Today's news summary:

The bane of my existence, the news roundup, is back again. Lodged between the rough incisors of the news roundup beast are the following remnants of its recent meals:

The nominees for the Game Developers Choice Awards of 2005 are out, and the audio team for Halo 2, including Marty "The Elder" O'Donnell, C Paul Johnson, and Jay "Man Behind the Man" Weinland are up for kudos.

A bunch of gaming-related Valentines out there: The Most Romantic Moments in Gaming from GameSpot; romance across battlefields, species, and even the periodic table in One One Se7en, and Lorraine "Mehve" McLees' old Bungie valentines retrieved for nostalgic purposes by

This week's What's What Update by Frankie focuses on bad language on XBL, downloadable content and new playlists (sounds like both are coming at the same time) and questions about what you can do with images from Halo if you run a website or blog.

Bungie manages another Humpday win, this time against HaloMods. (Corollaries to the rules predicting Humpday Challenge results: having Ferrex equals a win, but losing Frankie can also create a win, with or without Ferrex. Thanks to Louis Wu for the idea. Why does the Coagulation game summary show a screenshot from Headlong? Because those are shots of HaloMods mods --Ed.)

February 9 has now arrived, and unless you count the resumption of Bungie.net stats tracking, or the Top Story at Bungie.net about RSS and Halo.Defas.Org, then I think it's safe to say that nothing terribly exciting has happened yet, nor is it likely to.

There are those who said something would happen today. What are they to say now?

Daniel "Finn" Barbour of Halo Story Fame's review of Halo, entitled How I learned to stop worrying and criticize Halo 2, is getting passed around again in wider circles courtesy of a link from Joystiq; it's a good look from a critical fan, not an Xbox fanboi or a Halo Hater. If you missed this back in December, check it out now.

Greetings from Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan, a place that has very nearly nothing to do with the following things which happened in the Bungieverse and the Xbox markets while I've been out here futzing around:

Another news roundup before I head out to the airport. I'll be away from the Rampancy Cave until Super Bowl Sunday (or, as it happens to be in this time zone, Super Bowl Monday Morning) but hopefully I will manage to pop in now and again. Here are some of the items of note from earlier this week:

Another Bungie profile at Bungie.net; this one is on Marty "The Elder" O'Donnell.

Bentllama has put up a little cautionary tale on his blog-- don't cheat at Halo 2, but especially don't cheat in front of Bungie employees.

The Bungie Pentathlon this year-- the important part, that is-- was owned by Middle School. The Old School managed to pick up enough points to win on the more geriatric-friendly portions of the competition, such as Pictionary and Mario Tennis, but the Middle School, led by Brian "SketchFactor" Jarrard and including our own spiritual leader Tyson "Ferrex" Green won the only place it matters: the Halo 2 competition.

And no break in the Halo news, either, even when the site is down, as it was most of this past weekend. Sorry about that. Here's some of what went on: