I’m not sure if this is gonna become a standard feature, or if it’s just because of the hype surrounding the launch, but it’s time for another lightning round of news posting.

• That Weasel sent word that the latest ‘Grunts Are People Too!‘ video (Episode 12, Halopalooza) is online, and can be downloaded in WMP9 format (18.6 mb).
  
  
• Cybrfrk pointed out an article in Major Nelson’s blog that might make you want to puke.
  
  
• A few people pointed out that the latest w00tness is up now – the story is getting pretty intricate.
  
  
• BRASH noticed a Master Chief reference in a bizarre Flash animation with political overtones.
  
  
• Captain Spark wrote up a Game Day Preparation Guide for the Mature Halo 2 Player (read: old fogeys – OLDER THAN ME). Funny.

And, of course, more news articles:

• Canada.com – Halo as a pathmaker
• TheIndyChannel.com – winner of ‘Day’s Stupidest Headline’
• CNN Money – Is it big enough?
• Toronto Sun – Halo’s not for everyone (thanks, Tina)
• Toronto Sun – Halo 2 Flu (thanks, Tina)
• Wall Street Journal – MS Banking on Halo (thanks, linus)

PLEASE – if you’re gonna send in a link, would it kill you to paste it into our news search box before you mail it? Results come up in seconds. Really. Thanks!

After some goofy mistakes, the new spoiler system is online. Instead of two choices, you now have four (well, only three are actually useful). Hit the ‘Huh?’ link below the spoiler indicator graphic at the top of the page for more details. I’m sure there are still problems – it was a mess to set up. If you want to report them, something more than ‘OMG IT DUZNT WERK D00D’ would be helpful. Thanks!

Quick Reminder – today’s the last day to vote for your favorite pumpkins in the 343 Guilt O’ Lantern competition! If you haven’t voted yet… GO NOW.

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. 😉