Halo 2

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Halo 2
File:Halo2.jpg North American Xbox version box art
Developer(s)	Bungie Studios (Xbox), Microsoft Game Studios (PC)
Publisher(s)	Microsoft Game Studios
Engine	Havok physics
Platform(s)	Xbox, Microsoft Windows, and Xbox 360 backward compatible (with HDD unit to store emulation files)
Release	Xbox: Microsoft Windows:
Genre(s)	First-person shooter
Mode(s)	Single-player, multiplayer, Xbox Live, co-op, and system-link

Halo 2 is a science fiction first-person shooter video game developed by Bungie Studios. Released for the Xbox game console on November 9, 2004, the game is the sequel to Halo: Combat Evolved. After its initial release, Halo 2 was the most popular video game on Xbox Live, holding that rank until the release of Gears of War for the Xbox 360 nearly two years later. By June 20, 2006, more than 500 million games of Halo 2 had been played and more than 710 million hours have been spent playing it on Xbox Live; by May 9, 2007, this number had risen to more than five million unique players on Xbox Liveref name=5bil>"Halo 2 hits 5 million players!". bungie.net. 2007-05-09. Retrieved 2007-05-13.</ref> As of May 9, 2006, Halo 2 is the best-selling first-generation Xbox game with 8 million copies sold worldwide. As of September 25 2007, Halo 2 is the fifth best-selling video game in the United States with 6.3 million copies sold in the US alone.

The game features a new game engine, as well as using the Havok physics engine; added weapons and vehicles; new multi-player maps; and a continuation of the storyline from Halo: Combat Evolved. In the game, humans, who have developed faster-than-light travel and colonized hundreds of worlds, have been engaged in a war against a collective of genocidal alien races, the Covenant. The player assumes the roles of Master Chief and the Arbiter, and fights enemies on foot or with a collection of alien and human vehicles. Critical reception of the game was generally positive, with most publications lauding the strong multiplayer component; at the same time, the campaign was the focus of criticism for its cliffhanger ending.

A Windows Vista version of the game was released on May 17, 2007. It was developed by a team at Microsoft Game Studios who are referred to internally as "Hired Gun". Game developer Pi Studios produced editing tools for this version, which allows users to create multiplayer maps.

Gameplay

In-game screenshot of Halo 2 for PC.

Halo 2 is a story-driven action-shooter game with a first-person perspective. The game features an expanded range of vehicles, as well as other gameplay changes compared to its predecessor. In the original Halo, health and shield bars are visible on-screen. In Halo 2, the health bar is no longer visible; instead, shield regenerates quickly when the player is not taking damage.

Certain weapons can be dual-wielded, which allows the player to compensate for reload times, while sacrificing accuracy and the ability to use grenades for raw firepower. The player can carry two weapons at a time (or three if dual-wielding; one weapon remains holstered), with each weapon having advantages and disadvantages in different combat situations. For example, most Covenant weapons eschew disposable ammo clips for a contained battery, which cannot be replaced if depleted. However, these weapons can overheat if fired continuously for prolonged periods. On the other hand, human weapons are less effective at penetrating shields and require reloading, but cannot overheat due to prolonged fire. The player can also carry a total of eight grenades (up to four of each type: plasma and fragmentation); however, grenades can only be thrown when single-wielding. Another new ability found in Halo 2 is the ability to board enemy vehicles that are near the player and traveling at low speeds. The player or AI latches onto the vehicle and forcibly ejects the other driver from the vehicle.

Campaign

The game's "Campaign" mode offers options for both single-player and cooperative multiplayer participation. In campaign mode, the player must complete a series of levels that encompass Halo 2's storyline. These levels alternate between the Master Chief and a Covenant Elite called the Arbiter, who occupy diametrically opposed roles in the story's conflict. Aside from variations in storyline, the Arbiter differs from Master Chief only in that his armor lacks a flashlight; instead, it is equipped with a short duration rechargeable form of active camouflage that disappears when the player attacks or takes damage.

