Eep – forgot to put this up yesterday. The final piece of Heart is a Lonely Hunter, for those who are still waiting, can now be grabbed off mythica.org and files.bungie.org. 44.7 mb, 7:16 of conclusion goodness. Sorry for the delay!

poena.dare is back – with the Penultimate Bungie Giga-Quiz 1.0. Wonga! (Don’t ask me why it’s not the Ultimate Giga-Quiz – I can’t imagine him doing this again.) 343 questions to test your knowledge of Bungie lore – and you don’t have to do it all in one sitting! You can read the ‘official’ press release on our (lamentably empty) portal site, or just get over to the quiz itself. Warning – it relies heavily on Javascript, and is broken with Safari. (Works fine with Firefox on OSX, though.)

“Will Xbox LIVE hold up under the stress of 1.5 million users tonight and tomorrow?” Dolbex wants to know! Go vote.

Tina Leyk stopped by last night with another fantastic piece – this one was done with acrylics, on canvas, then scanned. (She’s pretty unhappy with the scanwork; the picture, in her opinion, loses a lot in the translation. I’d LOVE to see the original, because the scan is gorgeous.) Check it out! Nice (subtle) Mullins tribute, even. (And stay tuned… there might be more cool artwork on the way today.)

Today’s One One Se7en is 3000 words long.

Already, the eggs are starting to get posted. Hawaiian Pig points out this pic, with its Seventh Column logo staring you in the face, hidden in plain sight. And Daeryl Rodriguez (with help from Konrad) found what he thinks is a mirrored Halo 2 symbol on the right breastplate of Master Chief’s armor in this picture (it’s not in any others – just a weird shadow?). I’m sure there are more.

Falcon Zero sent along a pair of Megabattle pics (first, second) composed on the recently-released Zanzibar mod for Halo CE. Awesome!

Shadow Panther writes to point out the Xbox Clan Registry (and specifically the Halo 2 Clan List) at Shadowpanther.net. If you’ve got a clan page, you should add yourself! (There’s a link that explains why a website is required for registration.)

Bentllama has updated his blog with some enthusiastic thoughts about the next couple of days, and some pretty cool pictures of Halo 2 ad stuff in Toronto. Check it out! Thanks, Ross.

New nilerogers.com content today – Never Surrender is now up in the Listening Station. Snippet is 1:29 long, 1.4 mb large, and is contributed by Rogers himself. Interesting dub mix. Thanks, sharpe.

There are dozens upon dozens of Halo 2-related stories out there today – here’s a sampling:

• Fresno Bee – Anticipation builds (Thanks, Will)
• New York Times – Microsoft’s invested
• Springfield (MO) News-Leader – Gamers hot for midnight
• USA Today – Halo as a cattle prod
• TheManRoom – Plantronics headset review
• Seattle Times – General excitement
• XA Radio – Release party
• Seattle Times – a retrospective
• GameIndustry.biz – this could make Xbox profitable this quarter
• Update: The Boston Globe – Halo 2 is more destructive than the original (thanks, Mike)

I tried (with the exception of the New York Times, which SHOULD be an exception) to stay away from articles that required registration to read. There are also new reviews:

• X-Plays (5/5 – thanks, Frensa Geran)
• ETBGaming (10/10 – thanks, Anthony Manley)
• Gamereactor (Swedish, this time; 10/10, thanks again, Victor – and again, beware of spoilers)
• Update: The BBC gave Halo 2 a 9.5 – nice! Thanks, Stephen Smith

And, of course, comics:

• Crtl+Alt+Delete (Lothar Hex was first
• Penny Arcade (thanks, Ross Mills – who also was unhappy by the ‘spoiler content’ in the attached news article – though I’d suggest that it’s only a spoiler if you think it is; you STILL don’t know anything)

Whew! That’s a lot of news to get through in one shot.

Framerate posted a Guide to Getting Ready for Halo 2 over on HaloPlanet – mostly it’s about how to hook your Xbox up to XBL, but there are also some tidbits about food and chairs in there. Give it a read!

Recoil was the first to point out that Halo 2 is at the very top of Gamerankings’ Overall Game Rank list – at this point, topped only by The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. (When he wrote, last night, it was above even that – but has dropped recently with a few lower scores.) We’ll keep an eye on this for any dramatic changes. Warning: several of the reviews listed there are chock-full of spoilers; read at your own risk.

Red vs Blue is planning on releasing 3 episodes in the next 48 hours – WONGA. Episode 41 is up now (in both high and low res) – keep your eyes open for the rest.

Okay, 9 million people wrote to correct the one-line mention I made of the Gamepro review yesterday. I’m gonna cut and paste from one of the answers I sent, since I’m tired of writing this. Gamepro doesn’t give an overall one-digit ranking, so I went back to the Halo review from them to see how we reported that; what I did there, clearly, was average the four values. (They gave Halo a half-point higher ranking on both Graphics and Control than they did Halo 2.) Doing that here gives a 4.625/5, which I rounded down. It is totally unreasonable to report them as a 5/5 when they ranked control at 80% and graphics at 90%. Again – my reporting had nothing whatsoever to do with the ‘Community ranking’ they list – it was purely using their own numbers. Now can you stop telling me I did the math wrong? Thanks.

Kevin634 writes to point out a Halo 2-themed comic in the Toronto Daily Star. Hehe, that is SO my son right now. 😉

Former Bungie community flame-meister and current Bungie intern Shishka has offered a write-up of the recent Fall Foliage: Crisp Death LAN gathering held at Castle Wu. Last LAN party, though? Time will tell, I suppose. Check it out, and thanks to James Phelps for the notice.

The (massive) chat transcript of the Ilovebees PM Chat has been made available here. Get comfy and prepare for a long read, then hit that link! Thanks to Steve Patterson for the heads-up.

Bunch o’ rapid-fire news, to clear the inbox before the clock ticks over (and because I likely won’t be around to post more news before tomorrow):

• Eurogamer gives Halo 2 a 9/10 – 1 point above Halo (thanks, mad.max)
• Break Point offers another Zanzibar CE mirror
• Gamepro gives Halo 2 a 4.6/5 (thanks, BlazeFlare)
• Bungie.net gets the Gameviewer online for stats (thanks, Argent)
• They’ve also put the manual for Halo 2 online (thanks, Dustin)
• In fact, they’ve updated the entire Halo 2 Info section (thanks, Speny)
• MLGPro.com posts a review and tons of media for Halo 2 (thanks, Dolbex)
• A live chat with the people behind the I Love Bees is just finishing up – we should have a transcript for you tomorrow. (Some really cool info, storywise – thanks, Steve P!)

Whew! Enjoy the rest of your Sunday night.