As seen on Voodoo Extreme, GamesFirst has put up a preview of Halo 2. Basically the same information as everyone else, and the same screen shots, but we mention it here for completeness.

Bungie's own Matt Soell has posted a Halo National Tournament report from El Bastard in Florida:

Everyone knows people who have played Halo through on Normal, but seem to always get their asses handed to them during LAN play. Usually, this person feels that their tactics are superior and it was the game that failed in the execution. Such a player might, say, jump into a warthog, drive close to a heated battle, then hop in the back and try and use the LAAG to wipe out his foes. In theory, such a guy should get a few kills, right? Well, theory or not, this interesting tactic resulted in a grand total of 3 kills. You'd think wandering around shooting rockets randomly into each base might have improved his chances by a factor of 5 at least.

Be sure to check it out, some interesting stuff in there.

XenGamers, which used to be called CoreMagazine, has put up a story on the Halo 2 announcement in New York and the trailer that we are now waiting 21 days for:

With Halo passing the two million mark in global sales, Microsoft unveiled the first in-game trailer for the much-anticipated sequel. The trailer starts off with the Master Chief, assisted by his AI construct Cortana, deep inside a spaceship. Arming himself with an assault rifle, he makes his way though the corridors of the ship, as mission objectives from the first game flash across the screen, each with a Completed after it. Upon entering the ship's hangar, huge Covenant ships can be seen invading Earth. Huge explosions burst across the continents. A new mission objective hits the screen: Stop the destruction of the human race and Master Chief opens the hangar door and jumps into space, heading directly for a hovering Covenant craft below. The trailer showcased new graphic enhancements that Bungie's managed to get out of Xbox, including realistic real-time lighting effects, more fluid animation and more realistic bump mapping. In addition to featuring online play through Xbox Live, the sequel will offer a larger assortment of weapons and twice as many vehicles.

The story also covers the Xbox Live announcement.

It's strange that we have to wait 21 days for the Halo 2 trailer, but Smilebit thinks he knows why. He writes in the HBO forum:

The Halo trailer is encoded using WMP9. The Windows Media Player 9 beta comes out on Sept. 4th.

So IS Windows Media Player 9 coming out September 4? You betcha. My main concern is, will a Mac version be released by that time?

Crap. Don't count on seeing the Halo 2 trailer any time in the near future. There is a counter at Xbox.com that says it will be released 21 days from now. That would be September 4, 2002.

We've started a Halo 2 Screenshot section and added the first seven shots from the upcoming trailer as released on Bungie.net.

Gamers.com, a site which has pages on Halo and Halo 2 as well as Bungie Soft... uh, Studios, featuring various pieces of information, has also put up a transcript of the Halo 2 trailer unveiled last week. One of the more interesting bits is this bit of text, which apparently appears on the screen:

Objective -- Save the Earth from alien invasion
Mission: In progress

... just before the MC leaps out an airlock high above the Earth only to land on a passing Covenant ship.

Now, lots of people have interpreted this to mean Halo 2 takes place on Earth, and while that's certainly possible, I'd say it's decidedly less interesting. Here's hoping the Chief hitches a ride on that cruiser out to the Covenant homeworld instead to fulfill his original mission.

According to a news item at Bungie.net, the page that EB was hosting for the Halo National Tournament rules has disappeared inexplicably . There is a complete copy of the HNC rules online at iGames.