I’m keeping up! I’m keeping up! (I think this means I’m going to get finished with the long-awaited Tricks section soon.) You’ll find 16 new desktop images in our Wallpaper section – some additional backend coding makes the process quite a bit easier for me, so who knows… maybe I’ll be able to CONTINUE keeping up.

Okay. This didn’t seem like news to me, but after the 700th email (and half a dozen forum posts), I give. If you visit nilerogers.com, you’ll see a small note that states that the second volume of the Halo 2 Soundtrack will be coming out ‘within the first few months of 2005’. So… that tells you… well, nothing. I guess that you’ll be able to buy the second volume before, say, July. Maybe. Please – don’t send us this tidbit any more. When we have a REAL release date, we’ll be sure to publish it.

Hehe – Dolbex had a birthday today… and one of his presents was a pretty slick radio-controlled car. What was the first thing he did with it? Guess.

Our Cutscene Library grows again, this time with ‘Field Expedient’, the cutscene following Metropolis. Check it out!

We’ve added 25 new panoramic shots to BOLL’s amazing HALOrama collection – they’re all single-player images this time around, and some are just incredible. Go look!

There are three new articles for you over at Xbox.com, posted since our last roundup:

• Cory Values covers the biggest spoilers in Halo 2
• Twitch is Twitchin’ for Halo 2
• Hardcore’s Hardcorner has some Halo 2 advice

Always good to catch up when you’ve been away…

Some of you might remember a guy who made latex Master Chief masks, and sold them on eBay. He isn’t doing that any more – there are apparently copyright issues to work out – but I did find a very cool example of his product (in Doc’s trademark purple) under our tree this year. There are a couple of shots of my son modeling it (front and side) – it actually fits ME, so it’s a little big on him. Here’s hoping the licensing details are worked out, because these ROCK!

One of the criticisms leveled at Halo 2 was that Bungie had gone back to outmoded console concepts in this one. Stuntmutt has decided to take a closer look; today’s One One Se7en is the first of a series of investigative strips. (If you don’t get this one, you haven’t played the first 5 or 6 levels of the Halo 2 campaign.)

21 pieces written since Christmas Eve for the Fan Fiction section. Go read!

Couple of interesting articles out there – The New York Times has a piece on how the video game audience is getting older (and more monied), and how games like Halo 2 are leading the shift, and GameSHOUT has put up their top 10 games of the year – with Halo 2 taking the number 1 spot. (The article was written by SexyJosh, a sometimes-poster on our forum, so his nod to Halo 2 is not a TOTAL surprise.)

Missing things… it’s an epidemic. Hep, from AussieXbox, sent word last week of a really cool didgeridoo (if you’ve never seen a didgeridoo, there’s some good info here), carved with Halo 2 emblems, on display at Xbox HQ in Australia at the time. Now THERE’S shwag worth owning!

Speaking of comics, Boxer sent along a copy of Adventures in Disaster in honor of Boxing Day – which was yesterday. Unfortunately, I missed it, so you’ll have to pretend it’s still Boxing Day. (I also resized it, because it was simply enormous, and unnecessarily so… but if anyone REALLY wants to see the original, just write.)

Here’s hoping your Christmas didn’t end up like Samus in today’s VG Cats… thanks, Linkmaxwell.

We have another cutscene for you today in the Cutscene Library – this is the opening scene of Metropolis. As is true with a bunch of the cutscenes, the dialogue changes depending on which difficulty you’re playing on – and thanks to Sniper 058, you can grab it in whatever difficulty you’d like. (We’d appreciate it if you’d grab only one difficulty in High resolution; the footage is identical for all 4, so it shouldn’t matter too much what size you’re watching for the alternate wordings. Thanks!)

John Redman wrote a utility that will download user stats from Bungie’s RSS XML feeds, and then conver them to CSV format (easily read by any version of Excel out there, back to 1.0). The package is a bit under 9 mb, and runs on Windows platforms. If you’ve wanted to try and work with your stats, but didn’t have a version of Excel that could handle XML, this might be for you! You can download it from files2.bungie.org.

Interesting. An easter egg based on the Xbox’s internal clock has been discovered – brings me back to the days of Dark Castle. Skitelz posted over on the High Impact Halo forums that the Shark Warning signs on the Zanzibar beach were different on Christmas… that got folks changing their clocks, and 4 unique signs were discovered: January 1, July 7 (Bungie Day), October 31, and December 25. You can see all 4 in this image (41k). Clearly, SOME people had found these earlier – the Shark Petting sign is the opening shot of FTC’s Episode 16, released last week. Nice job, all!

Red vs Blue has posted a Holiday video for you to enjoy – reminiscences of Christmases Past, and such. Lots of such. First I heard of it was from Hawaiian Pig, on our forum.

TeamXbox posted a bit of news they cribbed from the latest Official Xbox Magazine – details about Halo 2.5. 2.5? That’s what they’re calling it.

“Halo 2.5 will be an Xbox 2 launch title and is going to run in HDTV resolution with new, improved textures and graphical effects. All the stuff that people expected from Halo 2 but didn’t make the cut will be there.”

Before you get TOO excited, be aware that nobody who actually has any authority to speak about this stuff has commented yet. This might be true – and it might be a bit of undigested beef, a blob of mustard, a crumb of cheese. When we have more info about this, we’ll be sure to post it. Thanks to Spike for the heads-up.

A number of people sent along holiday wishes – XLNC created a new HUDless shot, Dennis Powers put together his own Halo CE Christmas Video (broadband and dialup), and Hawaiian Pig put up a nice RvB-themed image. I’m sure there are others that i managed to miss – if I find them, I’ll update this news post.

Christmas is past, and I must say, I ate too much… but the time spent with loved ones was definitely worth it. Back to updating, though! Littlebigman noticed that there’s a new beer stein available at the Bungie Store. The perfect thing for slugging down that after-Christmas… juice.