Author: Louis Wu

Halo 2 was big enough to get a mention in Bill Gates’ keynote speech at the Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas. 6.3 million copies sold to date… wow. This has been reported in a number of places – I found it easiest to read at Eurogamer.

Bungie posted another interesting story last night – Xbox Live and Halo 2 by the Numbers. It’s a look at the first couple of months of Halo 2 multiplayer stats – and they’re pretty big numbers. There are some confusing things (how can you have more unique users than sessions?), but overall, it’s clear that…

Bungie continues their (long-dormant) series on what it’s like to work at Bungie… this time from the perspective of true royalty, Alta “Bungie Princess” Hartmann. (Okay, when you get right down to it, her job sounds kind of rough… but it IS all the beef jerky you can eat.) Thanks for doing what you do,…

Apologies – the forum is currently offline. There’s a 12-year-old script kiddie who had nothing better to do than spam it – and I, unfortunately, DO have something better to do than chase him around, so I’ve turned it off. Gotta love it when the bad guys win. On a positive note, though, a package…

IGN has put up an article predicting the year-to-come as far as Microsoft and Xbox are concerned. Their prediction for Halo 3: it won’t be out until fall 2006, released as a ‘counterpunch’ against the PS3 and Nintendo’s next offering. Hmm… Thanks, Guardian.

What do you do when you’re done? The latest Trunks and Soto takes one tack… (Thanks, Trunks.)

Bizarre. c0ld vengeance has been griping about a sound he hears on the Zanzibar bridge (the one you can lower to get to the sword) every time he plays… some expressed sympathy, and some expressed confusion. Today, he posted a short vid, showing what he was talking about… and it turns out this is another…

Today’s addition to the Cutscene Library is a biggie – it’s the end of Sacred Icon and the beginning of Gravemind. Lots of story meat in this one! (There is one tiny difference between the Legendary version and the other versions – we documented it here. The film that’s there now is on Legendary; it’s…

MrJukes has updated his Jumping Guide again – this time with a 6 minute treatise on Foundation. Some of the tricks are more fun than useful (they require overshield to survive, for example), but man… the guy’s got style. Check it out!

Kevin Ryan writes to say that Afterwar episode 10 has been posted – there are game spoilers in this one (Afterwar takes place… well, after the war). Go see what’s next for the Chief!

Back in December, Vue Cinemas in London sponsored the Big Screen Battle tourney, pitting Halo fans against one another on movie screens. Now, they’re doing it again… for a cause. This weekend, pay £3 to enter or £1.50 to watch, with proceeds going to the Disaster Emergency Committee for use in tsunami relief efforts.

Captain Spark snagged another 44 pretty cool dialogue snippets – they’re available for download in a single batch from his website (link in the forum post, 1.3 mb), or piecemeal in our Halo 2 Dialogue Databank. Go listen!

That TricKy doesn’t stop looking… this time he found a Best of 2004 Awards page on Xbox SE, a Swedish site. Halo 2 took home Game of the Year, Best Xbox Live Game, and Reader’s Choice.

Stuntmutt looks at Jackal snipers in today’s One One Se7en. (And for those who can’t get enough, it looks like there’s another animated one from N1NJ4 on our forum.)

Juggler has put up another modding vid – this one shows views from outside Colossus, Midship, and Waterworks, as well as other fun stuff. 35 mb, QuickTime format, hosted on HaloGT.com.

Halo 2 picks up another GotY award… XBOX365 gives it the nod as the #1 Game for Xbox in 2004. Thanks, TricKy.

Wonga. Looks like I got interviewed. I hardly even noticed. Ducain, over at High Impact Halo, asked me a few questions about ‘The History of Halo Tricking’, or somesuch… and then wrote up the answers all pretty-like. Go read.

Ouch. The last Fan Fiction update was 6 days ago – 27 new pieces have been submitted since then. Sorry for the delay! (They’re up now, obviously.)

The Detroit Free Press’s Game Master choise Halo 2 as the Free Press Game of the Year 2004 – mostly for multiplayer. (There is a second article with input from other editors, on other games, as well.) Thanks, ICDedPpl.

TheTaintedOne has been working for some time on an ‘end-to-end widescreen process’ – a technique to capture Halo gameplay footage in true Widescreen mode. His proof of concept is a video called Rocket Festival – taking advantage of a funny glitch in how homing rockets deal with a target on a high point of land,…