Thanks to Frankie, for pointing out a writeup at Aussie Xbox of a charity bash they hosted to benefit the tsunami relief effort. Great pics – that’s a lot of people playing Halo 2! Update: Gah – looks like mnemesis got to this one already; you’d think I’d be more careful reading existing news…

Bungie has put up an interview with BlAcKjAk, a high-ranking XBL player (he’s currently number 2 in the Rumble Pit stats). It’s just a quick ‘what do you like/dislike about XBL/Halo 2?’ piece – but it might make some people feel better to know that the folks at the top of the leaderboards are complaining about the same things that the common folks complain about.

There were a few news bits recently that might be of interest to Halo fans…

• Business Week has an article about the big-business aspect of the current videogame market – and Halo/Halo 2 play a pretty big role.
• The Oregon Daily Emerald looks at Halo’s ability to suck in and keep players.
• Pantagraph.com focuses on Steve Scott, a native of Central Illinois and a member of the Halo 2 dev team.

I’m slowly cleaning out the inboxes that mnemesis and CZ didn’t have access to…

Eternity 117 sent along a tabbed version of the Halo 2 theme, Mjolnir Mix, as played by Steve Vai. Go play!

We mentioned a vid called ‘Broken’ a few days ago; one of the mirrors came from HaloImpulse. Wasn’t until just now that I saw the actual link to the mirror… if you still haven’t gotten this, you can grab it here (12.7 mb, .rar format).

Another hefty art update over at Halo Babies; some really, really cool stuff. (If you like the ‘Ambush’ piece by tanqexe, be sure you’ve seen his other Halo-related work in our Misc Art section.) Thanks to mrsmiley, who sent this along a few days ago – sorry I wasn’t here to pass it along to someone who could post it then.

Dzejms writes to point out that “Pete Parsons & the Bungie Crew” have won the Wired Rave award mentioned here recently.

A couple of interesting (to me, anyway) movies popped up recently on our forum. The first, mentioned by nof, was done by Blackstar and stars the HBO Lekgolos in a send-off to one of their own. That Blackstar sure knows his stuff. The second was put together by Hikaru-119 as a sort of tribute to one of the less appreciated characters we know. Makes you wonder, maybe there’s more to the little blue guy than you thought. Perhaps he’s not just an irritating, bureaucratic, tin-pot dictator. Nah.

Nice work. (Before anyone gets all light-headed about “movie guidelines” and whatnot, I’m just posting to make sure the news page isn’t empty. Louis gets all cranky when the news page is empty.)

Jump Tactics, mentioned here a few times before, has released a whole mess of styles vids via their forum. Give ’em a look and see if they don’t improve your pouncing panache, your vaulting verve, your evading élan. They may possibly help you jump better, too.

Hep, from Aussie Xbox, writes to tell us of an article on their site detailing the results of the charity Halo 2 tournament, held this last week on the 12th, that we’d previously mentioned. Check out the final stats, plus all the tons of great prizes from Logitech, Xbox, and Netgear and the fun being had in the name of a good cause.

Episode 3 of the machinima series The Codex has been posted. It’s called “Aftermath”, and it’s available in Quicktime format for now; with Divx and WMV versions coming soon. The plot thickens…

To sleep, perchance to dream… or to play. Check today’s One One Se7en for deep philosophical meaning. Or not. Pax.

Somebody was messing around in one of the sub-basements where some of the servers are. This somebody apparently spilled their drink, or possibly some soup, all over a bunch of arcane equipment I can’t understand. Anyway, some sections here are offline for awhile, like Tips, the Story Page, and maybe some others. I blame Crux.

Deep thanks to Mike Miller, who submitted his Oracle chapter of the Halo 2 Legendary Walkthrough early enough that Louis could format it and prepare it for the masses before he left. Because of Mike’s consideration, you can read it on time, today, rather than at the end of this week. This level contains the first ‘Boss Battle’ in Halo 2 – and Mike shows you how to completely sidestep this annoying addition. 7 movies in all for this level. Pax.

OK, you naggers finally have your new Mailbag. Can I go back to sleep now?

A number of people have written to point out that tech news site Slashdot has posted a rather belated review of Halo 2. They give it an 8 out of 10, and also comment on the MagicBox XFPS, another adapter that lets you plug a keyboard and mouse into an Xbox (it gets a 6 out of 10).

Unable to pass up a golden opportunity, and with a bunch of other great stuff to boot, Jillybean takes time out from her busy schedule to update the Story Page once again.

That’s it – I’m out. My family and I are on vacation for the next few days; I’ll be back Thursday night. There’s a chance I might find a few minutes to add stuff here and there (mostly late evening)… but the bulk of the updating job is going to be taken on by mnemesis (and maybe Count Zero). If you mail news to lwu at bungie.org, it will be in limbo until the end of the week. I haven’t figured out why folks can’t seem to get it that Halo news for our site should go to halo@bungie.org… but they don’t. This week, though, if you don’t get it, you won’t see your news. It’s that simple.

Hogmasta put together a Halo 2 gameplay vid called ‘Broken’. Lots of folks on our forum liked it – but Hogmasta was pretty afraid of the bandwidth rush. Two kind souls have leapt to his aid – PLEASE, use these links instead of Hogmasta’s. Thanks to the DJ, of HaloImpulse (hmm… that link doesn’t seem to exist yet, but should, sometime today), and Nirvana, of Halo-Vids, for their help.

Stuntmutt pins down a nagging paradox in today’s One One Se7en.