Bungie.net has put up their own copies of the 10 new screenshots – you can find them in the Halo 2 Screenshot Gallery. Well, some of you can. I’m having trouble right now; some machines here can see the thumbnails, but get errors trying to load the full images, while others can’t even get to Bungie.net. Hang tight, try a bit later, and things should be solved.

Games Domain has put up its own Multiplayer Hands-On article – one piece of info that hasn’t shown up a lot is a comment about the matching process, with respect to connection speed:

“As far as the connection quality goes, when you’re being matched to join a game,” Jarrard explained, “you’re not just being checked for ping times against the host, but all the clients to one another and to the host, so it’s going to take it one more layer than what normally happens in traditional online games.”

There’s also cool info about the stats system, and a summary of gametype options. Give it a read! Thanks, Voodoo Extreme, for finding this.

That Weasel writes to let us know that Episode 10, Chuckzilla, and Episode 11, Green, are both available at the Grunts are People Too!!! website. Chuckzilla chronicles the rampage (and downfall) of the infamous monster grunt, while Green requires some serious work to translate, but checks out Halo from the other side. Modding to the max. Available in both WMP and QuickTime formats. Go watch!

GameDaily has put up another In-Depth look at Halo 2, this time focusing on Gameplay. Does a nice job of looking at the new features as they’re known today. Give it a read!

Dolbex points out an article, written by Liquid and Fuzz, on the MLGPro.com website that summarizes what’s known and unknown about Halo 2 multiplayer at this stage. If you’ve been feeling overwhelmed, this might be a good overview to read.

Another day, another 10 pieces of art gone from the queue. (You’d think that one of these days, we’d actually get to the bottom, wouldn’t you?) This batch is in the Wallpaper Section, and includes spectacular pieces from notables like Tina Leyk and Adam ‘Vegasmike’ Vehige, as well as beautiful constructions from lesser-known (for now) submitters. Check out the whole batch!

Pico is celebrating his 20th birthday today… and as a present to the Halo community, he’s released Lethal Rage 4, not so much a sequel as another in a series of nicely filmed battle pieces. Cinematics are great (and the bloopers at the end give you some idea of how much work went into them). The bugaboo for this series has always been voice acting, and that continues to hold true here… but that shouldn’t deter you from grabbing the vid. It was originally posted on Angelfire, and I’m astounded that that link survived the night – but at this point, there are a few other mirrors (including two we’ve supplied ourselves), and of course we’re always happy to add new links to that page, if you feel like helping out. And oh, yeah… Happy Birthday, Pico!

National Public Radio’s Morning Edition did a piece this morning on Madden Football, which has sold over 35 million copies over the life of the franchise. About 4 minutes into the 7 minute segment, the interviewer asks Gamespot’s Brian Ekberg if there are any games that approach the popularity of games like Madden. Ekberg points out Halo 2 as a strong contender this year. You can listen to the clip by searching for ‘Madden’ on this NPR page (Real or WMP formats). Interesting to see a Halo 2 mention in a context such as NPR! Thanks, BrotherSwing.

Looks like Finland is actively searching for the Master Chief. This news post on a Finnish gaming site explains how Microsoft Finland is looking for someone to fill the MC’s shoes – and the rest of his armor. Details thanks to Scanner Darkly on our forum. Do YOU make the cut?

Computer and Video Games has put up a pair of articles discussing their trip to Bungie Studios last month and their hands-on experience with Halo 2. Part 1 covers the basics of what they saw, part 2 looks closely at the 5 multiplayer maps they played. (Similar, but not identical, to the dozen other hands-on experiences we’ve mentioned in the past week or so.) Thanks, vshields ash.

Gamespy has added another 3 pages to their Halo 2 Reader Feedback Followup #2 (whew! Get that?). There’s some solid (if not always entirely welcome) info in there from Frankie; Halo 2 will not have bot support, and there will be no low-gravity levels in the game. There’s more – go read it for yourself. Thanks, Mr. Mongoose. Update: Nitpicker and HSP Factchecker Finn points out that Frankie specifies multiplayer levels in his response; there’s nothing, so far, that definitively rules out low-gravity environments in campaign mode. (We’re not saying it’s there – we’re simply pointing out that it hasn’t been ruled out yet.)

