Trickwaffle points out that today’s episode of the 7th Facet webcomic celebrates the one year anniversary of the release of Halo 2. Check it out!

3Suns found an article at Amped IGO that counts down the five top successes for the Xbox platform – and number one, in their opinion, is The Acquisition of Bungie. (I think I’d agree.) Go read.

Chappy found a pretty funny poster at his local FYE – they’re advertising the presale of a game that hasn’t even been announced yet. (Check out a blowup of the critical piece – they didn’t even bother to make the effort to blend the central area.) This is news not because someone’s trying to make a buck off this game (Gamestop and EB Games have had placeholder webpages up for it for months), but because someone actually went to the effort of creating a poster. Silliness.

Z points out Halo Fr3ak’s Montage over at Halo2Forum.com – nice timing. 96 mb. Go look.

TeamXbox posted a piece called ‘Passing Time‘ – ways to make the time go faster while you wait for the Xbox360. If you’re in this boat, you’ll find that the top two things to do on their list are Halo and Halo 2. Thanks, 3Suns.

Ever wondered how to stay calm when playing Halo 2 on Xbox Live? Fett_117 has posted 20 exercises that should help. Swing by Geezer Gamers to read about it. Thanks, Zed.

This year’s Child’s Play charity auction dinner (to be held next month) contains, among other cool things, a Tour of Bungie Studios. Tickets are $100 each (all of THAT is going to charity, too), so you can bet it won’t be cheap… but hey – aren’t they worth it? Thanks, Dr. Nick, who found it at Slashdot.

ofthehi77 stopped by our forum to point out 6 new downloadable maps for HaloCE. Swing by yayap.com to grab ’em! (They’re BEAUTIFUL.) Update: DocOc mentioned that there’s a problem with Dead End – you might want to hold off grabbing that one for a bit.

Kevin Paul, intrepid overlord of irc.bungie.org, has been interviewed over at High Impact Halo. Go read to see what makes this guy tick. (Ducain posted this on our forum last night, but KP wouldn’t let me put up a note about it until I’d hacked into the HIH servers and deleted the material about his rather questionable activities with cats and jello.)

Controversy still swirls about the Latino Review Halo script summary – Gamespot says they’re buying it, based on Latino Review’s record. Someone on the TeamXbox forums suggests that Microsoft is denying it’s true. You’ll have to make up your own mind – or simply accept that you’ll need to wait – but remember that NOBODY who’s actually involved in the making of this film has weighed in officially, yet. There’s nothing that says this isn’t real – and there’s nothing that says it is. I will reiterate that I don’t think LR has any good reason to fake this – and I will also reiterate that our policy is, and almost always has been, it ain’t so until Bungie SAYS it’s so. As soon as we know anything more definitive, we’ll be sure to mention it. Update: El Mayimbe has added an update to his story (scroll to the bottom) – apparently a lot of Halo fans are giving him grief about the piece. Yes, it’s true that a fake script was released last month – this might have made people wary. But LR has been doing these reviews for quite some time; they’re not in the same class as the site that tried to build traffic with that fake release. They’ve EARNED credibility.

Over at MLGPro.com, Dyslexia has taken time out with Trademark Gamers, who lost out to Team3D at MLG LA recently. Great read. Thanks, 3Suns.

Just a reminder – today is the last day to vote for the Guilt O’ Lantern pumpkins. If you haven’t picked your five favorites… do it now!

Sometimes, I get the feeling that Stuntmutt just wants to play. I dunno – maybe it’s stuff like today’s One One Se7en.

The weekend was busy for Fan Fiction writers – fourteen new pieces for you are up now. Go read.

DropShock has posted Episode 4 of their podcast – they look over the Bungie weekly update, the Codex series, and loser online gamers, among other subjects. This one is definitely aimed at adults. MP3 format, 34 mb, an hour and a quarter long.

This weekend, BoneKin released a run-through of the Maw, on Legendary, without a single shot being fired. (He does use grenades – which seems reasonable, since most of the enemies you face on that level (at that difficulty) are immune to melee attacks.) It’s pretty big – because it’s over 18 minutes long. It’s pretty cool to watch someone do this entire level, on Legendary difficulty, without ever once firing a gun (or dying). It may not be for everyone… but we’ve put up local mirrors (both of his original WMP9 versions and a pair of QuickTime versions) because we think folks should be able to watch this if they want to, and we don’t want to crush his university connection. (All links can be found in the forum post.) Enjoy!

A week ago, Tempus Fugit pointed out that a site called Latino Review was claiming to have their hands on a copy of the Halo script, and that there’d be a review this week. It’s up now. There’s already a rather large thread on our forum, discussing its credibility… for those who don’t want to be spoiled, don’t worry, there’s nothing in this review that isn’t in the first game or the first book. It’s probably too early to be passing judgement… but if this writeup is real, I’ll probably be unhappy with the final product. (I’m not looking for a movie that exactly reproduces the game I’ve played hundreds of times.) Thanks to El Mayimbe, of Latino Review, for the heads-up. Update: I’m just adding this to clarify – I am not accusing Latino Review of faking this review, or pulling a publicity stunt. I’m reserving SOME judgement, because the general rule around here is it ain’t true until Bungie SAYS it’s true (and because the date on the script reviewed is 9 months ago, and an awful lot can change in 9 months)… but there’s no really good reason for LR to fake this.

Had to head out for a couple of hours… and now it’s all over but the shouting. (Well, the paying, I guess.) You guys rock: the items for the Blow Me Away charity auction went for a total of $11,717.97, which means you guys are contributing over $10,000 to the American Red Cross hurricane relief effort (as well as taking home some pretty cool schwag). A really cool side note is that almost half of the money has ALREADY BEEN PAID. Nice. As soon as I have information from Bungie about shipping, the winners will be notified with details… congrats to all!

Just a really quick note – the Blow Me Away auctions are closing now; the first three are already finished, with 13 to go. Last chances!

Joyride has put up a number of new toys; check out the Heretic Elite, and the Heretic Banshee (among others)! Thanks, madda cheeb.