Bungie’s weekly update is upon us with the usual shocking revelations and totally ordinary and expected announcements.

Halo innovated in a lot of ways over the very cookie-cutter FPS genre. One way they very clearly did not innovate was the exploding barrel. The Bungie Weekly Update confirms that newer, prettier “fusion cores” will be present in Halo 3, along with newer, prettier explosions when you shoot them.

Good News! Theres an auto-update coming soon to Halo 2 that will enhance Banhammer functionality to dispatch cheaters quicker. This will pave the way for the new maps on April 17th! Matchmaking playlists will be updated to include the new maps on April 24th!
Bad News! Rankings will be set back to ZERO with the update. Sorry, Sean, you’re going to have to work your way up Rumble Pit all over again. This reset will make matchmaking easier with the smaller, but still dedicated player base. I feel less bad about dropping from a 23 to a 20 in Team Slayer a couple weeks ago, but the last time stuff was reset there it was pretty quick to rank up, so I’m not sweating this too much.

Public Beta still hasn’t been dated, but a new video documentary should hit Xbox Live before it starts.

This week there was also a re-release of Halo: Ghosts Of Onyx in paperback.

Hugo Weaving may have landed the role of Megatron in the 2007 Transformers movie, but the video game adaptation will feature Frank Welker. This will be the first time Frank Welker has voiced Megatron in over 20 years, last seen in Transformers The Movie in 1986. According to GameSpot, Welker will be joined by Peter Cullen as Optimus Prime. GameSpot also has an interview with Frank Welker, and one with Peter Cullen.

GameSpot also released 3 new screenshots from the game, shown here. All three feature Bumblebee fighting Decepticons.

Update! The rub with posting stuff like this in the morning is that by the evening all the press-releases are out and I gotta update the post. So, check out the new game site, http://www.transformersgame.com/. Make sure you’ve got your flash up to date and you’ll get more screen shots from the game , the developers’ blog, and, even a poll to name some of the new Transformers that appear in the game. Coolest of all is a new interview with Peter Cullen and Frank Welker. Just click through to the videos section for that. Bonus: watching Welker talk and hearing Fred from Scooby Doo.