There are four levels of difficulty in campaign mode: Easy, Normal, Heroic, and Legendary. An increase in difficulty will result in an increase in the number, rank, health, damage, and accuracy of enemies; a reduction of duration and an increase in recharge time for the Arbiter's active camouflage; a decrease in the player's health and shields; and occasional changes in dialogue.

There is a great amount of hidden content within the game, including easter eggs, messages, hidden objects, and weapons. The most well-known of the hidden content are the skulls hidden on every level. The skulls, which can be picked up like a weapon (or "ball" as in the '"Oddball" multiplayer gametype), are located in hard-to-reach places. Many are exclusive to the Legendary mode of difficulty. Once activated, each skull has a specific effect on gameplay. For example, the "Sputnik" skull found on the Quarantine Zone level alters the mass of objects in the game; thus resulting in explosions being able to launch these objects across larger distances. Skull effects can be combined to provide various new levels of difficulty and/or novelty.

Multiplayer

Unlike its predecessor, Halo 2 allows players to compete with each other via Xbox Live, in addition to the original game's support for split-screen and System Link multiplayer. Halo 2's Xbox Live mode offers changes from earlier online first-person shooters. Traditionally, one player sets his or her computer or console up as a game server or host, specifying the game type, map, and configuring other settings. The game software then uses a service such as 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, however, Xbox Live players do not choose to host public games, and they do not 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 "every man for himself" game types, and "Team Skirmish" offers 4-on-4 team games, which are primarily objective-based games like Capture the Flag. Bungie occasionally deletes the unpopular game types and adds new ones.

File:Halo02.jpg

Production Screenshot of a Capture the Flag multiplayer game.

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. If the Xbox console hosting the game resigns, the Xbox Live service automatically selects a new host from among the remaining players so the game can continue. Players can create small parties with their friends and/or clan and enter games together as teammates in Team based games. Players may also 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. For fairness and balance reasons, certain gameplay aspects from the Campaign mode are disabled or missing in Multiplayer: an example is the absence of the hand-held Fuel Rod Cannon and the removal of the Banshee's fuel rod cannon.

Technical lead designer, Chris Butcher, commented on the development of Halo 2's multiplayer in Edge, a British gaming magazine, in January 2007. Responding to a rash of subsequent news articles, Butcher clarified his position on Halo 2 multiplayer. He noted his original intent with the game, but he also reiterated disappointment. "For Halo 2 we had our sights set very high on networking," Butcher said. "We thought about the great LAN parties you can have with Halo 1 and decided to try [to] recreate that awesome experience of having all your buddies over to play, but using Xbox Live instead of having to lug consoles and televisions around. Going from having no Internet multiplayer to developing a completely new online model was a big challenge to tackle all at once, and as a result we had to leave a lot of things undone in order to meet the ship date commitment that we made to our fans."

Synopsis

Setting

Halo 2 takes place in the same science fiction universe as Halo. According to the story, humans have colonized numerous worlds due to the development of faster-than-light travel. Twenty-seven years before the beginning of Halo 2, the outer colony world of Harvest was destroyed by a collection of alien races, called the Covenant. Since then, the humans and Covenant have been locked in a bloody war, with the UNSC forces continually losing major engagements. The Cole Protocol was created in the hope of preventing the Covenant from discovering human population centers, particularly Earth itself. However, shortly before the events of Halo 2, the Master Chief heads to Earth after destroying a Covenant fleet to ward off an impending Covenant attack on humanity's home planet.

Characters

Main article: Characters of Halo

The playable characters are the "Master Chief Spartan-117", one of the few surviving super-soldiers of the SPARTAN-II project; and the Arbiter, a disgraced Elite Commander turned into a holy warrior and serving under the Covenant's Prophets. Throughout much of the story, the Master Chief is assisted by a feminine artificial intelligence construct, Cortana, who resides in a neural implant and is connected to his MJOLNIR battle armor. The Master Chief is also assisted by the Marines of the UNSC ship In Amber Clad and its captain, Commander Miranda Keyes, who is the daughter of Captain Jacob Keyes (captain of the Pillar of Autumn during Halo: Combat Evolved). The Arbiter, meanwhile, is assisted by the varied races of the Covenant and the Special Operations Commander, Rtas 'Vadumee. The Covenant are the story's antagonists, although due to the action shifting between the Master Chief and his Covenant counterpart, the Arbiter, these enemies are sometimes allies. Playing an antagonistic role in the later stages of the game to both sides is the entity called Gravemind, a Flood intelligence of unknown motives.

