[Ten]

New Halo 2 multiplayer stuff released yesterday and today at E3 in LA. :O

I made a tiny 9.5 MB video package just for you Halo freaks, click here.

There is an 8 minute direct feed video as well, but it - like the videos I'm hosting are Insider only. You'll see it around eventually, the clips are taken from the larger video.

[Ten]

What an IGN writer had to say about it:

May 10, 2004 - It is great. That's right. It is great, it is awesome, it is a whole lot better than the already stellar original Halo multiplayer. I played for an hour recently -- one map, one mode, a whole lot of Bungie employees. It is great. Before getting into the meat of this meat-a-licious hands-on, I figured the record should be set straight: Halo 2 multiplayer is gonna own you all on November 9.

Last year at its pre-E3 press conference, Microsoft unveiled an eight-minute demo of Halo 2 single-player. We didn't play it, but boy did we want to. This year, Microsoft changed things up, showing off multiplayer for the most anticipated game of the year. While everyone else in the theatre -- we're talking hundreds of people -- sat in awe, hoping desperately for a chance to play, I was sitting comfortably, my only desire to play it again. That's because earlier myself, Fran Mirabella III (a noted Nintendo whore), and two GameSpy editors spent an hour playing the game with the folks from Bungie. There was a good five minutes where I was staring at the menu screen, waiting to go in. It was like sitting in a roller coaster waiting for it to start moving -- you know what's coming is gonna rock, you just want it to get started already. Then we played for an hour. That hour was a reminder of why I love my job, why I love games, and why I'm so happy that what my mother told me about my youthful "activities" and blindness weren't true at all.
For Halo 2 multiplayer, Bungie wanted to focus on the social aspects of gaming. That means you can expect full use of Xbox Live 3.0, but in ways no one else has yet conceived. While those details have not yet been revealed, most of our questions about standard Live 3.0 fare was met with "Oh, we're doing something infinitely cooler." For those who truly want to sit on a couch with a buddy, split-screen and System Link will still be there. The new addition, of course, is Live play. Though no number has been finalized, a recent internal Alpha test had 16 players going at it online. So that would likely be a base, with possibly an increase in the limit to boot.

The four of us (whom I will nickname KillHil, FrancisCube, Sluggo, and "That Other Guy"), played a single map called Zanzabar, located in Africa in the year 2552. The outer human colonies have fallen and the Covenant are making their move to conquer Earth. Though Zanzabar is not a part of the single-player game, it is connected somehow through the story (Bungie's pretty secretive, so the how's of it are unknown). Zanabar's edges are well-defined. There's a beach on one end and a crumbling, decommissioned reactor station at the other. It's a medium-sized map, but the perfect size for four-on-four Capture the Flag.

This time out, Capture the Flag is a bit different. There's one flag, located in the heart of the facility. One team protects the flag, the other spawns on the beach, with a Warthog and two Ghosts at their disposal, and tries to break in, snatch the flag, and return it to their spawn point. Each round lasts three minutes and if time runs out before the offense can retrieve and return the flag, the round ends with no points given. Sides switch, so that those trying to get the flag last time are now trying to defend it. Play goes until one team earns three points. Sounds simple and it is, but the level design is so good on Zanzabar that there are tons of strategic elements that surface after just a few rounds of play.

Before getting into the subtleties of the map, let's talk about control. Anyone who's played Halo will have no troubles with picking the sequel up and owning right off the bat. The game feels like a natural extension of the original, with exactly the right tweaks and improvements. I wasn't certain of how much better Halo 2 multiplayer was compared to the first, so afterwards a few IGN editors got together to play the original and man, it's hard to believe how much tighter, smarter, and more impressive the new map is compared to some of the classics.

There are some new tricks to learn, however. Remember the single-player demo from last year? Everything cool in that is in the multiplayer. Dual-wielding is easy. With one single-handed gun in tow (an SMG, for example), stand over another single-handed weapon (like the Needler). You can hold X to switch weapons, as usual, but you can do dual-wielding by holding Y. It's that simple. With two guns in hand, you can't throw grenades or perform melee attacks (both a vital part of my game), but you can shoot two friggin' guns at once, so it balances out. The Left Trigger fires the gun in your left hand and the Right Trigger does the same for the one in your right hand. Squeeze both and you'll get dual fire. The trick is, your aim becomes total crap when firing two guns and the recoil will force your aim upwards until you stop shooting. Sucks, sure, but start at the feet of a fleeing foe and they'll be dead before you ever get up to their noggin.
Yeah, I should get on to some of the other aspects of multiplayer, but you know what, how often do I get to be the first person to devote a lot of words to dual-wielding. This is gonna be the cool thing to do. Fran's take is to use all his grenades, then go for a second weapon, but I found that when you have the chance, take a second weapon. You can reload them as if you were using a single gun and you can put one away by pressing Y. Dual-wielding will be a favorite of meatheads who love to run in and shoot everything in sight without any hope of using skill, but it's also a choice for skilled players. After all, you don't have to fire them both at the same time and there are advantages to firing an energy weapon instead of an SMG, so with one in each hand, you have the choice of which to shoot.

Speaking of Covenant weapons, there were only two for this demo. The Needler, which was a cool-looking but suck-ass weapon in the first Halo has been tweaked. It now actually has some muscle behind it and is as effective as an SMG. The other weapon is one that will make melee combat much more effective than ever before. The Elite's Plasma Sword can be used by Master Chief and his cloned crew or by the Elite's themselves. Oh yeah, you can play as Elite's in multiplayer, but don't worry, I will get to that soon enough. There's so much to get to, so lets stay focused on the weapons.

The Plasma Sword is not easy to get to. See, the maps in Halo 2 feature interactive elements. There are two interactive pieces in Zanzabar. The first is a gate, which opens into the compound to allow vehicles direct access to the flag. Problem is, the switch to lift the gate is on the second floor inside the complex, where all of the opposition spawns. The enemy will almost always send someone to guard the switch, if not, they are stupid, as getting the gate up is quite important. If you have the flag, you can't use a weapon, but you can hop into the passenger seat of a Warthog. And once you have the hog, you can be gone.

The other point, perhaps the more important one from a "holy sh*$ I want to play with that!" standpoint, is the maneuvering it takes to get the Plasma Sword. The Sword can be clearly seen after passing under the massive sea wall and into the courtyard of the facility. Perched inside a console in the center of a massive rotating wheel, many people will never even realize how to get to this gem. Describing it is a bit tough, but essentially, you need to find a small opening, drop down, move through, wait for the lift to appear, go up, shoot a lynchpin that drops a bridge, cross the bridge and grab the Sword. It's easy once you know how, but it's not easy to learn how.

With the Plasma Sword in hand, you have a normal attack with the Right Trigger and one of the new lock-on attacks. A few of the weapons, including the Plasma Sword and the Rocket Launcher have a new lock-on feature. Keep an enemy in your reticule for a few seconds and the reticule turns a more solid red. Fire the Rocket Launcher at this point and it will track the enemy, making it a lot easier to nail fleeing enemies from a high spot (and the fortress you defend has several sniper points). Lock-on with the Plasma Sword and you'll do very cool lunging attack that covers a decent amount of ground and is a surefire instant kill. Plus, it's fun.
The map had a variety of weapons (SMG, Sniper Rifle, Assault Gun, Mounted Machinegun, Rocket Launcher, Needler, Shotgun, Frag Grenade, Sticky Grenade). Notable omissions were a flamethrower (sorry!) and the single-shot pistol, which was easily the deadliest weapon in multiplayer from the original game. That's not to say those won't be included, in fact, there are numerous other weapons yet to be unveiled, but those remain to be seen. Each has some visual and slight game tweaks and all of them felt better, especially the Needler. The shotgun is only effective up close, but at close range it's pretty deadly.

My favorite weapon quickly became the mounted machinegun, which is positioned on one of the balconies overlooking the courtyard. What's cool is that you can go onto one balcony and grab the Rocket Launcher, then jump to the other balcony (just barely) and hop onto the Mounted Machinegun. It's just like in last year's single-player demo. An easy to use mounted gun that is just an absolutely blast to rip people with. But it's not often you can use it for long, because the offense knows that that's a trouble spot and will often blow up the balcony before it can be used (or, worse for a defender, when it's being used).

