Halo 2 has set another sales record – 104,000 units in its first week of sales in Australia (beating GTA: San Andreas, which sold about half that its first weekend). This article at Aussie Xbox (thanks, Gossip) said the previous 1-week record was 68,000 units (but doesn’t say what game). However you slice it, Microsoft is coming out on top with this one. In other news: This review at the Indiananapolis Star (4 stars, no idea what the scale is) deserves recognition for a nice turn of phrase; they’re discussing the controls of Halo 2, and how similar they are to those for Halo – but they say “newcomers shouldn’t fret because addiction will lead to a mastery of the controls.” Love it! And there’s a rather bizarre auction over at eBay right now; Halo 2 LE for $1000. The seller is not trying to fool you – he TELLS you you’re getting a $54.99 game: “Please be prudent in your search for Halo 2. They are available EVERYWHERE! But, if you want to throw away your money, please throw it at me.”

Part X, the final segment, of “As Real as a ‘Survivor’ Elimination“, the military analysis of Halo’s gameplay, has now been posted at the Junkyard. Sounds like they’re not completely done with the topic, though – there’s a ‘big announcement’ coming next week.

Stuntmutt has not one strip today, but TWO. There’s his regular One One Se7en, which continues the study of the Drone, but there’s also a Guest Halo Babies strip over at halobabies.net. Too many puns spoil the… something.

You can shoot grenades out of the air? As Neo would say… Whoa.

Quick netnews listing before I head out tonight…

Reviews

• The Adrenaline Vault (5/5 – thanks, Target4Hire)
• Stuff (New Zealand) – No score, but ‘best game on the Xbox’

Articles

• The Economist – The Halo Effect (looking closely at hype claims – thanks, D. Nadal)
• Kansas CIty Star – Halo 2: The Real Deal (Halo lives up to hype)
• Straight.com – info on how to enter a contest that pairs band The Music up with Xbox Canada – Halo and The Music schwag on the line (Actual contest site is here)
• The New Haven Register (my local paper) did an article… on me, I guess. (If the online access bugs you, a scan of the dead tree edition is here.)

I gotta say, I’m really loving bugmenot.com – I used to pass over subscription-only articles, but now I’m posting them. Visit if you need help getting in.

MereCatfish decided to write up his OWN Halo 2-buying experience. See how many times you ask the screen “what… are you an idiot?” (I think I got to 6.) (All in fun, Mere – but man, you DID do some silly things.)

Oddworld wrote an article on the amazing first-day success of Halo 2 for his school’s newspaper, the Carnegie-Mellon University Tartan (actually, for an included arts/style guide, Pillbox). We’ve put it online here so everyone can read it.

Last week, we pointed out a 12-page sampler of the Piggyback/Prima Strategy Guide (it’s the same book, on both sides of the Atlantic – the Piggyback team wrote this, Prima is marketing it in the US). Tonight, Frankie put up a note that includes direct download links for another few pages from Bungie, and a link to still MORE pages at Prima’s site. Go get ’em! (Nothing’s the same as actually HAVING the book… but it’s a great start; you can download 22 of the 226 pages right now!)

Cool new schwag at the Bungie Store – a signed, limited edition (500 total) mylar print of Lorraine McLees’ awesome Halo 2 MC; 8×10 for $25. Get yours today! (Thanks, Shishka.)

If you logged onto XBL today, and your clan status wasn’t anywhere to be seen, don’t panic. They’re working on it. No data is lost; you don’t need to rebuild your clan. Read Sketch’s note over on Bungie.net for more details.

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)