halo

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,[1] holding that rank until the release of Gears of War for the Xbox 360 nearly two years later.[2] 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;[3] by May 9, 2007, this number had risen to more than five million unique players on Xbox Live.[4] As of May 9, 2006, 8 million units of the game have been sold worldwide,[5][6] with 6.3 million of those units being sold in the United States alone.[7] As of September 25, 2007, Halo 2 is the fifth best-selling video game in the US[7] and is the best-selling first-generation Xbox game worldwide.[6]
The game features a new game engine, 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.[8] 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.[9] 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 June 1, 2007 in North America.[10] 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.
Halo 2Halo 2 is a story-driven action-shooter game with a first-person perspective.[11] 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, health regenerates quickly when the player is not taking damage.[9]
Halo 2 features more than fourteen human and alien weapons, many new to the series.[9] 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.[9] 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.[9] 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.

[edit] 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.[12]
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.[13]

[edit] 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.[9] 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.[9] 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.

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.[9] 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.[11]
Technical lead designer, Chris Butcher, commented on the development of Halo 2's multiplayer in Edge, a British gaming magazine, in January 2007.[14] 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."[15]

[edit] Synopsis

[edit] Setting
Main article: Halo universe
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.[9] 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.[8] 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.[16]

[edit] Characters
Main article: List of Halo series characters
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.[17] 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[18] (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.

[edit] 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 during the events of Halo: Combat Evolved. This is juxtaposed with the recognition ceremony of the humans Master Chief and Sergeant Major A.J. Johnson receiving awards aboard Cairo Station, a MAC (Magnetic Accelerator Cannon) gun platform orbiting Earth, alongside Commander Miranda Keyes.[18] It is revealed that the Covenant's interest in Halo lies in the 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".[19]
Soon after the commencement of Master Chief's 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.[20] Master Chief finds and disarms a bomb located on Cairo Station with the help of Cortana, while the flagship of the Covenant fleet speeds past Earth's defenses and heads toward Earth itself. Master Chief and Cortana join the UNSC ship In Amber Clad, which is en route to New Mombasa to deal with the Covenant flagship.
Before reaching New Mombasa, Cortana decodes transmissions revealing that the flagship carries the High Prophet of Regret, an important Covenant figure. The UNSC successfully repels the Covenant invasion force with the help of Master Chief, and the Covenant ship begins preparations for a slipspace jump to an unknown destination. The ship makes the jump, and the city is destroyed in the shockwave. To avoid destruction, In Amber Clad follows and discovers a second Halo installation dubbed "Delta Halo". Despite the Covenant's own ideas about the rings, Master Chief and the crew of the Amber Clad know that the rings are actually weapons that if activated would wreak devastation on a galactic scale. Master Chief is sent to kill the High Prophet of Regret while Keyes attempts to secure the Index to prevent the activation of Delta Halo.[21]
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 heretic who doubts the Prophets' teachings, in turn starting the Arbiter along a path which ultimately results in him doubting his own beliefs about Halo. 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. During his missions, The Arbiter finally realizes the danger that the rings represent.[22]

The Arbiter (left) and 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 Flood creature called the Gravemind sends the Arbiter and Master Chief in separate directions to prevent The High Prophets from activating Delta Halo.[23] Master Chief finds himself aboard the Covenant Holy City High Charity, a gargantuan space station, and pursues the remaining Prophets. During his mission, he finds himself in the middle of an 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 only remaining High Prophet, Truth, 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 if the Brute Tartarus activates the ring.[24] Tartarus does indeed activate ring, but the Arbiter with the help of fellow Elites, Avery Johnson, and Keyes, manage to stop the firing. However, the unexpected shutdown causes the ring to send a signal out to the other remaining Halos, sending them all into a "standby" mode so they can be remotely activated from the Ark.[25] Meanwhile, the Forerunner ship that Master Chief has stowed away on approaches Earth. One of Earth's remaining orbital forces contacts him 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

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