What's the most accurate thing you can think of? Probably this laser. The answer is a weapon so versatile it can snipe infantry or fry vehicles. It even makes coffee at a thousand yards. It is the Spartan Laser, the heavily-censored subject of KP's latest treatise on the weapons and vehicles in Halo 3.

Let's face it: if the Halo 3 Public Beta is our new Great Journey, then the Prophet of Truth is a liar, because some of us are going to be left behind. Not everybody who wants to can get in. If everybody could get in, there'd be no difference between the beta test and actually releasing the game. At least as far as multiplayer is concerned.

Over at Tied the Leader, XerxdeeJ says a few words for those of us who are destined to be left behind... at least until Halo 3 actually launches. As usual, this is only one of several pieces updated for this week. Head on over to Tied The Leader and check them out.

Games In Action gets to the bottom of the conspiracy that put KP in position to get Frankie's coffee keep the Halo fan community abreast of Halo 3's development. It's a sordid tale of job applications and interviews that exposes the seamy underbelly of game development.

Of course, working at Bungie isn't all sushi farts and roses, but there are advantages, says KP:

The best part is being a part of the playtests, easily. It’s like having a LAN at your buddy’s house except it’s better ventilated, everyone has their own setup and sometimes your box crashes. Not only are they fun but often there’ll be some pretty in-depth discussions after the fact. At first I just watched those go down, but now that I’ve actually got some experience and skill playing the game, I’m comfortable sharing my opinion. It’s very cool to have the ear of the Halo 3 multiplayer lead.

One can only wonder if that ear is going to end up in a jar, like Ling Ling. Thanks for the heads-up to Louis Wu at (where else?) HBO.

KP's latest in weapons profiling focuses on the Covenant's Type-2 Antipersonnel Fragmentation Grenade, or Spike Grenade. Even with all the info up close and personnel, we still have to settle for a microscopic dot on a microscopic dot for an image. Hey, how about some pictures, like we got for the Mongi?

You know, because of the layers. Layers of detail, like the layers in Frankie's latest Bungie Update. Between those layers are morsels of information: like the fact that every campaign level is now in the game, which is playable "from end to end"; like the fact that the usual levels of difficulty: easy, normal, heroic and legendary, are in the game and being tuned; like the fact that Robert McLees just found Ling Ling.

Okay, it could be cake. Everybody likes cake.

Don't call it a gun. In fact, don't even call it a rifle. It isn't even a weapon. It's a system. The MA5C Individual Combat Weapon System. If I didn't know better, I'd say that KP made that up himself when he penned the description of Halo 3's default spawn weapon, that hybrid of Halo 1's loveable bullet hose the Assault Rifle and Halo 2's pistol replacement the Battle Rifle.

One useful tidbit:

Fully shielded Spartans can take two blows from the rifle before dropping.

Granted, that's at close range, but that seems to indicate that under certain circumstances, the new AR might be just as, if not even more powerful, than previous "go-to" weapons.

UPDATE: For clarification, "two blows" mentioned above refers to melee strikes and not bullets fired, as the comparison to other weapons might seem to suggest. My bad.

Due to one thing and another, including chetz, h4x, modified weapon spawns, beastly brute spiker dual-wielding, and the fact that Ferrex rulz and Staten droolz, the Halo 3 Multiplayer Team defeated the Bungie Community Team 2 games to 1 in the latest internal humpday. See KP's writeup on Bungie.net for details.