A few days ago, we mentioned that Ms Man had made it to the bottom of Truth and Reconciliation – at the time, there were only photos and a short, hard-to-understand vid. At this point, there’s a full 12 minute, 42 mb WMP9, showing the whole level, with step-by-step instructions. It’s really impressive. I don’t have an alternate download link right now – but if Ms Man’s bandwidth runs out, we’ll add one tomorrow. There’s a forum thread over at High Impact Halo about this stuff.

The World Cyber Games website is streaming video from many of the Halo matches in this year’s tournament – you can find them on this page. Registration (free) is required to watch. Thanks, Bagre.

Over at nilerogers.com, there’s a new snippet available from the Halo 2 soundtrack – this one is Odyssey 1st Movement, from Incubus. Looks like the web team there has learned their lesson – figuring out the direct URL to the mp3 isn’t as easy as it’s been in the past… and it’s doubtful that this one is longer than the snippet itself. Hehe. Anyway – go listen. Thanks to Alex Cross, Eric Biro and Zachary Hahn, who let us know within seconds of each other.

There’s a new episode of Afterwar (episode 6) over at Black Arts Studios – looks like the Master Chief might be in trouble!

Speaking of books… Ross Mills ran across a curious entry at Amazon UK. It’s a book entitled “The Halo 2 Battle Guide: Advanced Combat Techniques“, and purports to be written by ‘an experienced Halo 2 Beta tester’, chock-full of multiplayer tips. Publication date is December 17. As far as I can tell, it is not offered by Amazon in the US.

eddie m pointed out a ‘Trade Kit’ for retailers made by Piggyback Interactive for their upcoming Halo 2 Strategy Guide. It contains different covers (including a very nice large version), an insert and a product sheet. The download is 2.1 mb, and requires registration (free). It’s still unclear whether there’s going to be a difference between the Prima guide available in the US and the Piggyback guide available in Europe – but they seem to have the same cover, so…

Alex Cross pointed out this post mentioning that a new Halo 2 Soundtrack snippet has been posted to nilerodgers.com. This track is called “Follow (1st movement of the Odyssey)”, and it’s done by Incubus. Hardcore!

Once again, the end of the day arrives, and the day’s One One Se7en is almost passed over. Today, that would be depressing, because it covers a subject that inspired headlines like “THE DEATH OF XBL!” when it was first announced… and Stuntmutt’s take was so close to my own I actually turned around to see if he had been watching me. (He’d need pretty good eyes, given that he lives about 3000 miles from here… but you never know.)

Uriel has written a rant about the bungling of the Halo 2 LE release in Germany – apparently, a pretty bad job of estimating how many would sell was done. The language is not for kids, but the anger is universal.

Another Halo 2 sighting in random web comics – today’s Joe and Monkey drops the name. Thanks, The Tropical Storm.

Want to see the artwork that made Halo as beautiful as it is, but think that $22 is too much to pay? Wal-mart is selling it for $13.83 – that’s a couple of bucks cheaper than Amazon. (Realize that you’re eating away at Eric Trautmann’s royalty check every time you look for bargains, though…) Thanks, ZigZag Master.

rockslider has added a Halo dictionary to his site – it’s called ‘Halo in a nutshell‘, and it’s pretty dang funny. Go read some.

Holly Wright, who owns littleplasticmen.com, a site that sells action figures, wrote to tell us about the HALO Forward Command Center (HALOfcc), a new subsection devoted to Halo, with news, giveaways, and of course, Halo action figures (both current and older). The deal that makes this newsworthy: from now through the end of November, customers will have a chance to win the Halo 2 Yellow civilian ‘hog – it’s a ‘chase figure’, which means there’s one randomly inserted in every 5 or 10 boxes of toys. (In many places, workers pull the chase figures and sell them on eBay or to friends, and the general public never even gets a shot at them.) Check it out!

kapowaz has put together a pretty fun wallpaper (preview here, 36K) that ties together the new Firefox web browser (final release is scheduled for November 9 – does that date sound familiar to any of you?) and a certain game you might have heard of. If you like it, it’s available in 800×600, 1024×768, 1152×864, 1280×960, and 1600×1200.

JMan of TalkXbox writes to let us know they’ve got a review of the new Plantronics Halo 2 Xbox Live headset over on their site. There’s some good info in there, so check it out!

Okay, I’m back, but I won’t be able to post news for several more hours – this afternoon will probably see a flurry of posts in the few hours before the timestamp rolls over to midnight UTC. Sorry about that. (And innumerable thanks to mnemesis, who kept the front page from being blank most of today, and Count Zero, who answered a BOATLOAD of mail.) That’s not what this news post is about, though. It seems that someone has been posting info from the Halo 2 leak on various sites, using my name as the poster. Totally, totally uncool. I will NEVER post illegal information on ANY website – and if I’ve got breaking news about something, it sure as heck isn’t going to end up in a comments section of another news site. For those who are offended that I would have done this – don’t worry, I didn’t. For the record – if you see my name attached to questionable info on a different Halo website, please, send me a note so that I can try and clear it up. Thanks.

There’s a new B.Net Top Story, “The Bungie Guide to Game Modes – Part One: Swords”. You’ve still got a few weeks to prepare yourselves, so get reading! Thanks to Anubis for the heads-up.

Wolfy writes to let us know that the Rockets On Prisoner awards for 2004 have been decided. Check ’em out! There’s some real entertainment in that bunch.

This was basically covered yesterday by noted globe-trotting gadfly Louis Wu, but enough people sent in mail noticing a particular bit of info in the latest press release for Halo 2. Apparently, over 1.5 million copies have already been pre-ordered. If you’re one of those dedicated pre-consumers, you can sigh contentedly with satisfaction, knowing you’ve been counted. Me, I’m #137,204!

James Phelps noticed that the Bungie Store is now offering pre-ordering for three of the new Halo 2 figures. Now’s your chance to ensure you get the Brute, the new MC, and the Warthog. Update: Doh! There’s a new Master Chief Hoody, too. Thanks, Dave. The store’s filling out nicely!