Year: 2004

There’s a new episode of Afterwar (episode 6) over at Black Arts Studios – looks like the Master Chief might be in trouble!

Speaking of books… Ross Mills ran across a curious entry at Amazon UK. It’s a book entitled “The Halo 2 Battle Guide: Advanced Combat Techniques”, and purports to be written by ‘an experienced Halo 2 Beta tester’, chock-full of multiplayer tips. Publication date is December 17. As far as I can tell, it is not…

eddie m pointed out a ‘Trade Kit’ for retailers made by Piggyback Interactive for their upcoming Halo 2 Strategy Guide. It contains different covers (including a very nice large version), an insert and a product sheet. The download is 2.1 mb, and requires registration (free). It’s still unclear whether there’s going to be a difference…

Alex Cross pointed out this post mentioning that a new Halo 2 Soundtrack snippet has been posted to nilerodgers.com. This track is called “Follow (1st movement of the Odyssey)”, and it’s done by Incubus. Hardcore!

Once again, the end of the day arrives, and the day’s One One Se7en is almost passed over. Today, that would be depressing, because it covers a subject that inspired headlines like “THE DEATH OF XBL!” when it was first announced… and Stuntmutt’s take was so close to my own I actually turned around to…

Uriel has written a rant about the bungling of the Halo 2 LE release in Germany – apparently, a pretty bad job of estimating how many would sell was done. The language is not for kids, but the anger is universal.

Another Halo 2 sighting in random web comics – today’s Joe and Monkey drops the name. Thanks, The Tropical Storm.

Want to see the artwork that made Halo as beautiful as it is, but think that $22 is too much to pay? Wal-mart is selling it for $13.83 – that’s a couple of bucks cheaper than Amazon. (Realize that you’re eating away at Eric Trautmann’s royalty check every time you look for bargains, though…) Thanks,…

rockslider has added a Halo dictionary to his site – it’s called ‘Halo in a nutshell’, and it’s pretty dang funny. Go read some.

Holly Wright, who owns littleplasticmen.com, a site that sells action figures, wrote to tell us about the HALO Forward Command Center (HALOfcc), a new subsection devoted to Halo, with news, giveaways, and of course, Halo action figures (both current and older). The deal that makes this newsworthy: from now through the end of November, customers…

kapowaz has put together a pretty fun wallpaper (preview here, 36K) that ties together the new Firefox web browser (final release is scheduled for November 9 – does that date sound familiar to any of you?) and a certain game you might have heard of. If you like it, it’s available in 800×600, 1024×768, 1152×864,…

JMan of TalkXbox writes to let us know they’ve got a review of the new Plantronics Halo 2 Xbox Live headset over on their site. There’s some good info in there, so check it out!

Okay, I’m back, but I won’t be able to post news for several more hours – this afternoon will probably see a flurry of posts in the few hours before the timestamp rolls over to midnight UTC. Sorry about that. (And innumerable thanks to mnemesis, who kept the front page from being blank most of…

There’s a new B.Net Top Story, “The Bungie Guide to Game Modes – Part One: Swords”. You’ve still got a few weeks to prepare yourselves, so get reading! Thanks to Anubis for the heads-up.

Wolfy writes to let us know that the Rockets On Prisoner awards for 2004 have been decided. Check ’em out! There’s some real entertainment in that bunch.

This was basically covered yesterday by noted globe-trotting gadfly Louis Wu, but enough people sent in mail noticing a particular bit of info in the latest press release for Halo 2. Apparently, over 1.5 million copies have already been pre-ordered. If you’re one of those dedicated pre-consumers, you can sigh contentedly with satisfaction, knowing you’ve…

James Phelps noticed that the Bungie Store is now offering pre-ordering for three of the new Halo 2 figures. Now’s your chance to ensure you get the Brute, the new MC, and the Warthog. Update: Doh! There’s a new Master Chief Hoody, too. Thanks, Dave. The store’s filling out nicely!

As noted by the errant Louis Wu (who shamelessly noticed it first on Rampancy.net), Evergreen98 at the Junkyard has a reflection on the Halo 2 leak and the community response to it. It’s an insightful read (not sure about the comparison to downloading music – NOTHING about the transmittal of intellectual property over the internet…

Reality check – if you thought WE were psyched about Halo 2, check the hype over at Yahoo Finance. Those are some pretty big superlatives they’re tossing around in there… Update: oops, looks like that’s just a standard press release; Rampancy.net points out Major Nelson’s blog, where it’s spelled out. Sorry about that. They’re STILL…

For the next couple of days, I’m not going to be around much. Hopefully, mnemesis and Count Zero can keep up on some of the news that comes in – but please… be patient, and do not send news items to my personal address if you want them to actually have a chance of being…