Rampancy.net continues its Halo 2 Impressions series with Sacred Icon – a discontinuity, but not a permanent one. (The two skipped levels will be covered later.) A very nice look at an effort Bungie made to address a major fan complaint about the first game… go read!

Another hidden Bungie inspiration comes to light in today’s One One Se7en. Or something. (Methinks this engagement business is going to Stuntmutt’s head…)

Twelve new pieces for you in the Fan Fiction section today. At least one long-unseen name, as well…

Termi, of Shaolin Productions, created a Halo 2 trailer recently – cutscene footage and added text and effects. The end product is pretty slick. You can grab it, in its original DivX format, on the Shaolin Productions website (there’s some description and a few screen grabs, as well). You can also get it from files2.bungie.org or mythica.org (in the original, 692×428 form factor, 35 mb) or a smaller version (460×286, 9.2 mb bungie.org or mythica.org). And finally, it’s available in QuickTime, as well – same screensizes: large (31.3 mb, mythica.org | bungie.org) and small (9 mb, mythica.org | bungie.org). Whew!

Hehe – TeamXbox put up their own analysis of the Bungie/TXB faceoff that was this week’s Halo Humpday Challenge… it’s not that they’re crowing, or anything, it’s just that they’re… well, crowing. PIctures, stats, even movies. Yeah, they’re milking it… but it’s fun. Go read. Thanks, 3Suns.

There’s a new comic up over at Halo Babies – the end of the Getting Started series. Poor Cortana! While you’re there, there’s a ton of new fan art and graphic novels in progress to see… check ’em out!

Welcome to our latest inmate – Jillybean has joined the Halo Story team. For now, she’s on tea and crumpets duty, until she learns the ropes… but as soon as she gets the hang of things, and stops blaming Cortana for everything, we’ll be letting her play with the toys around here. Welcome aboard, Jilly!

One last one for the day – There’s a new Humpday Challenge Writeup over at B.net. The Bungie Chimps took on TeamXbox… and got their butts handed to them. In small pieces. The first major defeat for the home team (the forum mods don’t really count). OUCH! Go read the gory details for yourself.

A list of ultra-popular Halo movie makers must include Hickadam (and his partner in crime, Dark 72), creators of such classics as A**hole (yeah, sometimes we try to be family friendly), Birds, and Holiday. The films are characterized by liberal doses of humor, tight integration of action and song lyrics, and preternatural timing – but they’ve been pretty quiet for the past 7 months or so. Luckily for all of us, they’re back. The latest offering is called Germs, and contains spoilers if you’re keeping track. It’s available in WMP9 format (18.3 mb) from either mythica.org or bungie.org, or in QuickTime format (18 mb) from either mythica.org or bungie.org. Enjoy! (If you like it, or even if you don’t, discuss it on our forum.)

We have four new cutscenes for you today in the Cutscene Library, because they’re not very large. This finishes up Gravemind, takes us all the way through Uprising, and starts off High Charity. Go watch!

A month ago, we mentioned a tourney in the UK, run by Vagusnet. Gamesindustry.biz has some more info today – the full prize list for the winner and runner-up. Go see what loot is available!

Bellator wrote to us recently to point out that there’s quite a bit of information about Halo 2 characters over at the Wikipedia – go check it out… and maybe add to it!

The Houston Press profiles Matt Leto, better known as Zyos on the Halo professional circuit. It’s a monster article, looking at Zyos from his early days, through the start of his Halo professional career, through the present day. Fascinating read. Thanks, Rampancy.net and cookedGamers.

There’s an editorial over at TeamXbox that holds up Bungie’s Halo 2 stats system as a model to be emulated by the rest of the developer community – and to back up what is written, the clan that wrote the article is putting out an open-source stats package that runs on php/mysql in the near future. Thanks, 3Suns.

Halo 2 was big enough to get a mention in Bill Gates’ keynote speech at the Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas. 6.3 million copies sold to date… wow. This has been reported in a number of places – I found it easiest to read at Eurogamer.

Bungie posted another interesting story last night – Xbox Live and Halo 2 by the Numbers. It’s a look at the first couple of months of Halo 2 multiplayer stats – and they’re pretty big numbers. There are some confusing things (how can you have more unique users than sessions?), but overall, it’s clear that Halo 2 has jumpstarted the Xbox Live service (even though that service existed for 2 years before Halo 2 ever showed up). Take a look!

Bungie continues their (long-dormant) series on what it’s like to work at Bungie… this time from the perspective of true royalty, Alta “Bungie Princess” Hartmann. (Okay, when you get right down to it, her job sounds kind of rough… but it IS all the beef jerky you can eat.) Thanks for doing what you do, Alta.

Apologies – the forum is currently offline. There’s a 12-year-old script kiddie who had nothing better to do than spam it – and I, unfortunately, DO have something better to do than chase him around, so I’ve turned it off. Gotta love it when the bad guys win. On a positive note, though, a package was delivered to my door about an hour ago – a pretty amazing package. Say hello to my little friend! To those wishing to chat on the forum – I’m sorry. Maybe tomorrow.

IGN has put up an article predicting the year-to-come as far as Microsoft and Xbox are concerned. Their prediction for Halo 3: it won’t be out until fall 2006, released as a ‘counterpunch’ against the PS3 and Nintendo’s next offering. Hmm… Thanks, Guardian.

What do you do when you’re done? The latest Trunks and Soto takes one tack… (Thanks, Trunks.)