Plot

The story of Halo 2 is told through in-game dialogue as well as cutscenes; the back-story to the game can be found in the game manual. Taking place shortly after the events of the novel Halo: First Strike, the game opens with the judgment and torture of a former Covenant Elite Commander, who is being punished by his fellow Covenant for failing to stop the destruction of the ringworld Halo by human forces during the events of Halo: Combat Evolved. It is revealed that the Covenant's interest in Halo lies in the religious belief that the activation of Halo would bring about the "Great Journey", which would allow them to follow the ancient Forerunners to the "divine beyond". At the same time as the Elite Commander is tortured and branded with the mark of shame by the Brute Chieftain, Tartarus, a recognition ceremony is held aboard Cairo Station, a MAC (Magnetic Accelerator Cannon) gun platform orbiting Earth for the Master Chief and Sergeant Major A.J. Johnson, who receive an award and a promotion, respectively, for their bravery during the events on Halo, alongside Commander Miranda Keyes, who accepts a similar award on behalf of her deceased father.

Shortly after the commencement of the ceremony, a Covenant fleet jumps out of slipspace near Earth. The Covenant proceeds to send boarding parties towards a battle cluster of MAC stations. These boarding parties are secretly carrying explosives designed to take out the MAC guns that protect Earth from attack. After repelling the initial Covenant assault, the Master Chief locates and disarms the Covenant explosives with the help of Cortana, while the flagship of the Covenant fleet speeds past Earth's defenses and heads toward Earth itself. The Chief and Cortana join Commander Keyes' ship In Amber Clad, which is en route to New Mombasa to deal with the Covenant flagship.

Meanwhile, the disgraced Covenant commander has been given a chance to redeem himself as the "Blade of the Prophets", the Arbiter. His first mission is to silence a group of heretics who doubt the Prophets' teachings, in turn starting the Arbiter along a path which ultimately results in him doubting his own beliefs about Halo.

Before reaching New Mombasa, Cortana decodes transmissions revealing that the flagship they are after carries the High Prophet of Regret, an important figure in the Covenant leadership. The UNSC successfully repels the Covenant invasion force spread through the city, and the Covenant ship begins preparations for an emergency slipspace departure to an unknown destination. As Regret's ship disappears through the Slipspace portal, Keyes thrusts her ship after it, just before the portal closes and destroys the city with a massive shockwave. On the other side of the portal, they discover a second Halo installation (dubbed "Delta Halo"). Despite the Covenant's own ideas about the rings, the Chief and the crew of the In Amber Clad know that the rings are actually weapons that if activated would wipe out all life in the galaxy. The Master Chief goes to the ring's surface to take down the Prophet of Regret while Keyes and Johnson attempt to secure the Index, an object the Covenant is after which can be used to activate the Halo array. The Chief succeeds in killing Regret, but is then attacked by a Covenant fleet and eventually captured by a mysterious tentacled creature.

Seeds of discord are further sown within the Covenant when the Prophets decide to grant the Brutes the job of protecting the Prophets instead of the traditionally favored Elites. The Prophets of Truth and Mercy send the Arbiter to retrieve the Index on Delta Halo. The Arbiter manages to obtain the Index before the humans do, but he is then betrayed by Tartarus, who reveals that the Prophets ordered him to kill the Arbiter. He takes the Index and shoots the Arbiter down into a hole in Delta Halo's library.

File:Halo2cutscene masterchief a.jpg

The Arbiter (left) and the Master Chief, the game's protagonists, in the tentacles of Gravemind.

