Rampancy

Halo Babies is being invaded by fan art-- more than a dozen new entries today. Thanks mrsmiley.

Shadow Panther has put an almost painful amount of detail concerning Halo 2's weapons into a series of tables that keep track of how many shots and how much time each individual weapon and dual wield combo takes to kill a fully shielded target, broken down into head and body shots. He's also done a page where he ranks each weapon according to effectiveness. Thanks Louis Wu at HBO.

Oh, wait... that sounds like... nevermind; there's new stuff at Halo Babies. Sparkie has submitted a new fan comic as well as 4 more pieces of fan art to Halo Babies. There's also a new desktop by nrek and new forum avatars. And according to mrsmiley, more is on the way tomorrow.

Halo 2 roundups simply refuse to die. So here is all the stuff you read about somewhere else while I was sleeping on an airplane with a wet towel wrapped around my head:

• Bentllama says: identify yourself before making an XBL friend request. Good advice.
• VerdaFolio points out the release of Halo 2 modding tools Encryptomatic, H2MT and CH2R.
• At Bungie.net, Frankie interviews the Red vs Blue guys (includes video) and then Chris Butcher, Max Hoberman and Frankie answer fan questions in the latest weekly update.
• HBO collects a few more links to reviews and stories, but warns that the "Halo is pretty good" kind of local newspaper story is going to stop being news very soon. Also at HBO: Mike Miller examines Halo 2 on Legendary.

We're hoping later to start a series of hands-on impressions, level by level, of Halo 2, as well as to recap the London trip that was highlighted by Stuntmutt and a few beers.