Halo 2

Halo 2 is the sequel to the blockbuster and critically-acclaimed Halo: Combat Evolved, and features a newly built game engine and the Havok physics engine, new weapons and vehicles, new multiplayer maps, and a storyline that continues the story begun in Halo: Combat Evolved. Halo 2, released for the Xbox game console on November 9, 2004, and its predecessor are both backwards-compatible for the Xbox 360, including its Xbox Live functionality.

History
Halo: Combat Evolved became a best-selling and well-lauded title upon its release in November 2001 but some complained that it lacked support for Xbox Live even though the broadband service would not be ready until a year later. The only cross-console multiplayer was either from System Link, Gamespy Tunnel, or XBConnect. Given the expected long development time of Halo 2, there were rumours of an updated "Halo 1.5" which would add Xbox Live support for the original and would be released in late 2002 or early 2003 but that never materialized. The PC version of Halo: Combat Evolved released in Fall 2003 however, and did have online support.

Since Bungie's 2002 announcement that they were working on an Xbox Live-enabled sequel to Halo, Halo 2 had became one of the most anticipated titles in development, only rivaled in hype by Doom 3 and later Half-Life 2. All three games were slated for a 2003 holiday season release but due to delays they were pushed back to 2004.

Of particular note regarding the release of Halo2 was an estimated one million dollar Alternate Reality Game project titled I Love Bees. The story line was entirely unique in the Halo universe, but was at the same time very engaging and tied in seamlessly with the game itself. For those who are not familiar with the "ARG" premise: a story is put forth on webpages and other media devices. Players are invited into a part of the story they might not otherwise see. ARGS have become increasingly popular in the early 21st century, and this popularity is owed in large part to I Love Bees.

On the morning of October 14, a leak of the French version of the game was posted on the Internet, and circulated widely. Microsoft, the parent company of Bungie Studios, tried to contain the spread, and pledged to bring legal action against anyone who spread the leaked version. Fortunately, the leak failed to have a significant effect on Halo 2 sales, due in part to a supportive Halo community which was determined to honor the original release date and which was instrumental in curbing the spread of the leaked version.

The first official release of Halo 2 was in New Zealand on November 9, 2004. Anticipation for game was high; three weeks before this release, a record 1.5 million copies had already been pre-ordered. This was followed by releases on November 10 in France and other European countries, and November 11 in the UK. The game sold 2.4 million copies and earned up to $125 million US in its first 24 hours on store shelves, thus out-grossing the film Spider-Man 2 as highest grossing release in entertainment history. As of 1 January 2005, the game had sold 6.3 million copies. According to a contemporary Wired Magazine issue, Halo 2 had a more profitable opening day than did the then-highest-grossing Hollywood film, Spider-Man. Some observers saw this as another milestone in the emerging dominance of the video game industry; a few years earlier, the video game industry had surpassed the movie industry in total revenues for the first time and had never relinquished its lead since then. It also won "Game of the Year 2004" at GPhoria, among other awards (Best Boss Battle, etc.), including different award shows.

Since Halo 2 was a successful killer app for the Xbox and its Live online service, Microsoft took advantage of Halo 2 to ban modded (modified) Xboxes from the network when they tried to log on for online gaming.

Campaign
The game is playable in campaign mode either single-player or cooperative. This mode follows the story to the Halo series and is the second of the three games (the third and final part of the series is still not published). When playing in this mode the player(s) must complete a series of episodes. Some of these episodes require the player to compete as a Covenant Elite called The Arbiter, while some, but not the majority are still played as the Master Chief. Aside from variations caused simply by switching sides in the conflict, most notably The Arbiter is different from Master Chief in that his armor lacks a flashlight and is equipped with a short duration rechargeable form of active camouflage that will drop if the player attacks or is shot. His shield is also weaker than the Master Chief's - probably a result of its age. Another possibility is that the Arbiter was designed to be less of a battering ram than the Master Chief, which subsequently requires different tactics. Additionally, the story line while playing as the Arbiter changes to one of fighting an internal faction within the Covenant, with the elites, hunters and grunts forming one team and the brutes, jackals, prophets and drones forming the other.

There are four levels of difficulty: Easy, Normal, Heroic and Legendary, the latter of which has been described as "suicide" by the game's developers. An increase in difficulty will result in an increase in the health of opponents, an increase in their accuracy, and a reduction of health in the player.

Multiplayer
There are varying modes, several of which have returned from the original Halo game. A typical classic free for all or team deathmatch game known as Slayer, a team based Capture The Flag game, a game which you plant a bomb in your enemies base to score called Assault, a more esoteric free-for-all (FFA) or team game of keep away called Oddball, a game extrapolated from a child's game of "tag" called Juggernaut, King of the Hill, where players race to control a specified area of the map, and finally, Territories, which bears some resemblance to King of the Hill, but with multiple hills. All of these modes can be twisted and changed in thousands of unpredictable ways, resulting in incredibly varied multiplayer gameplay. Of the preset variations present in the original game, only Race is missing.

Unlike its predecessor, Halo 2 allows players to compete with each other via the Xbox Live online service, in addition to the original's support for split-screen and System Link multiplayer. Halo 2 ' s Xbox Live mode offers a unique and, some would say, innovative approach to online gaming that is intended to alleviate some of the problems that have plagued online first-person shooters in the past. Traditionally, one player sets his or her computer or console up as a game server (or host), specifying the game type and map and configuring other settings. The game software then uses a service like GameSpy to advertise the game to the world at large; other players choose which game to join based upon criteria such as the map and game options each host is offering as well as the ping times they are able to receive.

In Halo 2, Xbox Live players do not choose to host public games, and they do not get to specify individual maps and options to search for. Instead, players select "playlists" that are geared to different styles of play. For example, the "Rumble Pit" playlist offers a variety of "every man for himself" game types, primarily Slayer or variations thereof; "Team Skirmish" offers a number of 4-on-4 team games, which are primarily objective-based games like Capture the Flag; "Big Team Battle" is similar to Team Skirmish but allows teams of up to 8 players. Other playlists allow head-to-head play and matches between different clans. The Xbox Live servers create games automatically from the pool of players that have chosen each playlist, choosing a game type and map automatically and selecting one player to serve as the game's host.

Players can create small "parties" with their friends and enter games together as teammates in Team based games. Parties can also play in "Rumble Training" games, which is an unranked version of "Rumble Pit" If the Xbox console hosting the game drops out, the Xbox Live service automatically selects a new host from among the remaining players so the game can continue. Players may still choose to set up games for their own party to their own specification, and invite others into that game from their Friends and Clan lists, however these games are not made publicly available.

Bungie.net records every single statistic that is displayed on-screen in the end-of-game "Postgame Carnage Report." Anyone can visit Bungie.net and look at any Xbox Live player's stats. If a player logs in with a Microsoft Passport, they can also access the "Gameviewer". This presents an image of the level that was played from the player's choice various angles, superimposed with a summary of the crucial game events. For example: for each kill, the attacker and target's locations and the attacker's weapon are displayed, and the paths taken by flags in Capture the Flag games are shown. Bungie keeps these stats for several hundred games per player at a time, then games begin to be purged to save space, and they are used as evidence when banning suspected cheating players (see "Xbox Live Updates", below).

Regular players have expressed concerns regarding the game balance of Halo 2. Many players feel that game strategies are too dependent upon controlling the "power weapons" in each map such as the Rocket Launcher, Sniper Rifle, Shotgun, or Energy Sword, which leads to the overshadowing of the other weapons in the game. Should a team acquire these weapons, it becomes more difficult for their opponents to score kills or attain objectives. Much game time may be consumed attempting to seize the weapons in question from the opposition to shift the balance of power; in some cases it may not even be possible to do so. This primarily affects team games and one-on-one games; in free for alls, a player with a "power weapon" will become a priority target for the other players, meaning that the weapon will change hands frequently. Another common criticism is the dominance of dual-wielding weapons over single-wielding combined with grenades, although attempts have been made to address these issues with the April 18th automatic update.

A second mode of Multiplayer is also availible called "Cooperative", in which two players on the same console can play through the singleplayer campaign together. Both players share the same character model (i.e 2 Master Chiefs or two Arbiters) and the addition made by the second player does not change any events in game. When one player dies in Co-op, he or she is given a birds-eye view of the other player, and a small line of text displaying the condition for the living player to fulfill for the deceased to respawn, for example "Too many enemies nearby" would mean that there are too many enemies around the living player to have the other respawn, and he must retreat to a safer area. however, on the Legendary difficulty, when one player dies, the game is reverted to the last checkpoint. Unfortunately, the Co-op game mode does not work on Xbox Live.

Damage system
The damage system in Halo 2 is slightly different from that in Halo: Combat Evolved. The player has a regenerating shield, but now has regenerating health as well.


 * Shields: The shield in Halo 2 is much stronger, and recharges at a higher rate. It covers the player's entire body, and slowly decreases in power as it sustains damage.  After it takes damage, it starts to recharge 4 seconds after the last time damage was sustained.  The power is displayed above the motion tracker in the bottom-left of the screen. Like in the original Halo, once the shields become low an alarm informs the player that they are out.
 * Health: In Halo 2, once the shields run out, the player also has a buffer of health. Unlike the first Halo, health regenerates after the shield.  The amount of health left is not visible to the player, and is also much smaller than in the original game.

Music
The Halo 2 soundtrack was mostly composed by Martin O'Donnell, who had also composed the music of Halo. Steve Vai provided guitar backing for many tracks. Additional tracks were also provided by various outside musicians, such as Joe Satriani (for the remixed theme song, which includes new guitar solos).

The Last Spartan, is the signature theme tune for Halo 2.

The bands Incubus, Breaking Benjamin, and Hoobastank also feature on the official soundtrack and to a certain extent, in the game. The song Blow Me Away is considered the most popular of these contributions, however Incubus's contributions create the mood of the game the best.

Xbox Live updates
A common complaint regarding Halo 2's online play has been the widespread cheating which occurred almost immediately upon the game's release. Users exploited bugs in the game and vulnerabilities of the network to win ranked games and thus increase their matchmaking rank. In response to these complaints, Bungie released an automatic update for Halo 2 (a mandatory patch) on Monday, April 18th, 2005, which fixed many of the various bugs and cheats in the game (though some inevitably persist), slimmed down split-screen HUD information, and rebalanced various weapons to promote use of single-wield weapons, grenades, and melee attacks. For example, the melee attacks and grenades are now far more powerful. The battle rifle is now more accurate. A full list of changes can be seen here. This brings Halo 2 up to Version 1.1.

Halo 2 also supports downloadable content, with Bungie making various new multiplayer maps available. Four maps were made available to download on Monday, April 25th, 2005. Two of these were immediately free to download (the "Bonus Pack"), while the other two (the "Killtacular Pack") had a charge attached (US$5.99, £2.99) until July the 5th (in actuality, late June), when they too became free to download. On the 5th, 5 new maps were made available in a pack for $11.99, and were similarly made free to download on August 30th. The Map Pack disk (below) was also released on that date. For further information on the map packs and their contents, see the /list of downloadable maps/.

Another update was added in July, 2005 (a week or so after the release of the map pack). The update added a detection tool that would automatically detect and ban 'modders' using modified content on their Xboxes. Modified versions of the downloadable maps would allow people to use cheats such as 'super jump' and 'automatic reload' during matches on Xbox Live. Any players who are detected using modified content would be automatically banned from Matchmaking on Xbox Live. The update also fixes a teleporter glitch on the map, Relic.

Criticism
While Halo 2 has won many awards and raked in colossal profits, debate has risen over the merits of such success, especially when faced with comparisons to the immense impact on the console market that the first Halo had. Many gamers even credit Halo CE with singlehandedly propping up the Microsoft Xbox's image and sales through its first generation of games.

Criticisms of Halo 2
Some players dispute whether Halo 2 is a good game at all. A large chunk of this group consists of disgruntled Halo fans who feel that certain changes have made the game unbalanced, mainly in multiplayer gameplay. Several argumentative complaints have been registered by members of this movement:
 * The lack of mid-to-long range weapons in the game.
 * The Sub-machine gun starting weapon which some claimed was imbalanced and underpowered, leaving the outcome of the game determined by a combination of luck and who can get to more dominating weapons first.
 * Increased "autoaim," "stickyaim," and "magnetism," which some claim levelled the playing field between the professional and the casual players. Magnetism guides the aiming reticle towards an enemy character, while the autoaim allows hits to be registered over a wider area around the target.
 * Toned down pistol. In Halo, the M6D pistol was an extremely powerful sidearm that, if aimed precisely, killed any shielded enemy with three shots to the head. This made it one of, if not the best multiplayer weapon and the main weapon used by many experienced Halo players. In Halo 2, however, the pistol lost a considerable amount of power, making it a support weapon of dubious functionality.
 * Addition of the plasma sword, a one-hit-kill mêlée weapon with a lock-on feature, considered by many players to be overpowered.
 * A narrower field of view of 70 degrees.
 * Minor gameplay differences when compared with Halo CE which deleted or changed more subtle aspects of skill that originally steepened the learning curve (deletion of fall damage, inclusion of vehicle lock-on feature for rocket launchers, shorter fuse times for grenades, decreased blast radius, massive plasma grenade damage, underpowered melee attacks, reworked network code which leads to massive host advantage, change of weapon respawn system so that the more powerful weapons won't respawn if someone has them, etc.)
 * A cliffhanger ending.

It should be noted that many of these gripes all concern intricate game balances regarding competitive gaming, and almost exclusively focus on the interests of competitive gamers.

Matchmaking
A number of players take issue with Xbox Live Matchmaking. One frequent complaint involves the default weapon settings used in multiplayer gametypes, situations where the player starts off with the relatively underpowered and inaccurate SubMachine Gun. These players feel that a starting weapon such as the Battle Rifle would make much more sense in the competitive environment of matchmaking, allowing for a greater emphasis on aim and strafing techniques. Others feel that the Battle Rifle is an annoying weapon and isn't nearly as much as "fun" as the traditional SMG. Bungie has since responded to these demands by including the Battle Rifle as a default weapon in several playlist scenarios.

Many members of the Major League Gaming league share similar gripes. Fans of the strict policies and gametypes endorsed by MLG routinely posted on the Bungie.net forums arguing for these to be included in matchmaking, often proposing the compromise of an MLG-style playlist. These complaints escalated until Bungie.net moderators eventually banned all talk of MLG related proposals. Now Bungie has added Team Hardcore playlist to enact several of the key MLG ideas into matchmaking.

There are many issues with lag as well. Due to the fact that there are no regional hosts, lag can get very excessive if someone of another country plays in the same game with someone from a different country. Regional hosts are when a host if from a specific country visibly seen in normal online games. This reduces lag times because the players are closer together, less distance for data to travel.

Technical
Conflicts also arose because of Bungie's Halo 2 game engine. This engine uses an "on the fly" rendering technique in an attempt to create a game without load times. The downside is that the full resolution version of most textures are loaded as needed on-screen, which means that often times when loading new levels or characters, there are a couple of frames with lower resolution textures. Although this side-effect is not common during the single player campaign or the multiplayer scenarios, it is very common in the cutscenes used to separate levels and level segments. A few wish that such implementation was optional and would rather sit through loadscreens in exchange for a more consistant cinematic presentation.

Offline multiplayer
Another area that is criticised is the lack of computer controlled enemies (also known as bots) in multiplayer. While Halo 2's main attraction was its online multiplayer component, its failure to improve over the original Halo in regards to players who do not have Xbox Live is sometimes pointed out as being negligent. The omission of bots is also strange in that the AI in the singleplayer section of the game is fairly intelligent and dynamic, and could possibly have been transferred to multiplayer with a reasonable amount of ease. However, early rumours in Halo 2's development as to the inclusion of bots were firmly rebutted by Bungie.

Many online players of Halo 2 suggest that bots would be a waste of development time for the game, although for the offline community it is another example of them being overlooked in favour of online multiplayer. Halo 2 certainly shines in this area, but for a game aiming to push the limits of the console FPS, the absence of bots is fairly odd, given that they are present in earlier console games such as Timesplitters 2, XIII, Perfect Dark, and even The World Is Not Enough.

Story
Other disputes concern the creative liberties taken with the story. Several fans felt that the game's plot was too different from what the previews suggested. They felt that the struggle to defend Earth should have been the centerpiece of the story rather than a preface to the reiteration of the first game's storyline. This was most likely due to Bungie's policy against the divulsion of spoilers prior to the game's release, a move reflected in Halo's advertising.

More controversy was generated by the game's abrupt cliffhanger ending. Many players (and some reviewers ) were dissatisfied with the apparent lack of climax and some claimed that Microsoft forced Bungie to cut the last level. However, according to the Collector's Edition supplemental DVD, Bungie's decision to resort to a cliffhanger ending was necessitated by "time constraints". After being given almost three years to finish the project, with numerous and competent staff, this was seen as a rather dubious excuse, and the outcome was less than satisfactory for many.

Players also lamented the demystification of the Covenant enemies. In Halo 2 Bungie decided to further humanize the alien enemies; aliens suddenly spoke English, due to the Master Chief's "Covenant translator" built into his new armor (the Covenant actually spoke backwards English in the original Halo). Also included were cutscenes that shed light on their socialization, inevitably compromising the Covenant's menacing appearance. Further, the decision to include a playable Covenant character (The Arbiter) proved a risky move that was not universally supported. Jokingly referred to as an example of the Metal Gear Solid 2 syndrome, it shifted focus away from the franchise's main character (Master Chief).