Halo 2 - Wikipedia
Bombarded from space, the Chief falls into a lake and is rescued by a mysterious tentacled creature. Regret's death triggers discord among the races of the Covenant, as the Hierarchs have given the Brutes the Elites' traditional job of protecting them in the wake of his death. The Arbiter is sent to find Halo's Index and retrieves it, subduing Johnson and Keyes in the process before being confronted by Tartarus.
He reveals to the Arbiter that the Prophets have ordered the annihilation of the Elites, and sends the Arbiter falling down a deep chasm. The Arbiter is saved by the tentacled creature and meets the Master Chief in the bowels of the installation. The creature, Gravemind , is the leader of the Flood on Installation The Gravemind reveals to the Arbiter that the Great Journey would destroy the Flood, humans, and Covenant altogether, and sends both the Arbiter and Master Chief to different places to stop Halo's activation.
As the parasite overruns the city, the Prophet of Mercy is consumed, and the Prophet of Truth orders Tartarus to take Keyes, Johnson, and Guilty Spark to Halo's control room and activate the ring. The Master Chief follows Truth aboard a Forerunner ship leaving the city; Cortana remains behind to destroy High Charity and Halo if Tartarus succeeds in activating the ring.
The Arbiter is sent to the surface of Halo, where, with the help of Johnson, he confronts Tartarus in Halo's control room. When the Arbiter tries to convince Tartarus that the Prophets have betrayed them both, Tartarus angrily activates the ring, and a battle ensues. Instead of shutting down the ring entirely, a system wide fail-safe protocol is triggered, putting Installation 05 and all the other Halo rings on standby for activation from a remote location, which Guilty Spark refers to as " the Ark ".
The Chief replies, "Sir, finishing this fight. In a post-credits scene , Gravemind is seen arriving on High Charity , where Cortana agrees to answer the Flood Hivemind's questions. Halo had never been planned as a trilogy, but with the critical and commercial success of Combat Evolved , a sequel was expected. Bungie writer and cinematic director Joseph Staten recalled that during Combat Evolved ' s development, Bungie "certainly had strong ideas for extending the story and gameplay experience that we knew we couldn't fit into one game".
The added publisher support for a sequel allowed greater leeway and the ability to return to more ambitious ideas lost during Combat Evolved ' s development. An important feature for Halo 2 was multiplayer. Multiplayer in Combat Evolved was accomplished via System Link , and only came together weeks before the game was released. Most players never played large maps, while a subset greatly enjoyed player action via four networked consoles.
That would be something really special, really unique. The story for Halo 2 grew out of all the elements that were not seen in Halo: Jason Jones organized his core ideas for the sequel's story and approached Staten for input. According to Staten, among the elements that did not make it to the finished game was a "horrible scene of betrayal" where Miranda Keyes straps a bomb to the Master Chief's back and throws him into a hole; "Jason was going through a rather difficult breakup at the time and I think that had something to do with it," he said.
Halo 2 was officially announced in September with a cinematic trailer, [31] subsequently packaged with Halo: A real-time gameplay video was shown at E3 , which was the first actual gameplay seen by the public; it showcased new features such as dual-wielding and improved graphics.
Many elements of the trailer, however, were not game-ready; the entire graphics engine used in the footage had to be discarded, and the trailer's environment never appeared in the final game due to limitations on how big the game environments could be. The restructuring of the engine meant that there was no playable build of Halo 2 for nearly a year, and assets and environments produced by art and design teams could not be prototyped. In order to ship the game, Bungie began paring back their ambitions for the single- and multiplayer parts of the game.
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.
Matchmaking Playlist Lineup Update
While this was a deliberate decision by Microsoft to push sales of Vista, the game could be enabled to play on Windows XP through an unauthorized third-party patch. As one of the launch titles of Games for Windows — Live, the game offered Live features not available in the Xbox version, such as guide support and achievements. The Windows port also added two exclusive multiplayer maps and a map editor. Halo 2 for Windows Vista [19] was originally scheduled for release on May 8, , but the release was pushed back to May 31 on the discovery of partial nudity in the game's map editor — a photograph of a man mooning the camera was presented as part of the ".
A common complaint regarding Halo 2 's online play was 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. 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.
Bungie 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, The disk contains the game's software update, all nine new multiplayer maps, a documentary about the making of the maps, and a bonus cinematic called "Another Day on the Beach", among other features.
On March 30, , Bungie announced that two new maps would be available on April 17, Bungie's own Frank O'Connor confirmed that both Xbox and Xbox users would have access to the content. Combat Evolved , "Hang em' High" and "Derelict".
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Bungie also reset all ranks for Halo 2 at the same time. Halo 2 ' s soundtrack was composed primarily by Martin O'Donnell and his musical partner Michael Salvatori , the team that had 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.
A dark room is spooky, but add a creaking floorboard and rats skittering in the walls and it becomes really creepy. In the summer of , 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.
Additional tracks included various outside musicians, including Steve Vai, 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, 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 , 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 on 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 ; [52] Wired noted that the game was drawing attention away from the Presidential Election.
Halo 2 was sold in both a standard and "Limited Collector's Edition". The Collector's Edition features the regular edition and 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. Anticipation for the game was high; three weeks before this release, a record 1. The game sold 2. Dead Man's Chest as the highest grossing release in entertainment history. Halo 2 is the best-selling first-generation Xbox game [10] with 8. As of September 25, , Halo 2 was the fifth best-selling video game in the United States with 6.
Category:Halo 4 playlists
Halo and Halo 2 are still some of the most played games for the Xbox console. Halo 2 has received critical acclaim. On review aggregate site Metacritic , the game has attained overall scores of 95 out of , respectively. Many reviewers praised the audio for being especially vivid. Game Informer , along with numerous other publications, rated it higher than Halo: Combat Evolved , citing enhanced multiplayer and less repetitive gameplay. 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 's review concluded that Halo 2 could be summed up with a line from its script: But we know it'll work. The game's campaign mode received some criticism for being too short, [70] and for featuring an abrupt cliffhanger ending. The Windows version of the game received mixed reviews, with IGN rating it a 7. It received an aggregate score of 72 out of from Metacritic.
Several publications have listed Halo 2 ' s innovative matchmaking technology as one of the turning points in the gaming industry during the s.
A collection of tournament-approved game types from Halo 2 and Halo 3. The Battle Rifle is your primary weapon. Aim for the head! Players have no shields and are equipped with rifles. We'll see you online in just a few days, and are looking forward to hearing your feedback on playlists, map and game type selection, and more, as we'll be updating Matchmaking based on player trends and community feedback - leave us your thoughts in the discuss link below.
Which team is your favorite? As you know, Halo: The Master Chief Collection ships with achievements worth gamerscore. However, your journey through Halo: The Master Chief Collection is an ongoing one, and as part of our day one update, we will be rolling out another 50 achievements worth gamerscore. This site uses cookies for analytics, personalized content and ads. By continuing to browse this site, you agree to this use. MCC review noted, matchmaking has been problematic since the game launched earlier this week.
In the review, which went live on Tuesday, Joystiq's Richard Mitchell described trying to connect to a match as being "a complete crapshoot. Microsoft might surprise us with HoloLens 2 next month. Shareholders ask Amazon to halt sales of facial recognition tech. From around the web.
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