…and figuring out who these guys represented. TheLethalSpartan found the four games of the Halo Humpday Challenge, played yesterday between Bungie and… somebody; looks like Bungie won this time around. We’ll have to wait for the official article on B.net to get the details, though…

In February, we mentioned that Halo 2 was up for Best Audio in the 2005 Game Developers Choice Awards. According to Slashdot, they won. Congrats, guys!

Echoes found a Canadian Halo 2 contest – rules are on this page. You must be a resident of Canada and ‘the age of majority or older in the province or territory in which [you] reside at the time of entry’. Seems like a marketing ploy, more than anything… but there are free Halo 2 games up for grabs.

The Lexington Herald-Leader has an article today about the power of Halo to bring people together; it focuses on some local players, but the ideas are pretty universal. Give it a read!

The World Cyber Games Samsung Euro Championship kicked off in Hanover, Germany today; the full list of games is here, the Halo 2-specific stuff is here. Good luck to the competitors! Looking forward to movies… thanks, Marc, of Halo Universe.

The Codex, Episode 5, has been released – swing on by The Codex Series website to grab a copy, in QuickTime, WMP9, or DivX formats. Very nicely done suspense episode this time out. Looking forward to Episode 6! They mention on their site that they’re pretty close to 1,000,000 page hits – with a day or two left in their first 30 days since the release of their first episode. Go visit, and push them over the line!

Jillybean attacked the forest of spam that is our Halo Story email queue, and extracted a few choice truffles hiding in the weeds. (There’s also a tidbit from Finn in there – man, the whole CREW is hopping! Well, except mnemesis. He got into the cough syrup again last night, and I don’t think he’s awake yet.)

SEspider posted a bunch of entries for his Miniature Halo Art Contest, and declared a winner. Nice work!

LunarShadow stopped by to point out that a new version of his H2O Stats Reader is out. Check the forum post for details and a download link.

Whee – tooting my own horn! The next installment of the CBS News ‘Violence in Gaming‘ series has been posted – and it’s me answering the questions this time around. Remember – as is true with all pieces in this series, the questions were answered without reading any of the other respondents’ replies. This is starting to feel like a ‘Pile on Jack Thompson’ collection… but that wasn’t the intent at all. (I didn’t even know he was among the people interviewed when I answered these questions.) As always – discussion on our forum is great… but please stay away from general politics; limit the discussion to this topic (violence in videogames), in order to keep the flames to a minimum. Thanks! Update: oops, seems I lied. The last half of the second-to-last question WAS in direct response to Mr. Thompson’s piece; it was added after the original interview, from an email exchange I had with William Vitka. The REST of the questions, however, were answered ‘in a vacuum’, with respect to other interviewees.

AYB Fonzi, a member of the Str8 Rippin clan, has been interviewed over at MLGPro.com. (Interestingly enough, the interview was conducted over XBL, via headsets – nice!) An interesting story about a group of guys who came together over Xbox Live, and challenged the upper crusts of the Halo Pro scene. Give it a read – and be sure to check out the streaming footage from MLG Houston, kicking off this weekend!

Sarge meets up with an Elite Councillor in today’s One One Se7en… and the results ain’t pretty.

Fourteen new stories for you in today’s Fan Fiction offering – and a milestone for me; the first post that I can remember where I didn’t need to delete a single entry! Wow. Go read. Update: There’s a fifteenth now, because someone… made noise. (No, this will not become a habit.)

There’s another massive art update (Halo and non-Halo work both) over at Halo Babies today – some fun stuff in there!

The Gamefly Q Awards (we mentioned these in January) were announced this morning at the Game Developers Conference – Halo 2 took hom Favorite Game of the Year, Favorite Xbox Game, and Favorite Shooter. Nice! You can read about it on PR Newswire or Yahoo Finance.

Turns out that National Xbox Tournament we mentioned a couple of days ago is not just Europe – it’s happening in Canada, too. Thanks, Speny Honest.

Captain Spark posted another batch of dialogue snippets on his website yesterday – all elites, this time around. We’ve added them to the Dialogue Databank.

Shane writes to remind everyone that Halo will be inducted into the Walk of Game this evening at 5:30 pm on Metreon’s Ground Level in San Francisco. Not exactly the same as getting your hands into the concrete… but if you’re in SF, go show your support!

Mike Miller once again comes through – what can arguably be called the most difficult level in Halo 2 now has a Legendary Walkthrough to help you along. Regret went up today – with 15 movies showing you a multitude of techniques that can get you past the hard stuff. Mix them in with Mike’s clear writing (and amusing commentary on the things he DOESN’T like) and you end up with a great read, even if (like me) your chances of actually USING this guide to get through the level on Legendary are about as good as Punxsutawney Phil’s chances of avoiding humans on February 2. Check it out!