Halo (video game series) The gaming world was rocked when Halo: Combat Evolved hit shelves. It revolutionized the FPS genre on the console and was the driving force behind the success of the Xbox. With it's cutting edge graphics, tremendous AI, brilliant storyline, and enthralling gameplay it set the new standard by which all games since have been judged. Years later it is still one of the most popular games around with a huge loyal fan base whose thirst for Halo seems unquenchable.
At X02 in 2002, Bungie and Microsoft made the announcement the world had been waiting for. A sequel to Halo was coming to Xbox. The masses rejoiced. The press entered a feeding frenzy. The fans waited anxiously for the trailer to go online, and when it did, they waited for days to get to the top of the queue for download. A new era of gaming was coming, Again. With a multitude of new features, abilities, enemies, weapons, and more fans were salivating to get their hands on it. On Nov 9th the wait was over.
Taking full advantage of Xbox LIVE, Halo 2 is an interactive experience unprecedented on a console. With a beefed up multi-player, new moves, dual-wield weapons, and 16 player action through XBox LIVE, Halo 2 is one of the most popular games of all time
Features and Innovations
Graphics and Physics
One of Halo’s greatest accomplishments, realistic graphics that continue to impress nearly three years later, has been overhauled. Featuring cutting-edge bumpmapping, physics, and an all-new lighting engine, Halo 2 stands in a class of it's own. The Bungie team has taken full advantage of the medium, allowing themselves to make this part of the Halo saga more sharp and astounding, while actually managing to use less pixels.
Combat
Halo 2 brings an arsenal of new weapons, vehicles and enemies to the table. New Covenant opponents include the rhino-ape Brutes, the floating space-popes, the Prophets and the insect-like Drones that makes you wish your MJOLNIR armour was insect repellent. The aliens are also packing a range of ships never before seen. The greatly improved AI will drop onto terra firma from the Shadow, a new Covenant “bus”. They will drive the Spectre, an extra-terrestrial Warthog-like hovercraft, and man the plasma turret on the back. They will launch attacks from enormous artillery, and even larger vehicles, Phantoms. This time around, all the dropships are destructable.
But the Master Chief isn’t defenseless. Bungie is providing the player with his own armory, with Battle Rifles, sub-machine guns, and stationary turrets. For travel, there is a new Warthog with a gauss-cannon. And we can of course not forget the ever-popular ability to board any enemy vehicle. But this is just singleplayer. Of course, hundreds of thousands of Master Chief's are battling eachother online over Xbox Live.
Multiplayer
Halo 2 takes it's multi-player action to new heights with the use of Xbox Live. Halo: Combat Evolved was designed with only LAN in mind. Thanks to programs like Gamespy Arcade's tunnel system the original was able to be played online but never as well as it should have been. Halo 2's multi-player on the other hand was designed with online play in mind. Live incorporation provides users with less lag, more opponents, bigger games, and a ranking system which creates a lot of interest and (friendly) competition.
In A Nutshell Halo 2 is definately the most popular console game in history and continues Xbox's rise to the head of the pack in the "console-war".