The Master Chief and the Arbiter meet upon the release of the Flood, a race of parasitic creatures, from Delta Halo. A mysterious and intelligent Flood creature called the Gravemind has captured them both and teleports the Arbiter and the Chief to separate locations in an attempt to find the Index and prevent the High Prophets from activating Delta Halo. The Arbiter is sent to an area on Delta Halo just outside the ring's activation center. There, the Arbiter discovers that the Brutes have massacred many of the Elites and most of the ruling Elite Councilors, betraying the Elites by the order of the Prophets. Having finally realized the truth about Halo and the Covenant, the Arbiter rallies his surviving fellow Elites and leads an uprising against the Brutes. Meanwhile, the Master Chief finds himself aboard the Covenant Holy City High Charity, a gargantuan mobile space station that serves as the Covenant capital city, and pursues the remaining Prophets. During his mission, he finds himself in the middle of the erupting Covenant civil war between the Brutes and the Elites. After capturing In Amber Clad, the Flood, led by Gravemind, arrive at the city and begin to consume and infect the populace. The Prophet of Mercy is killed by the Flood, leaving only one remaining Prophet, Truth, who escapes on a Forerunner vessel hidden in the core of High Charity. The Master Chief stows away on board while Cortana stays behind in order to detonate the In Amber Clad's engine reactors to destroy Delta Halo and High Charity in case Tartarus activates the ring. Tartarus does indeed activate the ring, but the Arbiter, with the help of fellow Elites, Sgt. Johnson, and Cmdr. Keyes, manage to stop the firing sequence. However, the unexpected shutdown causes the ring to send a signal out to all the other remaining Halos, sending them all into a dangerous "standby" mode so they can be remotely activated from the Ark. Meanwhile, the Forerunner ship that the Master Chief has stowed away on approaches Earth. The remaining orbital forces are in the middle of another battle with Covenant ships. On Cairo Station, Lord Hood contacts the Chief and asks what he is doing aboard the Forerunner ship. He replies, "Sir, finishing this fight.", ending the game with an abrupt cliffhanger and setting the tone for Halo 3.

Soundtrack

Main article: Halo 2 Original Soundtrack

The Halo 2 soundtrack was composed primarily by Martin O'Donnell and his musical partner Michael Salvatori, the team that had previously composed the critically-acclaimed music of Halo. O'Donnell noted in composing the music for Halo 2 that "Making a sequel is never a simple proposition. You want to make everything that was cool even better, and leave out all the stuff that was weak." O'Donnell made sure that no part of the game would be completely silent, noting "Ambient sound is one of the main ways to immerse people psychologically. A dark room is spooky, but add a creaking floorboard and rats skittering in the walls and it becomes really creepy. " Halo 2, unlike its predecessor, was mixed to take full advantage of Dolby 5.1 Digital surround sound.

In the summer of 2004, Producer Nile Rodgers and O’Donnell decided to release the music from Halo 2 on two separate CDs; the first (Volume One) would contain all the themes present in the game as well as music “inspired" by the game; the second would contain the rest of the music from the game, much of which was incomplete, as the first CD was shipped before the game was released. The first CD was released on November 9, 2004, and featured guitar backing by Steve Vai. Additional tracks included various outside musicians, including Joe Satriani, Incubus, Breaking Benjamin, and Hoobastank. The Halo 2 Original Soundtrack: Volume Two CD, containing the game music organized in suite form, was released on April 25 2006.

Development and release

Halo 2 was officially announced in September 2002 with a cinematic trailer. The trailer was subsequently packaged with later Halo: Combat Evolved DVDs. A real-time gameplay video was shown at E3 2003, which was the first actual gameplay seen by the public; it showcased new features such as dual-wielding and improved graphics. Bungie informed the public on development with weekly Halo 2 development updates which started on January 16, 2004 and ended June 25, 2004; the weekly updates became standard on the Bungie website even after the release of Halo 2. With only a year to go until release, Bungie went into the "mother of all crunches" in order to finish the game. The cliffhanger ending of the game was not originally intended, and resulted from the frenzy to ship on time.