The balconies can be destroyed, the walls can be shot away, everything is destructible. You mock the images released by Bungie? You're a sucker. I've seen it with my own eyes, the walls degrade in different ways almost every battle. Sometimes the support columns inside the facility are untouched and other times you'll see them whittled down to a sliver. If there's any doubt they are being shot at, you can hear bullets whiz past your ear and yes, you can hear the ricochet off the wall. If you destroy the support walls it does not bring down the building, I'm sorry to say, but then that would also pretty much end the game since you wouldn't be able to get the flag. Bungie wants to make it cool, but wants every game to still be functional.

More impressive than the environmental damage is the fact that the vehicles are now fully modeled in every possible area. You can shoot the hubcaps off of the Warthog or destroy the bumper -- even the engine in modeled. At one point, one of the Bungie gang was fleeing on a Warthog with the flag. I lit him up with the Rocket Launcher and blew him sky high. Parts went everywhere. I switch to my SMG and shoot at the tire, rolling it down a hill. Bad ass? What do you think?

Vehicles also feature slightly tighter control. I'm sorry, but as cool as the Warthog might have been in the first Halo the first few hours driving it seemed worthy of a CHP "Red Asphalt" video. It was fun, but it was not as functional as it could have been. It is now. And the Warthog also has a rocket launcher, making it much more effective in Zanzabar.

Fran and I eventually locked onto a strategy (originally suggested by Bungie's own Pete Parsons). When starting on the beach (and therefore needing to bust into the facility and steal the flag) I hopped in the gunner seat and Fran went about driving. Okay, so maybe having a woman drive was a bad idea, but eventually we got it down pat. Once we hit the entrance through the stone seawall, I had to aim to the right and try and take out anyone who might be manning the Rocket Launcher on the balcony. Then we go left and as we do so, I destroy the Mounted Machinegun, just in case. Meanwhile our other two buddies are inside trying to get the gate open. Once they do, we let them come out and we stand our ground and waste any enemies that come outside. It's quite effective so long as none of them get hold of a Ghost.

The Ghost, like the Warthog, has a brand new feature. By holding down the Left Trigger you get an infinite speed boost. This is good in that you can travel very fast, but control is for crap going at such speeds and you can't attack. Using the speed burst intelligently is the way to go, so when Fran and I hit the courtyard in the Warthog, he punches it if we start taking fire from the mounted machinegun. The control is better know and it seems a lot more logical when vehicles run you over. I was smacked many times and crushed against walls, but never was there a moment when it felt unfair. All of my smackdowns were justified. Why? Because I was doing my damndest to try out the new boarding feature.
I told you that everything in the single-player demo that was cool was, in fact, in the multiplayer demo. Boarding is a bit more simplistic for multiplayer. In the single-player, you press X to hop on, then you can do different attacks to take out your enemy, but in multiplayer it's just a one-button action, which serves for the faster pace. It is not easy to do, because you really need to be near a vehicle without getting rammed or without having it zip by before you can hit X. A good strategy is to have on person distract the driver with frontal fire, while you sneak up behind and do your bid'ness. There are two animations, one for a frontal board and one for a rear board and every single time I did one (err, once) or had it done to me (err, a lot), it was one of the cooler things I experienced on any Xbox game. I can't wait to do that to some sucker on Xbox Live.

I should mention, before hopping off of the topic of vehicles, that they have two levels of destruction. The first basically toasts the vehicle, making it basically worthless. It smokes and electricity sparks. If you're driving and this happens while you have your energy shield up, you'll be temporarily KO'd and will slump against the dash. If your shield is down, you die and respawn a few seconds later. The second level forces the vehicle to vibrate violently before exploding in mini-nuke fashion, killing everyone within about a ten foot radius. KaBOOM.

As I said a bit ago, we played the entire game as Elite. From what I could tell, there wasn't anything but a cosmetic difference between playing as an Elite or as Master Chief. No special vision, no secret attack, just the cool look of it. Though we were red team, the other blue, there are plenty of other colors. In fact, there will be fully customizable colors, though it's unclear if that means you can create war paint or anything like that or if you can simply choose from a hundred different shades of pink. One thing you can definitely create on your own are the symbols that appear above your head during play. Yes, you will have your clan colors, but individuals can create their own symbols, sort of like flags, that appear above a player's head above their name in multiplayer. Now people can know you not only in name, but in symbol. Should be cool and may have some extra functionality yet to be revealed.


