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.

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.