Friday’s GU Comics uncovers the secret of Halo 2’s spectacular sales numbers. Thanks, Meg. (They have a very cool little feature where you can search for comics by Game… in the past, they’ve looked at I Love Bees and Master Chief’s PR skills, as well as the pirating issue that already got a news post.

Today’s One One Se7en takes a shot at… well, someone. I’m not sure who, though.

A few days ago dude 69 pointed out that Gamespot’s Readers’ Choice Awards for 2004 had been posted. We were on-and-off following their Best and Worst of 2004 stuff – it started on December 18, and Readers’ Choice was day 7; I’d have assumed that the Reader’s Choice stuff was posted on Christmas Eve Day (or maybe the 26th, if they took Christmas off). I passed on the news tip. Then, today, I got ANOTHER one, this time from 3Suns; I went looking. Google cached THEIR version of that page on January 8, so it’s been up for at least 2 weeks… I can’t tell you how much longer than that. I CAN tell you we didn’t report the results before – in fact, we didn’t report ANYTHING past day 3. (Halo won nothing in the Genre awards, the Platform awards, or the GotY awards, so most of that is understandable.) The readers at Gamespot liked Halo 2 better than the editors, though – the game took home Best Xbox Action Adventure Game, Xbox Game of the Year, and Overall Game of the Year. Power to the people!

Couple of tourneys we heard about yesterday – over at High Impact Halo, there’s a 2v2 Tourney being set up; sign-up is on the forum, and a small subsite has been put together for rules and participants… and Halo HQ is running a 2v2 doubles tourney, as well: signup for THIS is on THEIR forum, with a separate Ladder News post giving rules and details. Check ’em both out!

Music from the Movies has reviewed the first volume of the Halo 2 soundtrack – you can read the details on their website. The writeup is predominately positive; the reviewer liked it, both as a soundtrack to a video game and as a standalone CD. (The rating was 3.5/5, somewhere between ‘recommended with reservations’ and ‘excellent’.)

The Weekly What’s Update has finally been posted over at Bungie.net… Frankie sounds a little harried. It’s got some fun info – lots on cheating (and how they chose who to ban), info on why it’s as short as it is (something to do with the Bungie Pentathlon… sounds like Frankie’s team might be losing), a few other tidbits. Go read!

Over the past few weeks, we’ve gotten a chunk of mail about the next series of Halo 2 action figures from Joyride; up to now, it’s all been text-based, and we’ve passed on making it news. Littlebigman found a website with a picture of the Series 3 toys, though – and posted about it on our forum. I suppose we also ought to mention the text descriptions of Series 4 and 5, as well… no pics yet, though.

teh Havoc modded a Halo 2 LED flashlight (no longer available, sadly, at the Bungie Store) to end up with a Halo 2 USB flash drive. Nice work!

As I sit here surrounded by 18 inches of snow (with more on the way), and some pretty heavy winds, I notice there are 17 new pieces for you in the Fan Fiction section. Nothing better on a cold, blustery day than reading by the fire!

Another Friday bit, almost overlooked. This one is only useful to Firefox users on WinXP… but it’s pretty cool. Go visit the MLG forums and grab a pair of search plugins (and their corresponding images), and drop ’em in your searchplugin folder (directions are in the post). Now you’ll be able to search for gamertags or clans directly from your search bar! Thanks to Mantis819 for pointing this out. Update: Thanks to DDMagnaS, the creator of these plugins, for pointing out that there’s an easier way to install them (for folks using WinXP/Firefox).

Oops – this came out Friday, but I forgot to post it. The 8th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards nominations (awards come from the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences – Halo took home Game of the Year in the 2002 ceremony) were posted on Friday (thanks, CJAD 800). Halo 2 is up for six awards: Game of the Year, Console Game of the Year, Outstanding Achievement in Sound Design, Outstanding Achievement in Online Game Play, Outstanding Innovation in Console Gaming, and Console First Person Action Game of the Year – impressive, but not quite up to Half-Life 2’s 10 nominations. The awards will be given out in Las Vegas on February 1… not long to wait!

Wow. If you want to get all the high-res Halo 2 cutscenes at once, without having to download them one at a time… HALOChat has made them available in a single 478 mb bundle via BitTorrent. Link can be found in this forum post. (I’m not sure how much demand there is for this… but certainly if you’re starting with none of them, this is the easiest way to get ’em all.)

Dennis Powers writes to point out a new machinima series he’s begun – it’s called ‘The Halo CE Chronicles‘, and follows a “hapless Spartan stationed to a distant Outpost Station and his relationship with the station’s AI.” Currently, there are two movies to see – a short trailer, and a 3:49 Episiode 1. The movies are in Flash format, so all you’ll need to see them is a browser. Powers does all the voices to date. Check it out!

The Halouvre has updated its site with two new images, in multiple form factors. Gorgeous HUDless shots of Delta Halo and Metropolis, both in regular screen ratios and as extra-wide panoramas. Check ’em out! Thanks to prometheus for the heads-up.

A couple of new Flash items popped up on Newgrounds recently, both done by ABob…. Halo 2: The Covenant , and Halo 2: Spartan 117. Pretty hard to hear… minimal plots. Thanks, Micro M and argent.

Back from errands, time to get a little Halo-related news posted. Last night, I saw a tidbit on the KOMO 1000 news page (thanks, Google) about a charity tournament set up by some students at Rogers High School in Puyallup (near Seattle)… that got cancelled by the school district. Two RHS seniors had organized a Halo 2 tournament to raise money for the tsunami relief effort… but the school board yanked permission because the game was too violent. The district has suggested that they’d support the fundraiser if it was based on a less violent game. Thanks also to Foolio, who sent us a note about this this morning.

Red vs Blue episode 48 has been released for Sponsors – ‘Heavy Metal’ has the remainder of the Red and Blue teams attempting to assault the Zanzibar base… with hilarious consequences. I love Caboose again. This puppy’s 6 and a half minutes long – 30 megs for small versions, 60 for large. (It’ll be up for non-sponsors by tomorrow night or Monday morning.) Thanks, jorge.

Hehe – there’s no Weekly What’s Update yet (looks like that’s coming Sunday)… but you can see the Anime Mister Chief that’s gonna go with it. Thanks, Frankie!

Looks like Bungie is still smarting from the whupping they took from EGM during the Halo Humpday Challenge this week; there’s a rematch (2v2, Shishka and Frankie vs Mark and Shoe from EGM), coming up as soon as it can get scheduled. (There’s some trash-talk about it in this thread on the Bungie.net forum.) We’ll bring you the results as soon as we hear about ’em! Thanks to psyho case, from Clan EGM, for the heads-up. (I gotta say, I have no idea what a ‘Fresian’ is… but Frankie called Shoe that in an email exchange. Must be a Scot thing.) Update: Thanks to Jamie Cockrill, who pointed out that Frankie probably just misspelled ‘Friesian’, a breed of cow. (You gotta wonder, though, what Frankie’s doing knowing about cow breeds…)