The Halo 2 headset is now being sold by Plantronics for $14.95 with one dollar going to benefit the victims of Hurricane Katrina. It'll work with either the Xbox or Xbox 360. If you need the communicator as well, they'll throw that in for another five bucks.

If you've been holding off on picking up this headset, now is definitely the time. It's a great headset, sound quality is crisp on both ends.

This may not be news to many of you, as it broke on Ars Technica a few days ago, where HBO picked it up.

Over at HaloPlanet today, they've announced the results of their Halo 3 Cover Art Contest. Bungie is not affiliated with this contest and has nothing to do with the selection of the winners nor will we use their art for the cover. Congrats to the four winners!

No, that's not our Frankie. It is likely one of the many free-range Frank O'Connors, running naked and untamed about the internet.

The next release in Stephen Cawood's long line of Halo-related books is finally here. The Black Art of Halo Mods hit store shelves recently, and there isn't enough space on the interweb to describe the plethora of information available in this book.


The Black Art of Halo Mods by Stephen Cawood is packed with info on both the basic and advanced techniques of Halo CE customization. Included in the book is a crap load of tutorials and information on everything you can think of. Weapons, vehicles, bipeds, levels; you name it, it's got it.

The most important parts of the book are the extensive chapters on the undocumented features of the Halo Editing Kit. Some of you might be familiar with the Halo2CE Mod released a while back. Well they were generous enough to donate some of their top secret information on customization breakthroughs to the book. Another important part is the introduction to the upcoming all-in-one Halo tool Prometheus - http://www.halodev.org.

Although Halo Custom Edition is the main focus of the book, there is plenty of information on the history of Halo customization, which dates back over three years ago! I'm sure I'm forgetting a lot about whats inside this book, so hurry up and grab your copy today!  

You can grab a copy from Amazon or your local book store.

There are a lot of cool sites and programs out there that make use of the RSS feed, one of them is the newly relaunched Stats Reloaded. You need to register for it to begin retrieving your stats, but once you do it's able to provide plenty of the more common stats, graphs and even a couple unique categories.

If you're looking for some programs that do much the same thing, Query Spree and Halo 2 Statitistics Tracking Utility both do a great job.

There's a slew of MLG Anaheim coverage over at MLGPro.com. Despite some really interesting 4v4 results in the beginning of the tournament, Final Boss remained unshaken atop the leaderboard. Karma was also able walk away with the 1v1 title yet again. Congrats to the winners, which is everyone, because we're all winners on the inside.

Trunkers filed a preliminary report on the goings on early on Sunday detailing the travails of top pro teams which were upset in the early rounds. Later he reported the final prize report and wrote a in-depth piece of the experiences of Carbon at MLG Anaheim. Finally, Jason posted the saga of the 1v1 tournament earlier today.

David Scully, voice of Sgt. Johnson and noted playwright, has authored a play to be read on August 4th and 5th here in Seattle. Ghetto Mansion will be read by The Hansberry Project at the ACT theatre. Read on for more info and a short description.

For more information, check out The Hansberry Project's site as well as ACT theatre's site.

From Scully himself:

Ghetto Mansion weaves a mysterious tale of an ex-convict father of the Secretary of State as he reenters the lives of his family and brings with him secrets most would prefer remain under deep cover.

The Video Games Live tour is rolling again and will be hitting some big venues in the coming months. Their first stop will be Houston on July 14th, then Chicago on August 5th and then Indianapolis on Augst 11th and 12th. Marty will be on hand in Chicago to sign various items and appendages.

You can learn more about the VGL tour at their site. For all of our friends to the north, VGL does plan to make a stop in Toronto on September first. To learn more about upcoming events check out their tour dates page.

jcap writes:

The Custom Map Team's makeover of Halo's singleplayer campaign has been released for Halo Custom Edition after months of anxiously waiting for its completion.  With all new content, campaign has a completely new feel to it.  Full details on the mod are in the continuation of this story.

For those of you who haven’t been following the Halo CE community news, over the past few months, the Custom Map Team (CMT) has been on a mission which no one had gone on before - redesigning Halo’s campaign maps for Halo Custom Edition. Since it was started, every single map has had the addition of new textures, shaders, environments, weapons, vehicles, animations, sounds, and a redesigned HUD. And because it’s the Custom Map Team, everything is 100% user created content.

Weapons such as the upgraded Halo 3-like Assault Rifle, an Anti-Aircraft Rocket Launcher, a new silenced Sniper Rifle, a silenced SMG, and a Battle Rifle with a Grenade Launcher, in addition to every original weapon overhauled. New vehicles such as four new Pelicans, two new Warthogs, a drivable Wraith, and an Apparition have been added. A new, custom biped (Master Chief) has also shown its face in the mod. These are just a few changes/additions, so for a full overview you can either take a look at the final mod pics which can be seen in this post, or you can watch it all in action in the seven minute release trailer, which has its link below.

The mod officially made its public release on June 25, 2006. Even with it mirrored on two servers, they were quickly taken down at 3:00AM EST due to roughly 250 people attempting to download at once.

To view the official CMT release trailer, click here.

All of the maps can be downloaded either individually or as one big map pack here.

To play the maps, you can use the CMT UI as your main menu, designed specifically for these maps with the original Halo Xbox shaders.

