The Junkyard has another spotlight for the Halo community today; they got in touch with Ducain from HighImpactHalo and he was kind enough to sit down and answer their questions. Thanks Ryan "Mhaddy" Matthews.

New guest strip by Stuntmutt over at Halo Babies today; also a new One One Se7en that cuts the other way. Thanks mr smiley.

Team 7hr33, consisting of Daniel "Finn" Barbour of the Halo Story Page, Richard "Shovelface" Nickel and Rob-Roy "M3" Schmidt have put up their review of Halo 2, titled Page of Woah|Woe, or, How I learned to stop worrying and criticize Halo 2.

Cooked Gamers today has word of the Cyberathlete® Extreme Summer Championships 2005 to be held from July 6 to 10, 2005 in Grapevine, Texas. Thanks rapture.

VerdaFolio notes a Field of Vision (FOV) hack for Halo 2.

Obviously showing off in front of the Frag Dollz took away whatever humility Bungie might have developed as a result of being beaten by the forum mods; triumphant in the latest Humpday Challenge against OXM, the egos run rampant.

If you've reached thirty you can try like hell for renewal on Carousel or you can join the GeezerGamers, a group of plus-thirty folks who like to play games against each other for fun. Bungie.net has an interview with the group's founder, Microsoft employee Jamey Tisdale.

Editor's Note: If you're a Safari user, like I am, you might have trouble with the site's yellow-on-white color scheme; try another browser. FireFox seems to render the site as intended, with black text.

K.R. Wicks of Rockslide Megabattle fame put up his own review of Halo 2, entitled Halo 2 Disappointment. Generally, it is a nice collation of most of the complaints that many players have had about the game, altough the postscript, added on November 29, is more harsh:

Put my copy of Halo 2 up for sale, restored Halo to its natural resting place in my Xbox, and loaded up some good old rockslide megabattling. Ah... blissful relief! Jackals that point and roll. Grunts that are truly grunty. And when an Elite bounded up and greeted me with "Wort Wort Wort!", I almost went over to give him a hug (but no don't worry, I quickly regained my senses and blew his ugly great head off). Just like old times. And wow, this gameplay is so much more enjoyable, it's like a breath of fresh air after the last few weeks. Makes Halo 2 seem like a bad dream to be forgotten.

For awhile I was thinking that criticism of the game was due to overhype and unreasonable expectations, but when someone who clearly loved the first game so well actually sells his copy of Halo 2 and feels good about it... ouch.

Achronos noted yesterday morning that Bungie.net's forums are back up; maintenance took longer than expected because of the size of some of the forums. "New Mombassa alone has 51,541 total topics and 623,614 total posts," said Achronos.

[image:8886 left hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0] Given the recent release of the Pathways Redux mod for Doom 3, it seemed appropriate to look for more old school Bungie news, and Izual delivered it: box art for Minotaur, Bungie's dungeon-crawling game, in Halo multiplayer levels: Foundation, to be exact. You can find it in our Halo 2 Tricks Database under Multiplayer.

bitterbanana over in the Gearbox Software forum has announced the release of a mod for Halo Custom Edition and PC Halo that provides a chase camera (third person view) and adjustable field of vision (FOV). Thanks VerdaFolio.

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

• SketchFactor from Bungie has responded to the allegations of cheating. They are asking to post the names of alleged cheaters, but not the precise methods used.
• Cooked Gamers reports that CAL's Halo 2 gametypes are almost set.
• Some guys put Blood Gulch, Warthog included, into Half-Life 2, and a GTA site notes mods that put Halo items into Grand Theft Auto. (Thanks Wu at HBO.)
• Chibification fan art at Halo Babies.
• Major Nelson links to a Seattle newspaper story about Sam Radakovitz, the guy who wrote the Excel worksheet to archive Halo 2 stats; he's a Microsoft employee in the Excel group.
• Eric Trautmann points out an interview of him by Eric Nylund (author of The Fall of Reach and First Strike; there are also some online pages from The Art of Halo at Xbox.com.
• Achronos notes that on December 7, a day that will live in infamy, Bungie.net will be down for maintenance.

Finishing this news, sir...

[image:8865 left hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0] Andreas "BOLL" Aronsson of Wheels on Fire and flashy gruntness (grunty flashness?) fame is the subject of the latest Spotlight at The Junkyard by Ryan "Mhaddy" Matthews. BOLL hits the nail right on the head when he says:

On a side note, the world needs more co-op games.

How right he is.