Author: Louis Wu

Quick Reminder – today’s the last day to vote for your favorite pumpkins in the 343 Guilt O’ Lantern competition! If you haven’t voted yet… GO NOW.

Eep – forgot to put this up yesterday. The final piece of Heart is a Lonely Hunter, for those who are still waiting, can now be grabbed off mythica.org and files.bungie.org. 44.7 mb, 7:16 of conclusion goodness. Sorry for the delay!

poena.dare is back – with the Penultimate Bungie Giga-Quiz 1.0. Wonga! (Don’t ask me why it’s not the Ultimate Giga-Quiz – I can’t imagine him doing this again.) 343 questions to test your knowledge of Bungie lore – and you don’t have to do it all in one sitting! You can read the ‘official’ press…

“Will Xbox LIVE hold up under the stress of 1.5 million users tonight and tomorrow?” Dolbex wants to know! Go vote.

Tina Leyk stopped by last night with another fantastic piece – this one was done with acrylics, on canvas, then scanned. (She’s pretty unhappy with the scanwork; the picture, in her opinion, loses a lot in the translation. I’d LOVE to see the original, because the scan is gorgeous.) Check it out! Nice (subtle) Mullins…

Today’s One One Se7en is 3000 words long.

Already, the eggs are starting to get posted. Hawaiian Pig points out this pic, with its Seventh Column logo staring you in the face, hidden in plain sight. And Daeryl Rodriguez (with help from Konrad) found what he thinks is a mirrored Halo 2 symbol on the right breastplate of Master Chief’s armor in this…

Falcon Zero sent along a pair of Megabattle pics (first, second) composed on the recently-released Zanzibar mod for Halo CE. Awesome!

Shadow Panther writes to point out the Xbox Clan Registry (and specifically the Halo 2 Clan List) at Shadowpanther.net. If you’ve got a clan page, you should add yourself! (There’s a link that explains why a website is required for registration.)

Bentllama has updated his blog with some enthusiastic thoughts about the next couple of days, and some pretty cool pictures of Halo 2 ad stuff in Toronto. Check it out! Thanks, Ross.

New nilerogers.com content today – Never Surrender is now up in the Listening Station. Snippet is 1:29 long, 1.4 mb large, and is contributed by Rogers himself. Interesting dub mix. Thanks, sharpe.

There are dozens upon dozens of Halo 2-related stories out there today – here’s a sampling: Fresno Bee – Anticipation builds (Thanks, Will) New York Times – Microsoft’s invested Springfield (MO) News-Leader – Gamers hot for midnight USA Today – Halo as a cattle prod TheManRoom – Plantronics headset review Seattle Times – General excitement…

Framerate posted a Guide to Getting Ready for Halo 2 over on HaloPlanet – mostly it’s about how to hook your Xbox up to XBL, but there are also some tidbits about food and chairs in there. Give it a read!

Recoil was the first to point out that Halo 2 is at the very top of Gamerankings’ Overall Game Rank list – at this point, topped only by The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. (When he wrote, last night, it was above even that – but has dropped recently with a few lower scores.)…

Red vs Blue is planning on releasing 3 episodes in the next 48 hours – WONGA. Episode 41 is up now (in both high and low res) – keep your eyes open for the rest.

Okay, 9 million people wrote to correct the one-line mention I made of the Gamepro review yesterday. I’m gonna cut and paste from one of the answers I sent, since I’m tired of writing this. Gamepro doesn’t give an overall one-digit ranking, so I went back to the Halo review from them to see how…

Bunch o’ rapid-fire news, to clear the inbox before the clock ticks over (and because I likely won’t be around to post more news before tomorrow):Eurogamer gives Halo 2 a 9/10 – 1 point above Halo (thanks, mad.max) Break Point offers another Zanzibar CE mirror Gamepro gives Halo 2 a 4.6/5 (thanks, BlazeFlare) Bungie.net gets…

And lest you think all there was to do was read about Halo 2 and look at tons of new media, the Custom Edition Halo 2 team has finally released Zanzibar CE – you can download it off EPGServers or HaloImpulse. It’s 22 mb. Thanks to a dozen people who all wrote within seconds of…

The Halo reviews have begun pouring in: IGN Has a review up for the common folk, with a HUGE list of Insider-only content. (Some of the video stuff isn’t there yet, it seems – check back soon.) 9.8 overall score. Thanks, Adur()n. Gamespot, as well, has a boatload of Complete content, and a 4-page review…

A couple of quick Halo CE bits – Kornman has released Tool++, a remade of the HEK’s TOOL with a GUI wrapper and some extra features (thanks, MaterGrief), and haloTV will be broadcasting live footage of the long-awaited Zanzibar CE mod tonight about 9:30 eastern (thanks, BJN1990).