w00t! You like the look of those Plantronics Halo 2 headsets coming out soon, but think $50 is too much for a headset? Get on over to haloTV – they’re giving away over 100 of ’em; 6 per week until November 13. What are you waiting for? GO!

Alex Cross mentions that the Marty O’Donnell interview that appeared for a short time last week on 1Up.com is now back. Go read it – it’s a fascinating look at how much work has been put into making your audio experience with Halo 2 be better than you could have imagined.

In the ‘it’s totally a rumor, but MAN wouldn’t it be cool’ category, CubanB points out a thread on the TeamXbox forums in which a Gamestop store manager reports info from an annual meeting he recently attended. At this meeting, the Microsoft rep apparently claimed that 2-player online co-op would be in Halo 2. Again – this is totally unconfirmed by anyone at Bungie. That doesn’t make it false – but it’s sure not something I’d stake any real money on at this point. If we hear something from someone official, we’ll be sure to pass it along.

On Saturday, Ducain released a video showing how he blasted himself from the bottom of the maproom shaft in Silent Cartographer all the way back up to the platform you come in on. (The vid is WMP9, 4:11 long, 8.2 mb large.) Amazing. Before I got a chance to mention it in the news, our connection died – but I’m mentioning it now, and also pointing out a QuickTime version I managed to whip out amongst the chaos – 10.9 mb – for those who need it.

What would Monday be without a shot from Stuntmutt? Today’s target: um… MC, I guess. For your daily dose of puns, read One One Se7en.

Goatrope has posted a new vid – Silent Cartographer, Legendary, Single Player, 0 shots, 0 deaths. All kills are using grenades, melees, and vehicles. Video is a DivX-encoded .avi, 6:22 long, 16.1 mb large. Download links (and a codec link, if you need it) are in the forum post. This was originally posted on the High Impact Halo forum.

UNEXPECTED62 sent along a few pictures of his Halo2-customized hub – I’ve picked a decent representative one (26k). Nice work!

pimpmeister, from HaloNorge, points out new Halo 2 footage being offered by a Norwegian site. He hasn’t seen it yet (nor have I), because it’s a pay-to-register site, and only registered members can view it. I’m sure that Cameron Payne, Bungie’s marketing guru, is tickled to be referred to in the article as ‘the boss over all bosses’ and ‘the supreme projectleader for Halo2’. It’s unclear from the writeup whether this footage is sanctioned by Bungie. If we find out more, we’ll be sure to pass it along.

Bungie has summarized the Q&A session from last Friday in a new top story at Bungie.net (including a couple of questions not answered the first time around). When there’s a free moment this week, I’ll add this to the Weekly Updates archive, but for now, go read for new tidbits. (Far too many people sent in mail about this to thank individually – so if you sent this, thanks.)

The Junkyard continues their analysis of Halo from a real military perspective with Part V, Assault on the Control Room. What’s missing, what’s weird, what tactics would work in the real world. Interesting read, as always!

TheManRoom, continuing the preview they posted last week, has put up Part 2: Vehicles. Again, this info comes from a Media Kit sent out by Microsoft PR to some websites.

DocOctavius has released a set of tags for adding the Energy Sword to your Halo CE map project – looks pretty nice! Thanks, MasterGrief. Update: Looks like there’s info on our own forum now, too, including a short movie and a small test map.

Worthplaying has put up a two-part preview of Halo 2 – it’s a nice summary of how things feel now (well, how they felt in August, I guess). Part 1 is gameplay and weapons, Part 2 is maps and vehicles. Heads-up goes to Voodoo Extreme.

Bear with me today; I’m coming off a pretty ugly weekend, and there’s quite a bit of cleanup work still ahead of me. I’ll do my best to get through the rather large mail backlog over the course of the day – but I think I’m gonna spam the page with the first batch, just to give myself some breathing room. If, by tomorrow or the next day, your news hasn’t been posted, THEN you can remind me about it – but please hold off on any ‘where is the news I sent you?’ notes for a bit. Thanks. First up: halochat released a Halo 2 Summary video; 20.6 mb, 6:01 long, WMP9 format. It covers most of the new features we know about for Halo 2, by taking clips from released vids that show those features. halochat is working on Fileplanet and GamersHell mirrors, but for now, you should use the BitTorrent link on his download page. Comments (and download links) are in this forum thread. Update: Looks like it’s made it over to GamersHell at this point – thanks, Soulblighta.

‘Nuff said. More later.

Not sure how many people can even read this right now… but there’s no point in NOT writing it. HBO HQ was hit by lightning yesterday, and a rather large collection of hardware got fried. The most critical piece of this was the router – because of it, no traffic is going into, or out of, the building. This means that the nameservers responsible for telling YOUR computer how to find halo.bungie.org are now unreachable – so you can only read this if 1) your nameservers are lazy and don’t check very often, or 2) you’re using a different URL to access these pages. (HBO itself is fine; it’s housed 1500 miles away from the dead router. In any case, we’re doing our best to find replacement parts; we’ll be up as soon as is humanly possible. Apologies.

MrFluffyPants points out that the ‘When Pigs Fly‘ contest mentioned a bit ago has actually gone live; they’re accepting submissions as of now. Check the contest page for details.

Whoa. By now, most online Halo fans know about the Backstage Pass Sweepstakes being sponsored by Xbox Live – and the official rules state that 5 of the 20 winning slots will be awarded to North American residents. Looks like some of those people just had their chances of winning boosted 20%… because IGN Insider is offering a 21st slot for this contest, but it’s only open to US residents, and only to those that are IGN Insiders or Founders Club members. Read all the details on their contest page – a rules link is near the bottom. Heads-up for this one goes to HaloPlanet.

Tina Leyk has whipped up another pair of doodles and a Halo Babies-inspired piece of Fan Art to her spectacular collection. Look for the 18 September dates. That’s one sad Elite!

There’s a short Hands-on article from GMR, one of the 1UP family of sites, with a nice description of a successful base defense. Heads-up goes to GruntKilla, who also noticed an interview with Marty O’Donnell at EGM – but that seems to have been pulled (the page states ‘Coming Soon’ now). I guess we’ll have to wait and see about that one…