And lest you think all there was to do was read about Halo 2 and look at tons of new media, the Custom Edition Halo 2 team has finally released Zanzibar CE – you can download it off EPGServers or HaloImpulse. It’s 22 mb. Thanks to a dozen people who all wrote within seconds of each other. Update: And another one – thanks, VII Toast.

The Halo reviews have begun pouring in: IGN Has a review up for the common folk, with a HUGE list of Insider-only content. (Some of the video stuff isn’t there yet, it seems – check back soon.) 9.8 overall score. Thanks, Adur()n. Gamespot, as well, has a boatload of Complete content, and a 4-page review for the rest of the world (9.4 overall). Thanks, Eric Biro. And Gamespy has THEIR review up – 5/5. And of course there are dozens of new screens – just look around. 🙂 More coming… Update: There’s also TeamXbox, who gave Halo 2 a 9.9 in their review, and also piosted a whole passel of features, including multiplayer variants with video walkthroughs, an interview with Brian Jarrard, and tons of screens and movies.

A couple of quick Halo CE bits – Kornman has released Tool++, a remade of the HEK’s TOOL with a GUI wrapper and some extra features (thanks, MaterGrief), and haloTV will be broadcasting live footage of the long-awaited Zanzibar CE mod tonight about 9:30 eastern (thanks, BJN1990).

Dark Bastion discovered that the way the EB Games midnight release is going to work is this: As you’re waiting outside the store, you’ll be given a flyer with a number on it; they’ll be calling folks into the store in batches of 10, by number. You might want to do your best to get a flier as early as possible… (Apparently, there’s also a voucher for a free year of XBN magazine – not a bad deal!) He also mentioned that (in his local EB Games store, at least), the official Soundtrack is already available.

Contests around the Halo community: mrsmiley points out the 2004 Bungie Baldathon – shave your head, send in pictures, win a shot at Halo schwag. And D_BRINGER told us about a Wallpaper contest at Halo S – winner gets a free gmail account. And though it’s not really online, it IS Halo-related, and a contest: Cerberus told us about his local radio station (between Baltimore and Washington DC), 99.1 WHFS (website is here) – they’re giving away a copy of Halo 2 LE, the new soundtrack, and an XBL Starter Kit to the 9th caller (when they tell you to call), all weekend long. Update: Eric Delgado says that a radio station in the Tampa Bay/St. Pete area (98.7 WILD) has the same sort of deal – except you can register on the web.

Victor wrote in with details about Gamereactor’s Halo 2 review (Gamereactor is a Scandinavian gaming mag) – it got a 10/10, with the following pros and cons (thankfully translated by Victor):

Pros: Amazing graphics, formidable sound and captivating game play in both single- and multiplayer.

Cons: You must have good knowledge of the world of Halo in order to fully understand the story.

He also sent a link to the actual review (in Danish). There are a bunch of new screenshots; we’re going to break with our usual tradition of giving credit to the first place that posts screens, because Microsoft distributed HUNDREDS of screens to press (and yes, for the first time in a long time, we were on the list), and they’ll be ALL OVER THE NET by this afternoon. (The embargo ends at noon Pacific time today, so you’ll be seeing screens, reviews, and all sorts of other things flooding the net in the next few hours. We’ll do our best to keep up.) Update: Another Scandinavian voice heard from – VG Nett gave Halo 2 a 6/6. Thanks, aksel. Update 2: warning, morriss points out that the Gamereactor review is full of story spoilers. Again, since I don’t read Danish, I’m taking his word for it.

Xbox.com also put up ‘Halo 2: Launch Party Time‘ – part four of their readiness guide. Thanks again, John Rivas.

MrFluffyPants wrote ‘The Buzz Ends‘ for the Junkyard about the commemorative DVD given out at the various Training Events (and yes, we know, the BitTorrent link we posted a couple of days ago is dead, there’s not much we can do about that), and Chris Remo, of Idle Thumbs, wrote up his experience at the San Francisco event (including an interview with Halo 2’s Lead Product Manager Cameron Payne) in an article entitled ‘I Love Halo 2. And Bees.‘ Update: Scott Weisgarber points out a new tracker for the DVD – currently 42 seeds, you should be able to get this puppy.