The release of Halo 2 was preceded with numerous promotions, product tie-ins, and movie trailer-like commercials. There was a Halo 2 Celebrity Pre-Release Party at E3 2004, in which a private home was transformed to replicate the world of Halo, complete with camouflaged marines and roaming Cortanas.

In addition to more traditional forms of promotion, Halo 2 was also part of an elaborate Alternate Reality Game project titled "I Love Bees" which cost an estimated one million dollars. This 'game' centered around a hacked website, supposedly a site about beekeeping, where an AI from the future was residing. The project garnered significant attention from sites including Slashdot and Wired News; Wired noted that the game was drawing attention away from the 2004 Presidential Election. The game won an award for creativity at the 5th annual Game Developers Choice Awards and was nominated for a Webby award. On the morning of October 14, 2004, a leak of the French version of the game was posted on the Internet, and circulated widely.

Additional content

Halo 2 Limited Collector's Edition

Contents of the Limited Collector's Edition

The Limited Collector's Edition features the regular edition, but includes several promotional offers, a special cover and a special DVD of the making of Halo 2. The instructional booklet is also written from the Covenant point of view rather than from the UNSC point of view used in the regular edition. Also enclosed is the "Conversations from the Universe" booklet that contains additional information from both the human and the Covenant side of the Halo storyline; transcripts are available online. The game is enclosed in an aluminum case with the Halo 2 logo.

Xbox Live updates

A common complaint regarding Halo 2's online play has been the widespread cheating, which began occurring almost immediately after 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.

Some players used "standbying" to cheat, in which the player hosting the game intentionally presses the standby button on his or her modem; this results in all players except the cheaters freezing in place. This way, the cheater would be given time to accomplish an objective in the game. "Dummying" involves using an Elite character and a vehicle, exploiting a glitch which would cause a doppelganger of the player to appear. Cheating also includes softmodding, in which a player uses devices such as Action Replay and computer programs to gain unfair advantages, and bridging, which uses computer programs to give a player 'host' status, and therefore the ability to disconnect other players from the game session. A game exploitation called "superbouncing" or "superjumping" is labeled cheating by many in the Xbox Live community, and Bungie employees have described it as cheating when used in Matchmaking. Another group of glitches, which involve the use of certain button combinations, has similarly been described as cheating by both fans and Bungie employees. Halo 2 updates have been used to balance multiplayer and fix bugs, as well as release new maps and content.

Map Packs

Bungie has released several map packs for Halo 2, both over Xbox Live and on game discs. The Multiplayer Map Pack is an expansion pack intended to make Xbox Live content and updates available to offline players, and was released on July 5, 2005. The disk contains the game's automatic update, all nine new multiplayer maps, a documentary about the making of the maps, and a bonus cinematic called "Another Day on the Beach", amongst other features.

On March 30, 2007, Bungie announced that two new maps would be available on April 17, 2007 for US$4. Bungie's own Frank O'Connor confirmed that both Xbox and Xbox 360 users would have access to the content. The two new maps were remakes of maps from the original Halo: Combat Evolved video game. Due to issues with distribution of the maps, the updates which made the maps mandatory was released on May 9, 2007, later than planned. Bungie also reset all ranks for Halo 2 at the same time. On July 7, also known as "Bungie Day", Bungie released the map pack called the "Blastacular Map Pack" for free.

Reception

Reception

Aggregate scores

Aggregator	Score
GameRankings	95% (112 reviews)
Metacritic	95% (91 reviews)

Review scores

Publication	Score
Electronic Gaming Monthly	10/10/10 Platinum Award
Game Informer	10/10
GameSpot	9.4/10 Editor's Choice
GameSpy	5/5
IGN	9.8/10 Best Xbox game of all time #2 Top 25 Xbox Games of All Time

Awards

Publication	Award
	2004 Game Critics Awards: Best Console Game
	2005 Game Developers Choice Awards: Excellence in Audio
	2005 Interactive Achievement Awards: Console Game of the Year, Sound Design

