GamersHell has written a review of the Multiplayer Map Pack – “the perfect addo-on for multiplayer Halo 2 fans.” Give it a read!

Microsoft Game Studios is looking for your feedback about the Multiplayer map pack – visit this survey and fill it out by August 17. Thanks, Cybrfrk.

Last week, Frankie said that if nobody found the Hi Ben egg in Halo by this Friday, he’d reveal the details. krakho pointed out that over on the Bungie.net forums, M0N3y 5H07 laid out how to find the egg, on the level Regret. (There are screenshots in that thread, if you want to hunt for them.) AlucardX posted a note on the HIH forum pointing to the description, and Reidon made a video showing where, exactly, to find it. I hate Putfile with a passion, so I’ve posted the 3.5 mb WMP9 vid (and a 3.8 mb Quicktime version) on our servers. Again: M0N3y 5H07 found the egg, Reidon made this vid showing how to find it. Congrats to everyone!

Whee – looks like The Art of Halo is selling nicely – Eric Trautmann mentioned on his blog that he received his first royalty check from Del Ray, and he thanks the Halo fans who bought this game. Nice! (Thanks to Rampancy.net for noticing so quickly.)

Black Six wrote to let us know that today’s Mac Hall (guest-drawn by Jamie Noguchi, whose Angry Zen Master comic we mentioned a couple of months ago) has some pretty cool Halo content in it. (The beginning of that story arc started a few comics ago – you might want to look there first.) w00t! (The topic itself is so chock-full of geek-goodness, I’m having trouble cataloguing it all.)

Funkmon points out that he’s now helping out at halomachinima.com – and that he’s mirrored all season 1 episodes of the Halo CE Chronicles there. (Some people have trouble with the HCEC downloading mechanism; this is a bit more straightforward.) He’s also added tons of older movies – poke around and see what you find!

MLGPro.com has posted Part 2 of their MLG Philly writeup – Dyslexia takes a look at the Halo 1 play. Great fun! Thanks, 3Suns. (There are also over 300 pics from the event, in their gallery.)

SketchFactor and Frankie wrote up a fascinating piece on Bungie’s experiences at G-Phoria, the awards ceremony that showed on G4TV last night. (It was recorded a couple of weeks ago, and we announced the results then – it was just that it didn’t make it onto television until yesterday.) There’s also a page full of pictures, some of which should make you go ‘hmmmm’. Thanks to Frankie for being Frist.

Z sends word of a couple of new vids available at halo2forum.com – Ripoff’s Montage can be found here (warning, this one might bug some people – 3 minutes of the 7 minute film are intro and final credits, and the rest is super-fast cuts, heavy on the editing, hard to tell what’s going on); WMP9 format, 69.3 mb… and Croyt’s Anger is basically the back of Croyt’s head as he plays Halo 2 – and curses up a storm at the TV. This one is 4:23 long (it gets old after a minute or so), WMP9 format, 55.3 mb. Update: Z’s also posted a 14-minute 2v2 gameplay vid – Arpus and wyteChocolate vs Fonzi (from Str8 Rippin) and IGN Shockwave. 111 mb, WMP9 format. Top-notch slayer action on Lockout.

Nirvana pointed out a new feature running on his website – he calls it ‘Interview with a Star’. The first installment is an interview with AnubisUK, one of the team behind Broken Console Productions, whose ongoing project is The Squadron. Give it a read to see where Anubis gets his inspiration, and what he feels is good – and bad – about Halo movie making!

Captain Spark dropped off another 27 dialogue snippets – you can grab them from his site, or browse them in our Dialogue Databank. Some funny ones in there!

Okinawa Productions put together a music video called Spawn Man, a video about a spawnkiller, and the player who gets revenge on the tactic, set to Soundgarden’s ‘Spoon Man’ (which fits pretty nicely, surprisingly). Fantastic quality, great timing, great cinematics. A low-res version of this vid passed the Movie Peer Review Rating System – the high-res version is even better. Snag it in WMP9 format (67.6 mb) or QuickTime format (54.9 mb). I’ve gotta say – the ‘Halo music video’ genre is really maturing…

The J Nice writes to say that WannaPartyUp.com, a site we mentioned a couple of weeks ago, has added a few dozen new clips, and the ability to rate clips (just click on the number of stars you want to give the clip).

It’s been a few months since we last mentioned Saber-Scorpion’s Halo-based Lego stuff… but he hasn’t been idle. xyc0n noticed a bunch of new minifigs at Brickshelf – check ’em out! (To be fair, Bungie’s agdTinMan pointed out one of them on a random blog last week, but I never got around to front-paging it.)

Lots and lots of movies over at halo2forum.com (which sports a new design, to boot) – Vrbas’ Trailer for Montage 4 and S3X0RC1ST’s Montage 2 can be downloaded from this thread (both WMP9 formats, 24.6 mb and 104 mb respectively), and a pair of games with top pro players (both in the same vid, WMP9 format, 113 mb) can be snagged from this thread. Good stuff!

For the last couple of months, Aaron Walpole, brother of Bungie Cananimator Nathan Walpole (better known around these parts as bentllama), has been working his way up the ranks in Canadian Idol, a Canadian version of American Idol. (bentllama first let our forum know about this in June.) We haven’t mentioned it because… well, because there’s no real Halo tie-in there. However, 1Up just posted a story about it – and did their best to force a Halo tie-in, so we’re piggy-backing. (Aaron is now in the top 7 – and still going strong. If you want to hear how he sings, check this blog entry.) For the record – I think it’s pretty danged cool, and hope he goes all the way.

Podtacular!, the Halo 2 podcast we mentioned last week, has a new episode up – 21.4 mb, 46 minutes long, covers a variety of subjects, including general tips, specific level strategies, and more. Go listen. (We heard from a couple of people about this – Donaff Baz was first.)

AJay points out SpartanComics over at MySpace, a series of well-done Halo-based comics. (To be fair – Shooty Guy pointed this out last month, but initially there was some unpleasantness about what ELSE was linked from the page Shooty Guy was pointing to, so I passed on it – and by the time it got fixed, I’d forgotten that it hadn’t been front-paged.) In any case, go read now!

Interesting – according to Stars and Stripes, Halo 2 is the most popular game at Forward Operating Base Lagman, home of the 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment, in Khandahar, Afghanistan. The local exchange is selling controllers “like wildfire” – partly because so many people are playing, and partly because the fine grit in the air is really hard on controllers. Yet another hazard of war…

Don’t have enough Bungie schwag? Go visit the Bungie Store – there are lots of new goodies, from t-shirts to posters to action figures. Read about it on B.net. Thanks to Cybrfrk, whose email was noticed before the RSS feed was.