Computer and Video Games managed to nab studio head Pete Parsons at Bungie to interrogate him about Halo 2.

GameSpy, your #1 site for Top Lists Of Anything, came up with a list of 25 Most Overrated Games, and put Halo at #10. Ouch. Thanks to Harry Al-Shakarchi of Oni Central, via Louis Wu of HBO.

[image:4345 left hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0]Some intrepid forumgoers here (thekman) and at HBO (op_ivy) noticed a new Halo 2 screenshot at an image hosting site called ImageMagician, apparently originating from the French gaming show X03. Later, it appeared on Bungie's own Truth and Reconciliation site. We've added it to our Halo 2 gallery.

[image:4044 left hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0]Louis Wu at HBO passed on the latest easter egg find from c0ld vengeance: a public safety message from Bungie, hidden under the pilot's seat in the lifepod. Check out c0ld's post in the HBO forum.

[image:4307 left hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0]Word has it that Xbox Live subscribers are starting to see the updated dashboard as of today, with all new features including access to the Friends list and to voice chat in the dash itself, without loading a game.

A few new events to add to the calendar:

[image:4038 left hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0]Halo hacker extraordinaire BOLL has put up a Halo site that catalogues his various forays into the guts of the Halo engine. We've added it to our links collection. Thanks Louis Wu.

Okay, this morning we've got a couple sites, in this case Xbox365, quoting EuroGamer, saying that Halo 2's release date has "slipped" to April of 2004. EuroGamer cites Microsoft as the source of the information, but there's no official press release text or link to one; in the Microsoft Game Studios Press Site, there's no mention of this "information". Eurogamer claims this is a delay of two months.

Everyone who watches this space knows that the only thing that was officially ever said about Halo 2 was "in 2004". If you want to interpret that to mean January 2004, then sure, I guess releasing in March means a two month delay. But you can't have a delay of an unofficial release date; and frankly, anybody who thinks about it for two seconds would probably assume that if Bungie knew that far in advance that it was impossible to release for the Christmas 2003 season, that the delay was probably going to be more than just a few weeks, so assuming January was probably wrong in the first place.

It's also unclear whether or not the dates in question are intended for a European audience; that seems to be the opinion of the Xbox365 forumgoers, anyway.

And of course, at the end of it all, there's horses' mouths and horses' asses; Microsoft is a big company, and it's probably better to trust those who are closer to what's going on.

UPDATE: Microsoft's official Xbox.com game list still lists the release date for Halo 2 as "TBA", although the page for Halo 2 itself does, in fact, say March 2004.

Captain Spark over at HBO has eleven new mp3 selections to their prodigious collection of Halo Dialogue Snippets, which now features over 100 clips of Halo dialogue, categorized by speaker... out of the 5000 that Bungie says exists. Nobody said it wouldn't keep them busy.

[image:4038 left hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0]You're going to need those flame retardant undergarments shortly. No, not a forum flamewar, but some flaming Warthog action from Xbox hexeditor extraordinaire, BOLL. His latest opus is Wheels On Fire; we;ve put it in our Movies Section.

[image:4036 left hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0]Blackstar of BSP pulled an image from the Summer Slaying LANFest held by Louis Wu of HBO and tagged it with all the nicknames he could collect. We've mirrored the Summer Slaying Program image.

Blackstar of Blackstar Productions has put up a photo gallery from the recent Summer Slaying LAN event hosted by Louis Wu of HBO. There's also a video

[image:4037 left hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0]The guys over at Red vs Blue have done their third Public Service Announcement; this one's based on a tatoo-related conversation in their forum.

[image:4041 left hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0]KP and Exogenesis attended the Summer Slaying and Lanwerx events, respectively, hosted by HBO's own Louis Wu and Penny Arcade, and they both posted a bit of an update in the HBO forum; here are the highlights from KP:

The usual suspects were there: The Wu, Miguel, Blackstar, nof, Gholsbane, team OvK, Have Blue, Konrad, Neo, Lophan, Fuhrman, Geoff, the Historian, Ben (Louis' son), a bunch of cool other people (I'm having trouble remembering, sorry), and some kids who showed up at 10:30pm as I was leaving who I didn't get to play with (apparently they were lost all day, I would've turned back for home after an hour, but that's just me).

... and from Exogenesis:[image:4044 left hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0]

Bungie was there, of course, showing off Halo 2 on a projector screen with a fairly good sound system. The quality is at least 100 times better than the videos released on the internet. Plus the first time, I was very close to the front. Prime viewing space. SketchFactor just cannot hit that jumping Ghost, though.

Although it seems this was a LANFest, and not a tournament per se, it sounds like Geoff walked away with top honors at SS, while Exogenesis nabbed himself a nifty souvenir by getting Gabe and Tycho from PA to sign a cardboard tube he found.