Well, except for LYING about the score on the first game [Update: he fixed this], the writeup Frankie posted over on Bungie.net about the whupping we took last night at their hands is relatively accurate (if a bit depressing). Go read about it – but realize I’m not nearly as old as Frankie makes me out to be. And the real reason Bungie won is because bentllama completely reversed his normal teamkilling behavior and actually went after his opponents, for once. (He shot me in the MIND a whole lot of times.)

Thursday isn’t quite over, as far as our news page goes… and Blackstar has squeaked in a new Calvin and Halo under the wire. I hope my kids aren’t as smart as Calvin…

Dolbex points out that MLGPro.com is collecting questions for Bungie about multiplayer. Time is of the essence; the list will be sent off in about 24 hours. If you’ve got a question – go ask!

Some folks have noticed I haven’t written a Halo 2 review yet. Some folks have wondered why. Part of the reason is that my only complete experience with the game was a marathon run-through in October – I had been given a single day to finish the campaign mode, and I wasn’t sure how long that was going to take; I didn’t ‘stop to smell the roses’, so when all was said and done, I didn’t feel comfortable writing an entire review based on this experience. I’ve been slowly making my way through the game again on Heroic – I don’t have that much time for doing this, so I’m only about halfway through. When I’m finished, THEN I’ll write a review. In the meantime, though, there are some interesting thoughts from pretty respected community members – Ducain started a thread this morning discussing his unhappiness with his own feelings toward the game. There’s some thought-provoking stuff in there. (Please – do NOT turn this into a flamefest. You’re welcome to disagree, agree, whatever… but keep the discussion civil. Thanks!)

We’ve said, over and over again, that we’re in the process of building a rather feature-complete Halo 2 Tricks site, as a joint project with High Impact Halo. Because of that, until it’s actually finished, we’re generally sending folks to HIH with their tricks (anything collected there will be added to the new site once it’s finished)… but Dark Helmet posted a trick so cool recently I COULDN’T pass it up. Many folks have been playing around with the Energy Sword glitch; it’s been known for almost a week that if you start a lunge attack you can’t finish, your sword will allow you to ‘fly’ to the target – WHEREVER that target is, whenever you get the chance to attack. There are a bunch of multiplayer movies showing this already (a nice one was made by Ducain and crew yesterday)… but Dark Helmet has gone them one better – he’s done it in Campaign mode, solo. The first vid was a teaser; it was 3:12 long, 13.7 mb large, and didn’t explain ANYTHING. Yesterday, he released a how-to vid, showing exactly how to do this at home. The video is 8:38 long, 41.1 mb, and pretty amazing to watch. Because it’s WMP9 format, I’ve gone ahead and whipped out a QuickTime version for folks who need it – this one needs to be seen. (QT is 27.9 mb.) People complained that destructible vehicles would lessen the jumping you could do in Halo 2… Dark Helmet proves they’re all full of hot air.

Ain’t It Cool News has yet another take on the ‘Halo as a movie’ rumor – this one dropping a whole bunch of big names in the movie biz. It’s STILL just a rumor… but there’s Ridley Scott’s name again… Thanks, Nicework.

Stuntmutt and c0ld vengeance braved the cold streets of London last week to get their hands on copies of Halo 2 (and some good curry). The writeup is quite well-done; if you’re not used to British slang, a couple of bits might have to be guessed at, but it’s not hard at all to put yourselves in their shoes. Stuntmutt pointed this blog entry out on our forum.

