststorm@podtacular.com. During evaluation, articles may be posted on the Podtacular news feed, at which point the content becomes property of Podtacular. Author will be given due credit for the article.

This set of criteria is not final and may be revised.

Things to consider for the Halo: Reach – Noble Map Pack Review

• Layout and visual aesthetics of the maps.
• Uniqueness of maps
• What games types best suit each map and how do map characteristics affect gameplay?
• Areas of the map that are of significant interest or important for game play and team dynamic.

Deadline for the Map Pack Review is Friday, December 10th.