Bungie.net is now confirming the Game Informer story that GhaleonEB pointed out earlier in the HBO forum; that a character from the Halo universe will make an appearance in DOA4. Neither developer is stating which one, as of yet, although the Bungie.net story has an impressive display of Cortana's own unnatural formations, which is either a blatant hint or a huge red herring.

GameSpot is reporting that the same company that has made mobile versions of Microsoft games such as Midtown Madness 3, Zoo Tycoon 2, and Age of Empires 2, has acquired the rights to make mobile Halo properties and is working with Bungie to figure out what kind of applications to make:

HBO also noted a few interesting items we'd like to mention here:

An Associated Press article at Yahoo News notes how U.S. Marines stationed in Iraq turn to videogames, including Halo and The Sims (there's a strange combination --Ed.) during lulls in fighting. Where's Halo 2? Quick, somebody make an emergency shipment of Halo 2 to Iraq!

...might still win Game of the Year from several places, but that didn't earn Halo 2 any kudos from Game Tunnel, a site purporting to offer the "independent underground" view of gaming with their top 10 Independent Game of the Year writeup. Here's how they introduce their list:

For those who believe that the best game this year was that badly named expansion pack that they have the nerve to call Halo 2, you are about to see a different piece of gaming than you are used to. 

Things outside the Haloverse are going to be busy for a bit, so here's a news roundup to start things off:

The ingestion of large amounts of tryptophan seem to have taken their toll here at Rampancy, so we're going to be reduced to doing a news roundup again-- hopefully the last one between now and... well.. Christmas.

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.

So here we all are again. Thanks to HBO, Halo Planet, Bungie.net, Sector 7, and everybody else who is awake and posting news while we're sleeping, and sleeping while we're playing Halo 2 and not updating the website. Here we go:

Xbox in the repair shop? Can't wait for Halo 2? Upset that BOLL hasn't produced a new Flash game lately?

If you've got a fair bit of time to spend while you wait, check out the Grunt Zone Flash game by Coke.

On the heels of the announcement that Halo 2 has received a 9.7 from the Official Xbox Magazine, their highest ranking ever, comes word that PC Gamer ha

Ross Mills and Louis Wu pointed out a new entry on Amazon.com's UK site; a book called The Halo 2 Battle Guide: Advanced Combat Techniques, supposedly written by a beta tester. Interesting. Don't NDAs prevent this sort of thing?

Major Nelson has posted up photos of the package the new Plantronics Halo 2 edition Game Com in-ear headset comes in. It looks cool. The package says it is "ear-gonomic." That makes my head hurt just reading it.