Because the Elites and Master Chief have no real differences, the game is pretty balanced. And, oddly enough, there are no power-ups in Zanzabar. That doesn't mean they don't exist, but to be honest, I really hope they are gone. Yeah, it was very fun to go camo in Halo, but the experience of Zanzabar was truly about as good as I could possibly have expected and part of that is because those power-ups sort of cheapen the tactics in some ways. Okay, yes, it can be strategic to know where an overshield power-up is and find a shortcut to it, but the hour we played getting our nuts handed to us by Bungie was made all the better because it was based on pure skill. And that meant that when I smoked one of them, it was me and him, even grounds and no-holds-barred with nothing but our skill determining who won out. That's how it should be.

I have to say that if there was one thing I could complain about -- other than the fact that most of our questions were met with cryptic answers -- is that the Elite really has nothing to separate it from Master Chief. Why not some sort of different visual mode or something, to have nothing, well, I had to look at my teammates to make certain we were still Elites when we started a new match.
Visuals are a big part of Halo. The original set the standard with some outstanding textures and a lot of cinematic flare. Most Xbox Live games suffer a little bit graphically and Halo 2 is no different. While the multiplayer looks great, it's a step below what was shown of the single-player at last E3. The textures don't seem quite as robust, the bump-mapping also seems a little toned down, and the lighting isn't particularly spectacular compared to the single-player. Still, there was only one spot with any slowdown (the same spot too, so that's likely something that will be fixed), very minimal aliasing, and a ton of carnage. The graphics are striking, but I honestly forgot all about them five minutes into the game. This thing could look like ass and play great and I wouldn't care. The beauty is just a bonus.

Compared to the original, Zanzabar is worlds ahead in terms of level design and the textures. Seeing walls chunk, being able to have an instant sense of placement on the maps, and having a furious gunbattle without framerate hitches -- oh the joys. Truly, after playing Halo 2 multiplayer, I'm gonna have trouble playing Halo again.

Another boost is the upgrade to sound, which is clear the moment the game starts. While the music and sound from the first was great, everything has been taken up a notch this time out. Like I said, you really can hear bullets ricochet and when a rocket zips overhead you can hear it whoosh past with full Doppler effect. The one thing I wish we could have tried was some voice chat, but since the four of use were only separated by a glass wall from the four rotating Bungie and Microsoft employees, it seemed kind of silly to suggest. Instead, I decided to make the mistake of antagonizing everyone when anything went our way. "I thought you guys had played this game before!" I might have shouted at one point -- I won't confirm this, as it would sully my reputation -- but if I did, I promise I paid for it dearly.

Outlook
Hear me now or hear me later, Halo 2 is looking damn, damn, damn, damn, damn, damn, damn fine. It would take monumental effort for this game to suck, unless, somehow, this is the only map and only game mode that's good. That doesn't seem likely, so if I were you, I'd expect this to be a serious competitor for Game of the Year. The first Halo was woefully low on IGN's list of the Top 100 Games of All Time (somewhere in the low 30s, I believe), but I do have that feeling that Halo 2 would not be so misrepresented on that list. Only time will tell. Until then, I'll be spending my nights dreaming of my one hour with Halo 2, basking in the envy of millions of gamers, and looking forward to the day when I can play the single-player campaign -- I only hope it's online with a buddy.

Expect an interview with Pete Parson on Tuesday and more hands-on impressions from Fran, Doug Perry, and perhaps even Mister Aaron Boulding.

Remember, no matter what else you see or hear or think: It is awesome and it is coming this year.

[[njk]Nopeace4u-DBD]

Halo 2 , its gonna rock! Ive had a reserve stub since 9-30-03...lol
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[Simpleman]

Woo7 November 9 My birthday Happy Birthday to me .
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<eVa>Simpleman-V$=<RIP>

[Speaker's Xeno]

bah now i have to buy xbox instead of stealing my friends(which he just found out i had ) and get both halo and halo2
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[Speaker's Xeno]

OMG i just saw it *drools* need it want it must destroy all who keep it from me
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[YourPowersAreWeakOldMan]

Microsoft X-box devision just got a raging hardon from reading you guy's giddy posts about their Halo2.

I've played the first Halo and have no idea what the fuss is about, I wasn't impressed, guess you have to be passionate about something though.
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[Gamepro65]

[[HALO]MasterChief]

i like all game systems halo2 will be awsome. HL2 will be awsome. it will all be so much fun
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