Ducain has finished the Three Towers highlight video (he says ‘finally’ – making me feel even WORSE that the Going Nowhere Fast vid isn’t done yet, thanks, Ducain), showing the best stunts of the entries for this contest. WMP9 format, 9 minutes long, 23.2 mb. If there’s demand, I’ll toss up a QuickTime version. Update: Due to popular demand, I’ve put up a QuickTime version for folks who need it.

Well, I’ll say that last night was pretty fun. I logged onto the HBO Coerce server – one of the few 16-players-full CE servers running last night – and saw a HOST of names I never see any more, including one I haven’t seen on Halo CE or PC… EVER. It was a blast. But again, even with the added publicity… total numbers never rose above 400. There are still a few more nights in which the 1000 player total can be reached, in this push… but I have to tell you, I’m starting to believe that this is just too little, too late. There are many hundreds of thousands of copies of Halo PC and Mac Halo out there – but Halo CE came along too late to capture the PC crowd, and the Mac folks never even got a chance. If the combined readership of all the largest Halo fansites can’t generate 1000 online players when they’re BEGGING for them… it just ain’t gonna happen. (Goes without saying that I’d LOVE to have that last statement proved wrong.)

CreepHunter pointed out yet ANOTHER guitar tab of the Halo theme he found at Video Game Jam – he liked this one better than the last one we mentioned. Again – I can’t read these, so I’m not passing any judgement at all… but they’re out there, if you want to use them.

Guess who’s back? We missed you man.

Finn, the more productive half of the HSP duo, has gone and updated the Story Page again. Kings and angels, maps and timelines, there’s some good stuff there. Check it out!

Wow. Got mail from AEG, a PR firm that handles a lot of Microsoft’s promotions; there’s a BIG contest launching Wednesday, September 15, at 9 am PDT. We don’t have a lot of details yet… but I do know it involves Halo 2, and Xbox Live, and as soon as the full contest announcement has been sent out, you’ll be able to read all the details here. Stay tuned! Update: There’s been a timing change; the announcement will happen at 1 pm PDT, not 9 am. Keep your eyes peeled!

Another day, another Miscellaneous Art batch. Again, 10 items, ranging from sketches to animated gifs. See what you can find!

Last night was the first attempt of a weeklong push to get over 1000 people playing Halo CE simultaneously. It was a failure; total players never climbed above 400. Captain Spark suggested that the problem might be that there aren’t enough non-passworded servers to even SUPPORT 1000 players… but I don’t think that’s the case. (Even this morning, when some servers that were up last night are offline, there are over 90 freely-joinable servers online… more than enough to support the needed number of players.) The problem, it seems, is much deeper; a year after the game has been released, it’s still FULL of bugs that make it unplayable for the casual visitor. (I jumped on last night for 3 hours or so. I sit on a T1 here, and during my playing time there was never less than 1200 kbit/sec bandwidth available. I played the entire night on a single server, a relatively fast server sitting on a 10 Mbit line in a pretty fast datacenter. And I was lagging all night long.) Gearbox says they’re willing to put the effort in to fix some of these problems – but only if they can be shown that there’s interest in the game. And at this point, a year after release, folks aren’t interested in even trying. It’s a shame, really, because CE has HUGE potential. Some of the mods I’ve tried are mind-boggling. The community contains enough core creative people that if the game were playable by newcomers, it WOULD be self-sustaining… but the developer says ‘we can’t justify fixing it because there aren’t enough customers’ and the customers say ‘we can’t justify playing it because there are too many bugs.’ If you have any hope for Halo CE at all, jump on and play tonight, at 7 pm EST (4 pm PST, midnight GMT)… this might be the last gasp. Update: for those who don’t even HAVE Halo CE yet, you can download it from one of the links on our Halo Custom Edition Mirrors page. (I doubt they all work any more, but many do.)

What? You thought I was punishing Stuntmutt for all the news posts last week? Nah. There’s still a One One Se7en today. Whether you think I’m now punishing you, the reader, is yet to be seen…