Random mainstream press articles from around the net recently:

• What makes Halo so addictive? A writer in San Diego tackled this topic.
• A New Zealand Herald writer takes to the streets dressed as Master Chief, and talks about it.
• The Edmonton Sun discusses the Halo 2 hype machine.

While we got multiple notes about these, Google was first with each. Update: Hawaiian Pig points out an article that was published next to the Edmonton Sun article in his local (Toronto) Sun – another Bentllama piece. Man… they just don’t stop.

Thousands of stores are opening for midnight sales on Monday night… but only 5 are sponsored by Microsoft. Articles are at both IGN and Gamespot. Thanks, John Rivas.

Thanks to eaglesquad, who pointed out that the Homefront team has released their entire soundtrack, work by Justin Durban, aka EdgeN (if the name doesn’t sound familiar, you haven’t been following the Halo fan music scene). It’s 26 tracks of music, 90 minutes in all, and fits into two nearly 100 mb downloads (each) off of Fileplanet. Visit the Homefront website for links!

Yet another Bentllama piece in the Canadian press – they love this guy! (Where are all the interviews of the OTHER 5 Canadians on the team, dammit?) Best quote: Bentllama talks about Bungie staff trying to play all the way through Halo 2 using only melee attacks: “That’s quite hard on legendary.” Um.. yeah.

Many people noticed a new Halo 2 skin for Media Player 10 – you can see a mini-screen of it on this page, or just download it from there. Folks who’ve installed it and sent us notes about it are universally happy. Bentllama was first to mention it. (While you’re there, you can follow a link to this Xbox.com article we never mentioned – Hollywood’s Hooked on Halo, and it shows.)

Gamespy extended their interview with Nile Rogers (the first part was listed Friday – you can read the new material starting on this page. It’s all about what differentiates Halo’s music – specifically the popular-band-generated music – from other video games. Good read. Of the dozen people who sent this in, Ross Mills was first.

Many people noticed that Sunday’s Heart in the City (a syndicated newspaper comic strip) was Halo 2-related. Adam McDougall sent us the first scan on Friday, even. Since it’s now online on the official Heart in the City website, we’ll just point to that. (We’ll post one of the half-dozen scans we received once it’s no longer available on that site, and update this news item for folks who go looking for it.)

Apologies for the lack of updates yesterday. A combination of factors (not the least of which was an 8-hour rebuild of my main work machine) kept me from posting news. On to the flood. Ryan ‘Mhaddy’ Matthews points out a new Spotlight over at the Junkyard – That Weasel, of That Weasel Television, holds forth on his life – it’s quite long for a Spotlight. Go read!

Our very own Big Kahuna, Mr. Louis Wu has been interviewed over at Halo4U. Head on over and check out how he reveals the launch date for Halo 3. OK I was kidding folks, just kidding! Thanks to Rampancy for the heads-up! Update:Oops, this is old news. My bad! Thanks Abdomen for the correction.

There’s an interview with Nathan Walpole, better known as bentllama around the Halo community, one of the Canadian animators on the Halo 2 team, over at Simpatico/MSN. Nice read! Thanks, Farhang.

Gamespy continues their saturation coverage with an interview of Tyson Green, aka Ferrex, level designer for Halo 2. If you’re wondering what’s different about Halo 2 (in comparison to Halo 1 level design), read this!

Couple of new articles at IGN today – the Countdown article is about the I Love Bees phenomenon, and the ‘Training Exercises’ that happened on Thursday around the US. And an article called ‘Bungie.net’s Battle Plan‘ gives you an overview of what’s going to be available from the Stats section of Bungie’s website – the stuff you can see for yourself, now, plus some pretty astounding information that’s NOT available to he public yet (check the last page of the article). Definitely worth a read! (Google beat everyone in letting us know about these – sorry.)