The hype had been building for years. Bungie, creators of the wildly-popular Xbox game Halo, pushed back release date after release date for the sequel. Originally planned to debut around Christmas-time—in 2002—the anticipation surrounding the game just kept growing; people started pre-ordering copies like crazy. When the disc finally went gold in mid-October, and was shipped off for mass production, a release date was finally assured.
And when it came, it came in style. Over 2.38 million copies of the game were ordered, giving it a single-day gross of approximately $120 million; larger than any one-day gross for any blockbuster movie in American history. Fanatics and casual fans alike lined malls at midnight on November 9 to get their mitts on the first set of copies.
Anyone purchasing this game will not be disappointed. This could easily be the single greatest game ever produced. The graphics are sharp, the AI is cunning, and the online multiplayer features are efficient and robust—albeit somewhat random in parts—combining to make this a game that will keep anyone riveted for a very long time.
The original campaign and storyline featured the player as the Master Chief, a cyborg fighting machine, equipped with state-of-the-art fighting technologies to be a one-man wrecking crew. The Master Chief took on Covenant (alien) and Flood (zombie) forces on the mythical ring-world known as Halo, thwarting Covenant attempts to kill him, steal the ring, activate Halo, and destroy much of the universe as we know it. And while he was at it, he killed thousands of enemy soldiers, ships and vehicles, and, of course, destroyed Halo.
No sooner does the Master Chief return to earth and get a small ceremony in his honor, than the Covenant try to stick it to the humans where it hurts—where they live. In a dazzling opening scene that pays homage to Star Wars, among other things, we see a Covenant Senate Meeting, after which a military leader is martyred and the Covenant forces are rallied to attack earth.
The Chief meets new kinds of aliens, all of which are smarter, including flying drones and Elites with jet-packs. These enemies react much more intelligently to the environments, giving players of all skill levels a challenge. Fortunately, the Chief also has a stunning array of new weapons at his disposal—including a human and alien battle rifle, a pseudo-grenade launcher, the Covenant’s deadly energy sword, and (my personal favorite) an alien sniper rifle. Everyone’s favorite—and, according to my roommate, “the sexiest”—construct, Cortana, is back, and our zombie friends, the Flood, make an appearance, too. There are many other twists and surprises in the single player storyline, as well.
In addition to the killing spree and running riot categories from the original game, Halo 2 adds the higher-level renegade and berserker labels.
The multiplayer experience harnesses the power of Xbox Live, and uses a fairly complex ranking system. Players, once signed on to live, can choose a variety of game types. Rumble Pit, which only permits one player per box, is like the original Halo’s slayer, as it randomly chooses maps, from the winding Lockout to the spacious Colossus, and game types, from standard slayer to rockets to swords to oddball. There is also Team Skirmish, which pits teams of four in fast, frenzied skill games, including team slayer, capture the flag, territory control, and bombing runs. There are big team battles and clan play where you can assemble your friends and co-fanatics to take on other teams of warriors.
The ranking system rates players on a scale of 1-50, where 50 is the best. There is a different ranking for each category of multiplayer play. The calculating procedure is rather complicated, but as of Monday, the highest players were only rated a 19. I’m a nine, myself, but the game has me and my Cortana-lusting roommate hopelessly addicted, with no hope for rehab in sight. This is the best game I have ever played on any platform.
