Folks have been noticing some glitches on our website recently; we’ve been getting a LOT of mail. The explanation is pretty technical – but for those interested, I’ve written it up. Check the ‘Read Why‘ link to the right. If you continue to send mail about these problems without reading this, we’ll likely just send you the link; we’re not trying to be rude, we’re trying to deal with the astounding quantity of email that comes in while still actually maintaining the site. Thanks!

Once again, in the crush of Halo 2 news, regular sections of this website are being neglected. I wish I had a solution for that. I’ve processed the Fan Fiction queue (languishing for almost a week) – another 20 pieces are up for your perusal. Hopefully, artwork is coming soon.

A few new articles around the net for you; IT AsiaOne wrote up an overview of the game, and Alexis visited an I Love Bees training session in Illinois last week – his writeup is over at Rampancy.net, with pictures added later. Reading is gud!

Something Awful reviewed Halo 2 – sort of. Like much of the content on SA, this is a total farce. If you read it, don’t let your blood boil… it’s TRYING to piss you off. Some of the comments are quite funny. gspawn was the first to notice.

Marsguy posted a set of pictures he took at last week’s Halo 2 Fanfest hosted by Bungie. Nice shots! Comments can go back on our forum.

HaloPlanet has a nice collection of fan-written reviews, broken handily into spoiler- and non-spoiler-laden categories. Check ’em out!

We’ve been flooded with submissions for tricks, glitches, eggs, and the like, and we plan to open a section to house all these goodies in the not-too-distant future. The problem is… it’s not coded yet. However, this doesn’t mean you’re out of luck if you’re looking for hosting for your tricksterism. I’m proud to announce an upcoming joint project between High Impact Halo and HBO – two of the best-known names in Halo oddness are teaming up to bring you the most complete tricks site on the web. While the new home is built, you should post your tricks on the HIH forum – Ducain will grab them from there and add them to the main HIH site. As soon as the new home is built, we’ll import all existing Halo 2 tricks into it (and provide a nice interface for new additions). There are many things on the plate right now… but this one has pretty high priority!

Man… you guys are hardcore. I had a small problem with the spoiler system today – took me about 15 minutes to fix it. In that time, I received 10 notes – a couple were just confused, 3 were angry, the rest were giving me a heads-up… our spoiler system was broken, and was showing weird stuff. Remember, this is a low-budget operation; I don’t have a development server, so fixes happen on the live server, in real time; sometimes, I have to put some debugging code in to see what’s going wrong. If you see odd stuff, how about you wait 10 minutes and then look again, before you start mailing me that it’s broken? Thanks.

While we’re on the spoiler system – there are a number of you that continue to have trouble setting a spoiler cookie on your computer. With one exception, every single problem that I’ve heard about involves Windows XP with SP2 installed. I’ve done as much testing as I possibly can without an actual SP2 machine (I’ve had more than a dozen people with this combination playing with settings to see what works and what doesn’t) – without exception, all of my testers were able to set cookies successfully. If you can’t, it’s more than likely that you have something blocking cookies – something in your privacy settings, or a software firewall (like Norton Internet Security), or something similar. There’s nothing at all I can do about that. That’s your computer. You need to accept first-party cookies, and (I think) accept session cookies. Beyond that, any blockage is on your computer; I can’t tell you what’s wrong, because I’m not there. Sorry.

Anton P. Nym found a tidbit in the Art of Halo book that might explain why there are no Flood Hunters… nice!

Halo Babies has a couple of guest strips from akba – one points out the bald mrsmiley, who also wants to remind you that the Bungie Baldathon is coming to an end soon (today is your last day to submit entries). Get going!

If you have a problem with BitTorrent, but still want a copy of the I Love Bees commemorative DVD, you can grab it from Fileplanet (thanks, Shorty).

News roundup is a bit smaller than it’s been recently; sites are winding down, maybe?

Strategy Guides:

• 1UP.com (campaign and multiplayer – thanks, John Rivas)

Articles:

• IGN – Halo 2 UK launch coverage (thanks, John Rivas)
• TeamXbox – review of SmartJoy FRAG (thanks, John Rivas)
• TeamXbox – a writeup of a clan challenge (thanks, John Rivas)
• Slate – Halo 2 as a ‘nuanced political experience’
• Spong – Halo 2 isn’t selling at all in Japan
• Salem (Oregon) Statesman-Journal – local kids beat the game Update: Mintz08 claims this contains a major story spoiler. I can’t find it on short view, but beware.
• Tucson Citizen – Halo 2 multiplayer is great, despite lack of coop

Comics:

• Crtl+Alt+Del

Not bad. Should keep you busy!

Jay Weinland confirmed that Brian Morden lives on in Halo 2 – though we don’t know yet what line is his. If you don’t know who Brian Morden is, you can search our news, or read this guide at Bungie Sightings.

Marty O’Donnell has posted a pretty definitive statement about Halo 2 (and Halo) sheet music – he’s okay with fans transcribing it, but he’s not going to be doing it himself. (There are solid reasons for this.) Read the post on his 7th Column chapter for more details. Thanks, Jarrad Whitaker.

It’s not a Weekly Update… exactly. It’s a Weekly What’s Update. This week… that means a reader Q&A. A pretty substantial one, too. Discussion of Halo 2 bugs (and potential fixes)… answers to common complaints… more. Go read!

Dan Chosich, longtime member of the Halo community and a fan moviemaker extraordinaire, lived a dream this past summer – and recently, he talked to Cybrfrk about it. The interview contains some pretty interesting info… go read!

DoctorEvol, of Xblnext.com, recently talked to Alex Seropian about Wideload’s upcoming Halo-engined game, Stubbs the Zombie. There’s not a lot of new info there – but sometimes, any info is good info! Give it a look.

KP noticed an enormous Halo 2 Game Guide (Single-player only – multi comes later) at Gamespot. Weighing in at almost 6 mb, this PDF has 86 pages of pictures and text to get you through Halo 2. Unfortunately, it’s only available to Gamespot Complete members. If you have a membership, though, go grab it! Update: Oops, my bad. There’s a free html version for everyone – it’s only the downloadable PDF that’s Complete-only. Sorry about that!