Gold! Halo 2

News - But still nearly a month to wait...

"We finished every line of code, every pixel of art, every frame of animation, every phoneme of dialogue, and every note of music. We finished it when we said we would (when it was done) and shipped that baby right on time to make its November launch date," read a euphoric statement on the Bungie official site, confirming - as you've probably guessed already - that Halo 2 is gold.

This is significant news, as it means the final title is even as we speak being duplicated onto thousands - nay millions - of DVDs, though could be regarded as something of an anticlimax on this occasion, as Bungie had stated more than a week ago that they thought it was pretty much ready anyway.

"We now have retail versions (test samples) here in the office," the update continued. "In fact, one sharp and presumably jealous-eyed reader saw the following legend appear in his Live-linked MSN Instant Messenger window: 'Anm8erJB is now playing Halo 2 on Xbox Live.' Now that's a tease." A tease indeed, where's our 'review' copy? More soon.