The first official release of Halo 2 was in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United States on November 9, 2004. Anticipation for the game was high; three weeks before this release, a record 1.5 million copies had already been pre-ordered. Massive lines formed at midnight releases of the game; the event garnered significant media attention. This was followed by releases on November 10 2004 in France and other European countries, and November 11 in the UK. The game sold 2.4 million copies and earned up to US$125 million in its first 24 hours on store shelves, thus out-grossing the film Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest as the highest grossing release in entertainment history. The game sold 260,000 units in the United Kingdom in its first week, making it the third fastest-selling title of all time in the UK. On June 20, 2006, Xbox.com reported that more than a half-billion games of Halo 2 have been played on Xbox Live since its debut. As of May 9, 2006, Halo 2 is the best-selling first-generation Xbox game with 8 million copies sold worldwide. As of September 25 2007, Halo 2 is the fifth best-selling video game in the United States with 6.3 million copies sold, according to the NPD Group. From the day of its initial release and up until mid-November 2006, Halo 2 was the most popular video game on Xbox Live, even after the release of the Xbox 360; its position was eventually surpassed in 2006 by the 360-exclusive Gears of War. Halo and Halo 2 are still some of the most played games for the Xbox console.

Critical response

Generally, the game was positively received; many reviewers praised the audio for being especially vivid. Multiplayer especially was noted in being the best on Xbox Live at the time. Game Informer, along with numerous other publications, rated it higher than Halo: Combat Evolved, citing enhanced multiplayer and less repetitive gameplay, however on one occasion Halo 2 was beaten by its predecessor in IGN's Top 25 Xbox Games of All Time where Halo: Combat Evolved secured #1 with Halo 2 following in #2. Halo 2 received multiple awards, including Best Console game and Best Sound Design from the Interactive Achievement Awards. Most critics noted that Halo 2 stuck with the formula that made its predecessor successful, and was alternatively praised and faulted for this decision. Edge noted in its review, “It's fitting that we're able to steal a line from the script to sum everything up. No spoilers here, just an epitaph, from the moment Cortana turns to Master Chief and says this: ‘It’s not a new plan. But we know it’ll work.' " According to Xbox.com, the game has received more than 38 individual awards.

The game's campaign mode has received some criticism for being too short, in addition to some dissatisfaction with the abrupt, cliffhanger ending that sets up the sequel, Halo 3. GameSpot noted that the story switching between the Covenant and Human factions made the plot more intricate, but distracted the player from Earth's survival and the main point of the game. There is also some criticism of the game's on-the-fly streaming and level of detail adjustment, which can sometimes result in textures loading erroneously and "popping in" when the camera changes in cutscenes. Bungie has stated that this issue has been fixed for Halo 3 and the Windows Vista port.

In an interview with Edge magazine in January 2007, Jamie Griesemer, one of Halo's design leads, said that the main reason for Halo 2's shortcomings was a lack of "polish" period near the end of the development cycle. Staff member Frank O’Connor admitted the cliffhanger ending was abrupt, noting “we drove off 'Thelma & Louise' style". Nonetheless, in the interview Griesemer promised that they would make Halo 3 a more than worthy successor.

Windows version

File:Halo2 widescreen.jpg

The PC version with fixed widescreen ratio.

See also: List of Games for Windows titles

On February 9, 2006, Nick Baron announced that a version of Halo 2 would be released on PC, but exclusively for the Windows Vista operating system (though this limitation can be removed by a patch). The game was ported by a small team at Microsoft Game Studios (codenamed Hired Gun) who worked closely with Bungie Studios.

Halo 2 for Windows was originally scheduled for release on May 8, 2007, but the release was pushed back to May 29. This delay was apparently due to the insertion of nudity into the game via a "content error". Microsoft will be offering patches to remove the nude content and is revising the boxes to reflect this. The nudity was a photograph of a male mooning (presumably of a Microsoft or Bungie employee) which appeared as a ".ass" error when using the map editor in Halo 2 for Windows Vista.

External links

• Bungie's Official Halo 2 site
• Xbox.com's Official Halo 2 site
• Halopedia Article:Halo 2
• halowiki.net Multiplayer Wiki
• Halo 2 reviews at Metacritic
• Halo 2 at MobyGames