So there are some button combinations that can give you a leg up on the competition in Halo 2 multiplayer… but what happens when you get ’em wrong? Stuntmutt speculates in today’s One One Se7en.

Jillybean has taken a whack at the overgrown forest that is the Halo Story Page mailbag – you’ll find her latest prunings on the Story Page.

LunarShadow points out that the H2O Stats Reader has a new version out (1.2.0) – a bunch of new features are available (check the changelog for details). Looks nice!

Wow, this is rather… strange, if you ask me. If you visit the front page of Gamespot, in the bottom left corner, you’ll find a list of the Most Popular Games, presumably based on traffic to various Gamespot pages. Number 10 on the overall list is Halo Zero, a fan-made sidescroller we mentioned last week. If you look at just the currently available games, it jumps up to number 6. That blows me away – it’s a fan-made sidescroller, in the middle of the Christmas season. Have you played it yet? (Thanks to LoneRanger 2.5 for noticing.)

Red vs Blue Episode 70, ‘Sneaking In‘, was posted last night for sponsors. (Yes, that means it’ll be out in the next day or two for everyone else – you don’t need to send us mail when it happens.) Tex rocks (yeah, surprise), and she puts a lie to the ‘the SMG is the wimpiest weapon ever’ argument. And Church rocks, too (though I don’t think he’s quite as good with SMGs). This whole season continues to reach new levels of funni – I’m loving it. Looks like DirePhoenix was first with the heads-up.

Team3D dominated as a team again at MLG Chicago – they won the 4v4 finals, though only one of their members placed in the top 4 in the 1v1 event. Threads were started on our forum by 3Suns (1v1 and 4v4), and there’s a bit more info at Team3D.net, as well.

Toby Dillman went to MLG Chicago this weekend – and took a bunch of pics. Go read his writeup! Interesting to see the tourney from the viewpoint of someone who doesn’t do this for a living.

Oliver Stopienski has released “The Halo Revolutions – A New Beginning” – a HUGE (320 MB, 16 minutes) amalgam of styles – mostly, it’s a montage vid (alternately showing the usual stuff like no-scopes and sticks and griping about lag issues), but there’s also a mini-chapter of his ongoing machinima project in the middle. Encoding seems to be DivX5 – but I can’t be sure; I’ve only got one player that will even SHOW this vid, and it doesn’t tell me much about the video stream. You can find it on the Halo Orbit downloads page (it’s the third vid from the top). If you’ve got a large pipe and up-to-date players, go watch!

Jump Tactics is sponsoring another Jump Tournament, coming up in January. Full details can be found on their site. Thanks, JumpTactics.

The PGL is hosting a $10,000 4v4 Halo 2 tourney in Florida in 2006, with the finals taking place in Miami on April 29. You can find more info (including how to register) on their web page. Check it out!

PEZ has added a new feature to halowiki.net – there’s now a Recent Games extension. You can set up a page that keeps track of your recent games – it’s an easy way to see at a glance some of the stats get on Bungie.net, all on one page. Nice!

Foo Mo Jive points out that two more Podtacular episodes have been released – Episode 39 and Episode 40. It’s hard to keep up!

Video Games Live is kicking off again – and IGN has the Halo performance for download – by Insiders. Thanks, Tempus Fugit.

MLG has an intro article up about their Central Conference Championships, which kicked off last night in Chicago. If you’re on a PC, you won’t be able to beat their Video on Demand service for watching games – in fact, you’ll probably get a better view with VoD than you would if you were there! Go read/watch! Thanks, 3Suns.

A small article on Gamasutra points out that the number one game played on Xbox Live is STILL Halo 2. On the one hand, it gives me a warm glow that Halo 2 has such staying power. On the other… when is the next killer online app gonna come along?

Looks like the Bungie Weekly Update is online now – congrats to Psychophan7, who posted before Frankie did. (I’m guessing Frankie left the office, or something, actually.) Awesome news about the Halo 2 Soundtrack Volume 2 (only a year later than expected!), a suggestion that there may yet be more Halo novels, a nod to Jon Stewart, a very funny incident involving a monkey, some basic common sense (what?), and a great Mister Chief. Should be in the BWU archive soon. Go read!

Wow, interesting. AfroRyan points out a ‘Coming Soon’ page for UDON Entertainment, a “Canadian-based art collective of over a dozen creators formed in 2000 to provide high-quality creative services to the entertainment industry.” (They provide freelance artists to comic publishers, among other things.) Because it’s likely that the image in question will vanish once the site goes live, we’ve archived a snapshot. That character sitting third from the left sure looks familiar…

Stuntmutt wonders about Nicole’s special moves in today’s One One Se7en. Weird… I hear munchkin voices from Red vs Blue when I read that last panel…

Elnea‘s been drawing up a storm recently, and I’ve been lax about adding content to her gallery here (mostly because some of it needs a new display system, which doesn’t exist yet)… but she whipped up a patriotic image (and then colored it) a couple of days ago, and I think it’s awesome. Give it a look! Update: whoa, just posted – and I couldn’t pass it up. A beatnik spartan… that’s the ginchiest.

Halo Babies takes their own look at the ActionSack playlist with today’s comic. I think I know how Baby Chief feels…