Okay, so the 360 isn't setting sales records in Japan, and the Japanese aren't really known worldwide for their love of the Halo franchise. Still, that didn't stop flagship Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu from ranking the game quite highly. One scorer gave it 10/10. The others? 9/10. Not bad. PlayTM has the story.

In yet another example of Halo becoming so cool that the only way to make yourself look cooler in comparison is to dump on it, Steve Tilly at the Edmonton Sun drops this pearl of wisdom: Halo 2 is the #4 most overhyped game ever, just ahead of Daikatana:

One of my biggest regrets as a so-called professional game reviewer is giving Halo 2 a five-star review in 2004. But journalists are human too, and like so many others I got caught up in the tornado of hype surrounding Master Chief's triumphant return to the Xbox.

First-- you gotta be kidding me. More overhyped than Daikatana? Halo 2 was more overhyped than a game Romero advertised by promising to make fans "his bitch" and in the end delivered only schizophrenic level design, robotic frogs, and a helpless, stereotypical sidekick? More over-hyped than that?

Secondly, you should stand by what you write. If you'd predicted Halo 2 would be the best game ever before you played it and then got a chance to admit you were wrong later, that's one thing. Admitting that you got "caught up" in the hype and gave a game a rank it didn't deserve is something else entirely. It's just as likely that right now you're caught up in a backlash against Halo. How can anyone tell?

Call them like you see them-- and stick by what you've said. All else is pretense.

Thanks to chewpathingy for the heads-up in the HBO forum.

Australia's PALGN has posted a review of Freeverse's XBLA port of Marathon: Durandal. Their verdict:

Marathon: Durandal is one of the best value games on the XBLA. You could spend more time playing through this than Halo, and at a fraction of the cost. There are aspects of the game that are archaic and it’s not a good game in short bursts, however, it provides a mysterious and lengthy experience for anyone who is willing to immerse themselves.

They did say it's too easy to get lost, but there's always the Marathon Spoiler Guide if you do.

Funkmon over at Subnova wrote up a scathing review of Eric Nylund's latest Halo novel, Ghosts of Onyx. Although he gave high marks for writing and story, in the end he wanted fewer new characters and more of the Master Chief-- and the reality is the book isn't about Master Chief at all.

For my own part, I liked it, ranking it right up there with Fall of Reach and way above The Flood, which I didn't care for at all. I think some of Funkmon's criticisms are unfair; I don't think Nylund was free to explore events between Halo 2 and Halo 3 since the latter picks up pretty much where the former left off. The book exists more to clarify your interpretations of what has already been revealed and to drop a few hints about what is to come, not to actually move the main story forward.

Where I do agree with the review is on areas where things we see in the novel just don't match up with what we see in gameplay; encounters that simply don't play out the way we know they would in the game, for various reasons.

More reviews of Stubbs: Anton P Nym wrote a nice piece on Stubbs the Zombie in his blog that is well worth a read.

Two major categories of news in this roundup: Stubbs and Xbox 360.

• GameSpy previews the PC version of Stubbs.
• IMG previews the Mac version of Stubbs.
• Gaming Horizon reviewed Stubbs and gave it 9 points out of 10, calling it "refreshingly original" as well as addictive and entertaining; they only bemoaned that the single-player campaign was too short. (Where've we heard that before?--Ed.)
• MacWorld's Peter Cohen takes a first look at the Mac version of Stubbs the Zombie; he loved the humor and the soundtrack, but felt the campaign was too short. He also confirms that the Mac version doesn't have cooperative play.
• The Xbox 360 manual has been spotted online in PDF form. We'll host a copy... until somebody tells us to stop.
• Circuit City is rumored to be selling an Xbox 360 bundle as early as this coming Friday, ahead of the official launch date. Not to sure about that one.
• The Xbox 360's power supply is, indeed, lolhueg.

HBOer N1NJ4 wrote a review of Wideload's Stubbs The Zombie. The mostly-positive review says that Stubbs is as gross as it is engrossing:

For me, there is no joy greater than whistling to my complete army of festering undead and knowing that they are my minions. The warm feeling I get when one of them is eating a brain, however, is nothing short of creepy. Its like I have a family: I feed them, push them, and occasionally use them to take bullets for me. The creation and manipulating of zombies is by far the most important as far as game play is concerned.

What N1NJ4 wonders is if the game has replayability. Hey, time to look for those hippos!