Custom intro videos can be retrieved from right here.

For first-time installers, or if you need help installing, follow the CMT’s Maps Installations for Dummies guide.

What does it take to become an ultimate Halo fan? All the action figures, books and hours of game play? A few rare posters and back stage passes to exclusive events? Today we examine one fan who truly has gone above and beyond when it comes to interior decoration.

Meet Namloco, a fan who just could not escape the clutches of the Halo universe. A Father of two, his addiction started one Christmas where he received Halo as a gift unaware that it would eventually suck his eye balls out of his skull. Believing that he would never pay for an online gaming service he quickly dropped that delusion when Halo 2 hit the shelves. Juggling a full time job, kids and being a husband has been quite the task for Namloco but somewhere between the tasks he has managed to find his escape in Halo and has built him self one heck of a place to relax.

Where'd he get that?
Blasting away in peace and relaxation

A basement as bald as Frankie's cranium was the beginning when Namloco examined his house for a space worthy of a gaming kingdom. A true visionary, the plan was set when he began to do the preliminary work by himself in the basement to ensure enough green to finish his ambitious project. After putting up the drywall himself, Namloco began his quest to find the most inspiring piece of Halo related art and finally settled on Eddie Smith's original work for the Edge cover. (Found here.) ”Well that portrait stood out to me in a way that gave me the sense of being in the fight, being part of that world and helping me to put the game face on. You know that loading screen online where all the troops are sitting in the pelican waiting for battle? I’m one of those, or so I wish” he said.

The goods

Over five weeks the artists labored to bring the six by twelve foot display to life and even added in extra details to the piece, such as his own custom Halo 2 symbol to Master Chief's arm and glow in the dark pant. Eventually he stated to add many trinketed pieces off of Ebay such has exclusive posters, display boxes and even a skull to mimic the famous odd ball. Namloco even wet as far as to building a 20 inch LCD TV. into his fireplace with surround sound to ensure top quality pwnage throughout inexcusable hours of gaming. And how can you forget the mini fridge conveniently located close to the battle grounds for refueling purposes!

Personal Emblem

“[I'm] very satisfied, as I said before I feel like I’m part of the game. But the kicker of it all is that I can pwn in peace and share it with like-minded fans through out the world,” Namloco told us when asked about his piece. Although the room may seem complete it is far from it, much like Halo itself. luckily Namloco planned on adding more detail to his Halo-tastic room, “No way am I done. I left a wall to the right of the Chief to expand. Maybe a life size gun rack in the pelican so visitors may have their weapon of choice on hand.”And what about when Halo 3 was announced at E3 this year? “Guess I’ll have to talk Mrs. Nam into letting me do our bedroom!”

More images of Namloco's mural and room can be found here.

MLGPro.com has cranked out some new content in preperation for this weekend. There's a 4v4 Preview, they announce locking down some Pros and Overswarm put up an article on MoBDeep earlier this week.

The 4v4 preview is pretty interesting and gives a pretty good description of what we can expect of the action. The announcement is standard fare, congrats to Final Boss and their newfound dough-rolling. Overswarm does an excellent job, as always, detailing MoBDeep, worth a read.

Maimum FEAR writes:

Games in Action are hosting a non-Bungie Team SWAT tournament in four weeks time over Xbox Live.  Teams of four will battle out against each other for a chance to win cash prizes from GiA, not Bungie.  If you are interested then read on.

In light of the release of the brand new playlist Team SWAT and its immense popularity Games in Action has decided to host a Team SWAT tournament, which is scheduled to begin in four weeks time.  The tournament will consist of teams of four players, battling it out with other teams in an attempt to get to the finals.  The games will be played using Team SWAT classic rules and monitored to ensure no cheating.  Prizes will be awarded as follows:

1st Prize: $200
2nd Prize: $100
3rd and 4th Prize: $50

So if you are interested in taking part for a chance to win $200 and show everyone who the best is then simply go to Games In Action and sign up in the forums.  You will be able to read the full rules and more details on the tournament there.  Good luck!

[Shishka's note: This is NOT an official tournament. It is being held by the Seventh Column group Games in Action. If you wish to participate, you will need to join their group. You must join their group before you can participate on the forums.

Again; this is NOT an official tournament. Bungie is not responsible for difficulties with the tournament or details. Contact Games in Action if you need more information.]

Red vs. Blue  has a new miniseries, Out of Mind, starting up on Xbox Live Marketplace today. It won't cost you anything other than a few minutes to download the ultrasupermegaxtreme high definition 720p video. Fire up the Tree Sitty and check it out as soon as you can.

Gus talks about Red vs. Blue's entry into the high definition era and what it meant for them in his RvB blog. Thanks to Wu again for the heads up.

The Halo 2 Series 8 action figures have been released by Joyride Studios. This series features the Master Chief with Infection Form, the Heretic Elite Leader and the Jackal.

You can pick the new series up at any of these fine establishments or online at Die Cast Express. Thanks to the Wu for pointing this out.

Over at MLGpro.com, Trunkers has taken a look at the upcoming MLG event in Anaheim. The article covers the up-and-comers in the pro scene, highlighting three teams in particular, as well as the possibility that we could be seeing some changes on the leaderboards in Anaheim.

MLG Anaheim takes place June 23-25, find out more on their event page.