You fix some stuff, you break other stuff. There’s a forum thread over at bungie.net where people are screaming about new-found lag in XBL Halo 2 matches. I know nothing about the specifics of yesterday’s autoupdate – but it seems to me that if you decrease the testing you do to find the best match, bandwidth-wise, for a game (which HAS to be the case; after all, the total time taken has dropped dramatically), you MUST be allowing for more leeway in the matches found… which means you’ve increased the opportunity for things like lag. If we get any more specific/technical info about this subject from anyone at Bungie, we’ll be sure to pass it along! (Thanks, Wraith.) Update: Chris Butcher has replied in the original thread, explaining the mechanics of the change in the matchmaking code; the search for ‘best host’ is unchanged, but the search for ‘best game’ (which happens first) has been greatly speeded up by expanding the number of games being seeded. According to Chris, this means there’s nothing that was changed that should manifest as laggier games; his best guess is just that last night was worse than usual for general internet connectivity, but they’re going to be closely monitoring the situation for the next few days. (Thanks, Sketch.)

Very cool. Mike Chambers, an employee of Macromedia, set up a contest for programmers using Macromedia products: come up with a Flash/Coldfusion-based application that makes the best use of the Halo 2 stats data available from Bungie.net, win cool schwag. The contest ends tomorrow – we heard about it because Mortalis Deus sent us a link to the website of Eric Dolecki, who’s been working on an entry – you can find a couple of blog entries (this one has a preview of where he was going, and this one shows off his final entry) with info. If you want to enter, there’s still time!

A few Halo articles from around the web:

• The Hornet (Fullerton College) – Halo is the coolest game ever.
• Philadelphia Enquirer – Halo mostly lives up to the hype
• Dallas Morning News – Choosing the M-rated game for YOUR kid (registration required – use Bugmenot.com for a login)

Deathwhore pointed out a focused Cafe Press site (his, I think) where you can express your love for Halo in the real world. Pimp your ride!

Forbes did a Monday Matchup this week comparing Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas with Halo 2. It’s basically a slideshow of competing facts about the two games. Interesting numbers! (There’s also a small poll on the main page, asking which game you think is more impressive – Halo’s winning by a 2:1 margin.) Thanks, Pete.

D_BRINGER mentions that his website now has a WAP component; if you have a WAP-enabled phone, you might want to check this out.

Buried deep in an article about how many albums Eminem is selling is a tiny note mentioning that Halo 2’s soundtrack debuted on the Billboard charts this week at number 185. Not bad! Thanks, Finchmeister.

Gabe, of the Penny Arcade team, posted a note about a charity dinner for Child’s Play, an organization devoted to bringing games to sick kids. One of the auction prizes: “Tour of Bungie – How does a monster game like Halo 2 get made? This is your chance to meet the developers and see where the magic happens.” Nice! Thanks to Bonekin, who was first with the heads-up.

IGN was along for the ride on the Backstage Pass sweepstakes a couple of weeks ago – the writeup can now be found on their site. Looks like it was fun!

Clan HBO (well, a ragtag collection of us, anyway) just played Bungie in the second weekly Halo Humpday Challenge… and got toasted. We were doing okay, actually, after a rocky start, on our favorite gametype (Beaver Creek Shotties-only CTF), but Sketch decided it had been running too long, and ended the game. Our second and third attempts were dismal failures, and we’ll be headed home with our tails between our legs. I’m sure there’ll be some suitably humiliating writeup by morning over on B.net. I’m going to bed now, to avoid thinking about it.

Thanks to the many people who wrote in to point out an article on HowStuffworks where Chris Butcher goes into detail about Halo 2’s AI. Take a look behind the curtain and see exactly what’s going through those Elites’ heads as they roast you with their dual plasma rifles.

The update we mentioned earlier has now been formally announced on Bungie.net – with a list of all the fixes it presents. If you’ve got Xbox Live, connect and you’ll get the autoupdate. (If you don’t… well, you won’t. The writeup has suggestions on how to get this update if you DON’T have a broadband connection – though most of the enhancements are online-related, anyway.)

Interesting – Mike Scott found a suit of Halo armor on eBay – starting bid is $1000 (considerably cheaper than Nightmare Armor’s offerings). There’s a bunch of info about how it was made on the page, as well. Auction ends in a bit under a week… take a look!