There's going to be a Halo 2 launch party in the UK, at London Bridge, open to everyone over 18. Xbox.com is giving away tickets. Thanks Louis Wu at HBO.

princeofthesword has posted an interesting challenge for Halo fans over in the HBO forum; he's compiled a checklist of tricks and accomplishments in the original game, for fans to go through and make sure they've done before the sequel hits the shelves. Sounds like a great idea-- maybe we'll run a quick series of polls on some of these items to see how common some of these exploits really are, once the current poll ends.

Skeifer and the Captain venture into the Library to see how "real" a giant multilevel archive full of Flood can be in Part 7 of The Junkyard's series on realism in Halo. I have to admit, this article must have been a real challenge, as the Library is probably the most unnatural and arbitrarily designed environment in the game, so it's difficult to imagine it as a real scenario. The Captain does ask the question I've always wondered about, though:

TeamXbox has put up a story that Microsoft Game Studios and Toys "R" Us are holding a launch party in Times Square on the evening of November 8. The Times Square Toys "R" Us location will open to sell Halo 2 at midnight on November 9, but partyers may get a chance to play Halo 2 while they wait.

Mat "Shunji" Noguchi seems amused at the reaction to how tidy he keeps (or, rather, doesn't keep) his desk at Bungie, pointed out in the Video Update by Frankie as a "zone of entropy and horror".

Season 3 of Red vs Blue kicks off with Episode 39, The Best Laid Plans. Lores versions are available right now for everybody, since the sponsor restrictions on the new site are not yet in place. Speaking of which, if you haven't seen the new site yet, go ahead and take a look, it's sweet, and you should sign up.

According to this thread at GameSpot, SpikeTV is doing a new show called The Ultimate Gamer. Residents of Southern California who want to try out are urged to attend a casting call today, October 12, at 15:00 at MTV Networks, 2600 Colorado Ave., Santa Monica, CA, and bring a photo of your living room and another of your house. Don't know if this is the real deal or not, but it might be.

Wouldn't you like to be Matt "Zyos" Leto? We bet lots of people would. In the past year, he's won $55,0000 in Halo tournaments at the tender age of twenty. There's an interview and video intervew at GameSpot (video for Complete members only).

Visit http://www.slurpee.com/ for information on how you can win a copy of Halo 2, perhaps go to the Spike TV Video Game Awards or even visit Bungie Studios. The contest is being sponsored by 7-Eleven, Mountain Dew and Microsoft.

Lots of new stuff at Halo Babies over the past few days; a new strip, two new fan strips, new 3-D desktops and 3-D fan strips. Thanks mrsmiley.

Be in Times Square in New York at the ESPN Zone restaurant on November 4th and you could be one of only 50 randomly-selected people who get to play Halo 2, the final version, before anybody else. Check MLG for details. Thanks Dolbex.

Fluffy Pants has a writeup, with photos, of the Crisp Death LANfest held at Louis Wu's earlier this month online at The Junkyard. The photo of the network rack is a nice touch. For carnage, apply within, I guess. Thanks Ryan "Mhaddy" Matthews.

This week's Bungie update won't come until Monday, instead of on Friday as usual. Frankie mentions it at Bungie.net and explains it in the HBO forum, along with a peace offering of a new screenshot from the Ascencion multiplayer map. The gist of it is that this update will be in video format, and hosted at Bungie.net once they've got the server sufficiently prepped.

Finn of the Halo Story Page asks in the HBO forum if anyone is willing to try and complete all of Halo 2's levels for the first time around (solo or coop) only on Legendary. Any takers? This inspired our new poll, so take a look and vote.