In yet another example of Halo becoming so cool that the only way to make yourself look cooler in comparison is to dump on it, Steve Tilly at the Edmonton Sun drops this pearl of wisdom: Halo 2 is the #4 most overhyped game ever, just ahead of Daikatana:

One of my biggest regrets as a so-called professional game reviewer is giving Halo 2 a five-star review in 2004. But journalists are human too, and like so many others I got caught up in the tornado of hype surrounding Master Chief’s triumphant return to the Xbox.

First– you gotta be kidding me. More overhyped than Daikatana? Halo 2 was more overhyped than a game Romero advertised by promising to make fans “his bitch” and in the end delivered only schizophrenic level design, robotic frogs, and a helpless, stereotypical sidekick? More over-hyped than that?

Secondly, you should stand by what you write. If you’d predicted Halo 2 would be the best game ever before you played it and then got a chance to admit you were wrong later, that’s one thing. Admitting that you got “caught up” in the hype and gave a game a rank it didn’t deserve is something else entirely. It’s just as likely that right now you’re caught up in a backlash against Halo. How can anyone tell?

Call them like you see them– and stick by what you’ve said. All else is pretense.

Thanks to chewpathingy for the heads-up in the HBO forum.

This has to be one of the strangest Halo tie-ins. Madame Tussaud’s wax museum in Las Vegas, Nevada has added a wax statue of its first videogame hero: Master Chief from Halo.

You really sort of want to know whose idea this was, and then who thought it was a good enough idea to actually do it.

Kotaku is as good a place to get the story as any; they’ve posted the entire official press release.

UPDATE: Joystiq has some more details, including a picture from the unveiling.

Whagi in the Xbox Live Forums warns that US and UK subscribers to Xbox Live may be targets of a phishing attempt. An email arrives that claims to require you to login to XBL due to changes to your account, but the links in the message go to a fake XBL login page that allows the perpetrators to record your username and password.

Check the forum post for full details and don’t fall for it.

Its time to submit your comments for our next show; Goodbye Halo 2: Farewell Old Friend. What we are looking for is your most memorable moments with Halo 2.

Examples:

· The night Halo 2 was released, where were you and how did you feel when you finally got your hands on the game.

· Tell us the longest session you ever had with Halo 2.

· Your favorite moments with the single player and multi-player.

· The things you hated the most about Halo 2.

· What will you miss the most about Halo 2?

You don’t have to follow that format. We encourage you to submit anything you want, as long as it remains on topic. This will be a very big episode, so lets make it a great one.

Also, this marks the very LAST episode we will exclusively talk about Halo 2, the game that created the foundation for the Podtacular community. Halo 2 was a part of our lives for so long, so lets give it a proper farewell party.

Send in your submissions to podtacular@gmail.com

As soon as possible being, in this case, already. Francesca Reyes, Editor-in-Chief of Official Xbox Magazine, has already played through the entire Halo 3 single-player campaign, and her ten page review will hit the streets in the next edition of OXM, day and date with the game.

Technically nobody’s supposed to say a word about the game, but GamesRadar managed to get her to say a few words about how she felt after she finished playing:

I think I was kind of in a state of shock for most of it, especially after I finished the campaign. I was happy, yes – but it didn’t really hit me until I was back in San Francisco and eating a big bowl of ramen at some neighborhood joint. I sat there at the table with my bowl of ramen and a copy of Wired (the one with Master Chief on the cover which I bought for the flight home) – and I thought to myself: Wow. I can’t believe I just did something that hundreds of thousands of people have been waiting years to do.

Thanks Major Silva for the heads-up in the HBO forum.