Wolfy writes to point out a new episode of Marines at Sector 7 Halo. I dunno… the problem here seems like it will resolve itself, pretty quickly…

This came in yesterday, but I managed to overlook it. The Home Front team has posted another update on the Junkyard forums – screenshots of a redone map, and a fixed release date (next Friday, actually). Go read. Thanks, Mhaddy.

IGN’s Halo 2 Countdown article today is ‘Five Ways to Prepare Yourself for Halo 2‘. I’m sort of glad none of them involve vaseline.

Finalcutmac points out that there’s a video link for the MTV vid we mentioned yesterday, right on the MTV page that contains the story. (Look in the right navbar for ‘Audio & Video’.) Unfortunately, they actively weed out Mac users – something I find pretty dang annoying. I therefore extracted the url to the actual video stream – this should work on any platform with the ability to read mms streams. (Unless, of course, they change it.) Update: Looks like the direct URL has been turned off; someone at MTV decided they didn’t like direct-linking. I can’t really blame them, except that I think it’s really dumb that they won’t let Mac users even TRY. (We have a perfectly functional WMP9 that works just fine with their movie…) Sorry, folks.

If you’re a registered member (free) of RedvsBlue.com, you can grab Episode 40 from their forum. 7:22 long, ranging from 31 to 48 mb, depending on version. I gotta say… it’s gettin’ weird. Thanks to Ross Mills for the heads-up.

Apologies for the delay – I promised last week that we’d continue releasing segments of ‘My Heart is a Lonely Hunter’ every few days, and it’s been almost a week. I realize that more than 1500 of you have grabbed the entire movie via BitTorrent in the last couple of days… but many are still waiting patiently for the smaller pieces. You can grab Part 2 either on mythica.org or files.bungie.org – Part 3 will follow soon. (Part 1, if you missed it and can’t handle the BitTorrent version, can be grabbed at the links in this news post.) [I actually wrote this – and posted it – about 12 hours ago… but somehow, I managed to forget to actually FINISH the posting process. Sorry to everyone involved.] Update: the DJ writes to say that all released pieces so far (the trailer, part 1, part 2, and the full 30-minute movie) can be found on Halo Impulse, as well. Thanks!

Wonga. Amazing as it sounds, Frankie is STILL continuing with the Bungie Weekly Updates – this one is at Subnova. New TV spots coming next week, a sick SketchFactor, and a guest Mister Chief rendering by BOLL. Go read! (And Sketch – here’s hoping you get better!) Thanks to Eric Biro, who let us know while I was watching Big Fish with my family. Update: oops – Boxer points out that I misread the bit about Sketch – it’s his DOG that’s sick. (I guess i thought Frankie was insulting him while he was down. 🙂 ) Sketch – here’s hoping your dog gets better!

Another one from Hikaru-119; he’s uploaded the French commercial mentioned earlier to Brian Towne’s public service server – you can grab it from there. 2.2 mb, MPEG1 format.

I didn’t really think this was news, since it existed in Germany a month ago – but loads upon loads of people are writing to us about it, so… looks like as of today, Microsoft has OFFICIALLY announced the Limited Edition Halo 2 Xbox Live Starter Kit in Europe – it comes with a copy of Halo 2 (but not, confusingly enough, the LIMITED EDITION copy), an Xbox Live Voice Communicator, and a 12 month subscription to Xbox Live, all for £59.99. There’s a press release at Gamespot, among other places.

nilerogers.com continues its posting spree, with another snippet from the Halo 2 Soundtrack – this one is called Earth City, and is 2:40 long. The flash art is quite nice, but if you’re on a low-bandwidth connection, the direct link to the snippet is here. Lots of heads-ups from fans, looks like the earliest one came from Hikaru-119.

Stuntmutt feeds off a great scene in Aliens for today’s One One Se7en – looks like MC ain’t no Bishop.

Two new video clips for you today, around the web; Xbox Central is hosting an MTV news clip showing the ‘Halo 2 Council’ (celebrities getting special Halo 2 goodies) and the Pelican case’d Xbox/screen that’s among their loot: 8 mb, WMP9 format (thanks, Ben Bayes), and there’s a higher-res version of the leaked EB Games commercial we saw a couple of weeks ago; unfortunately, the only place it’s currently available is on a site hosting pirated information, so we’re not going to pass out the URL. (It’s also in French.) Thanks, Hikaru-119. Update: Gah, I should have passed on this news item altogether. Warbow points out that the MTV piece is no longer available, either. Sorry.

Ryan McCaffrey, from OXM, stopped by the TeamXbox forums to answer specific, non-spoiling questions about OXM’s review of Halo 2, out now to subscribers in the December issue of the magazine (and on newsstand shelves on November 2). As of right now, there aren’t a lot of answers, but there sure are a lot of questions. Thanks, Myles Leadbetter. UPDATE: Be careful when following along here- spoilers are starting to show up. -CZ

IGN has reviewed the SmartJoy FRAG device, the mouse/keyboard combination for the Xbox. Overall, they liked it, though they said it worked better with some games than with others. Halo was near the top of the list of ‘good’ games. Thanks, Joe Larson.

There’s a short interview with Nathaniel, one of the owners of EP Game Servers, over at BlamDink.co.uk. He takes a decidedly Gearbox-centric view of the development situation for Halo Custom Edition and Halo PC – that is, Gearbox is doing everything they can to help the fans, and the only roadblock is the big bad Microsoft and its left arm, Bungie. I suppose that’s one point of view.

There’s a new article over at Xbox.com about 10 fans who won all three Halo novels (two of them signed by the author). You can read their explanations about why they wanted the books. Thanks, Littlebigman.

Today’s IGN Countdown article gives you 5 excuses to try with your significant other in order to garner some screentime on November 9. I can’t see any of them working, unless your significant other has the intellect of a small fern.

New comics up – there’s a wordless (but not even remotely hard-to-understand) strip over at Halo Babies… and a look at the MC’s improvements over at Master Chief and Cortana. And yesterday, there was a continuation of the Joe and Monkey strip we mentioned recently – with another new one today. (We’re definitely getting away from Halo-related… but it’s a story, so…)

Just a reminder, since it rolled off the front page so quickly – there’s a great new interview of Marty O’Donnell in our Miscellaneous section. If you haven’t read it yet – go do so!

Thanks to the very large number of people who wrote in to tell us that OXM has published their Halo 2 review and rated the game a 9.7- the highest score the magazine has ever given out. As usual, we’ll post scans in a month, once the magazine is no longer for sale.