Tom ‘Darkphibre’ Mathews has created another Halo 2 statistical tool – this one sucks up all the data from a particular game (everything, down to the GameViewer), and dumps it into an Access database. He’s got some examples of how the info can be used, as well as download links for the beta version. Swing by his forum post for more details!

The ‘sell Halo-related stuff at auction’ phenomenon is exploding. Here’s what we’ve heard of in the past day or so:

• A repainted Warthog, in ‘Special Ops’ colors (currently $45, 3 days left) – thanks, Penguin080
• Another resin statue MC (currently $25, 6 days left) – thanks, Helios
• Another 6-foot MC statue (Buy it now price of $1200, 6 days left) – thanks, Ross Mills
• A customized Halo 2 Central Xbox Jewel (NZ$1.50, 7 days left) – thanks, Sean

It’s buy, buy, buy!

Frankie posted an update to the Rumble Pit Reset issue last night; they’ve decided to put stats to where they were before the January 1 reset. That means all the games played SINCE January 1 (through about 4 hours ago) will be wiped – but they decided that was preferable to resetting 2 months of stats. Thanks to all that wrote to us about this.

Jade8704 wrote to us to point out that the large Master Chief statue selling on eBay we mentioned a few days ago has sold, for $710. The smaller one has about half an hour to go on its auction – it’s currently sitting at $257.49. And the resin model is at $305, with almost 4 days left. (You can see the last two at this link.)

Looks like the Rumble Pit reset a couple of days ago was a mistake… Bungie’s looking into possible solutions. (There’ll be more info tomorrow, it seems.) Check Frankie’s note at Bungie.net for details. UPDATE: Frankie posted an update explaining that rank resets were caused by a glitch in the system, and that ranks will be “rolled back” to their December 31 levels- erasing any stats gathered since then. (Before you send angry emails to Frankie (or us), please remember that rank is not your personal worth, it’s just a number on a web page for a video game.)

Okay, first off, a removal – I’ve replaced three of the four downloadable versions of the ‘Ladies Like…’ cutscene with a single ‘delta’ vid that contains just the changed content (similar to what was done for the Helljumpers scene). I’ve also added two new scenes – the final one from Regret, and the opening scene from Sacred Icon. Grab ’em while they’re fresh!

Stuntmutt submitted a New Year’s Strip recently – but someone fell down on the job and forgot to post it. We’ll pretend this never happened, and you can read it as today’s One One Se7en. Poor MC…

That Weasel writes to say that Episode 17 of ‘Grunts are People Too!!’ has been posted. I don’t get it. 🙁 (You can download it in QT6, WMP9, or DivX formats, though.)

3Suns writes to point out that TalkXbox has posted Week 8 of their Halo 2 Strategy series – this one focuses on Ivory Tower Assault.

Goose241 writes to mention that the Halo 2 Wiki started up recently now contains a section for Campaign strategy tips; visit to add your own, or see what’s there.

A few Halo 2-related stories out there today:

• Ve3d.com reports the results of their Halo 2 vs Half-Life 2 poll… and Halo 2 lost miserably.
• ZDNetIndia reviewed Halo 2. (Pretty standard likes and dislikes.)
• Marin Independent-Journal picked their top 10 choices for 2004 games – Halo 2 came in 6th, behind such notable blockbusters as Spider-Man 2.

Last year, we hosted a comic series called Halo: Resolution. It closed its doors in July… but recently, Fuzzy (one half of its creative team) released 6 sheets of sprites used in the strip. See what you can do with them!

• UNSC (13K) or PNG (17K)
• Master Chief (21K) or PNG (26K)
• Various H:R Backgrounds (22K) or PNG (20K)
• Covenant Characters (10K) or PNG (16K)
• Miscellaneous H:R Sprites (19K) or PNG (26K)
• HaloVehicleSheet (22K) or PNG (34K)

(Comments can go in this forum thread.)

Rampancy.net has put up their impressions of Regret – a beautiful, but narrowly playable level. Read the whole piece for full details.

Another pair of cutscenes have been added to the Cutscene Library – Testament reveals some of the Prophet’s plans in Regret, and Objects in Mirror gets us started in the Quarantine Zone. Go grab ’em! (I’m gonna have to reformat the page soon… too many images for a single page.) Update: Oops – looks like I missed a bunch. I’m pulling the Quarantine Zone one for now – we’ll repost it later. As soon as I can, I’ll put up the One Way Ticket scene that leads to the Prophet on Regret. Sorry about this! Update 2: One Way Ticket is now posted. Again, sorry for the confusion!

The Rumble Pit stats were reset yesterday on Xbox Live, leading to some outraged high-ranking players venting their anger on our forum (and others). According to this thread on Bungie.net, Frankie thinks the reset might have been a mistake. Stay tuned – if it’s fixed, we’ll let you know. (Thanks to all who pointed this out – the first note I saw came from FugitiveSoldier, on our forum.)

Frogblast noticed some updates on Saber-Scorpion’s Lego collection web page… go visit for some really cool Halo 2-related Lego creations!

LD2k posted a pretty nice video on our forum yesterday – I found the rapidshare link in the post to be annoying, so I’ve mirrored a copy for him. 6.7 mb, QuickTime .mp4 format. Heroic gameplay, set to Troy’s trailer music. Nice cuts.

One last bit before I leave for the day: we’ve got the next entry in our Cutscene Library for you. It’s the Helljumpers cutscene, the beginning of Delta Halo, and there are two files: there’s the cutscene itself (2:30 long), and a small composite file that shows the one change that occurs, depending on the difficulty you’re playing at. It’s a very short bit, so I didn’t think it was worth releasing 4 separate versions of the cutscene – it made more sense to simply snip out the difference. As the Covenant guard the ancient ruins, there’s a short clip where a Jackal dances in front of a Grunt – and what the Grunt is doing depends on how hard the game is for you. On Easy and Normal, he’s just rubbing his hand in the dirt. On Heroic, he’s playing with fire. And on Legendary, he’s fiddling with what looks like a Grunt doll – maybe the fabled plushie that never got made! Thanks to BOLL for the difficulty help, and as always, thanks to Sniper 058 for getting this section started in the first place. And that – as they say – is that. I’m gone. Update: Ename nep (among others) pointed out that it’s not just a Grunt doll that Grunt is playing with… his left hand is holding a Master Chief doll! Nice.

There’s a bunch of Halo news out there, on this first day of 2005 – here’s a roundup:

• G4techTV looks at the year in gaming – Halo 2 gets a writeup, and a mention in other writeups.
• The Davis Enterprise looks back on the last couple of months, and how Halo 2 has changed one columnist’s life.
• GameDaily looked at the best games for 2004 – Halo 2 took Best Game of the Year, First Person Shooter of the Year, though it missed out on Best Xbox Live Game of the Year (it wasn’t even nominated). Thanks, TricKy.

I’m sure there’s more to read… but it’ll have to wait. We’ve just finished cleaning up from last night’s gala, and I’ve got a family engagement to make… so I’m almost outta here.