Halo 2. The Legend Continues

"Halo...it's finished" - Cortana CTN 0452-9
"No. I think we're just getting started" - John 117, The Master Chief

**This Recap Contains Spoilers

The Master Chief wasn't wrong when he uttered those words in the haunting final scene of Halo: Combat Evolved as him and Cortana drifted off into space, seemingly the only survivors of the Pillar of Autumn and The Covenant armada that pursued them. Almost three years later the Chief would return to action as humanity's best weapon against the covenant in the sequel to Combat Evolved, Halo 2.

The game came as little surprise to people. Most successful games are usually followed up by sequels and other ways to milk the franchise, however as his was only Bungies second game in the Halo series I guess I could let it slide.

The story of Halo was expanded upon a lot in this game taking the player beyond the role as not only the Master Chief but as a disgraced

Elite Commander whose fleet was destroyed by the Master Chief at the end of Halo: Combat Evolved. The opening cut scene is rather impressive and lets the player gain a feel for the hierarchy of the covenant. The highest authority being "The Prophets" a chair bound race who claim to know the way to the Covenants ultimate goal, "The Great Journey". Following down the order of command the player can see tension between the Prophets and The Elites, suggesting that the main armed force and the best fighting unit in the Covenant could break off. Regardless of this for The Arbiters failure he is stripped

of his rank and branded with a mark of shame burned into his flesh. Parallel to this The Master Chief and Sergeant Avery Johnson, survivors of the Halo Ring, are being awarded and celebrated back on Earth as heroes for destroying a Covenant Armada. During the ceremony Cortana, returning from the first game, detects hostile targets near the planet and an all out race is on to destroy the Covenant ships before they can relay the position of Earth back to their superiors. From their the story follows both The Master Chief as he takes on the Covenant and is informed of more sinister intentions than just that of a religious space movement and The Arbiter who learns of that the "Great Journey" is all a lie and will ultimately condemn the universe to death if the Covenant go through with their plans.

The game-play of the series remains relatively unchanged from Combat Evolved. The Chief now sports new combat armor, "Mark VI" which allows him to have faster charging energy shields than the previous system. Bungie also removed the health meter from the Heads Up Display of the player, meaning that when the shields were down the player could only take a few hits before death, a feature which annoyed many fans of the series.

The physics of the game were improved vastly. Bodies of fallen enemies now were moveable when struck by melee attacks and movable items in the world such as ammo boxes, and crates behaved very realistically for the time.

Bungie also added The Arbiter, a disgraced Elite commander, into the story mode. Levels would switch between the perspective of him and The Master Chief until they met in the clutches of a large Flood creature, who return as main antagonists once again, before being forced to work together to stop the Halo rings from destroying the life in the galaxy. The Arbiter could do all the things that the Chief could do, although The Arbiters armor came equipped with a temporary camouflage power which could be used to sneak past or ambush groups of enemies.

The Chief, and The Arbiter, were also able to use a feature called "duel wielding". This allowed the player to take on two one handed weapons at once and fire them in unison, this spawned the combination dubbed "the noob combo" of the Plasma Pistol and SMG. This feature did carry over to online play too.

The multiplayer feature did make a return, however unlike Halo 1, Halo 2 was now given dedicated servers on the Xbox version which could host the same game types as the original such as slayer and juggernaut but take them online without needing to have the PC variant.

Despite the significant graphic improvements and gameplay features, such as better handling on vehicles and hilarious easter eggs (search Halo 2 Scarab Gun) The game is often considered the least popular of the series due to its confusing perspective and initial reactions to the new species in the Covenant known as Brutes. While Halo 2 was still a good game Bungie ended it on a cliffhanger, meaning players would need to wait a further three years before being able to "Finish the Fight"

Halo: Combat Evolved. The Beginning of an Era

Way back in 2001 when the original Xbox was being launched a studio with plans of world domination were about to release the start of their biggest game series.

Released as a launch title with the Xbox, Halo offered incredibly immersive game play for a game of its time giving gamers a wide amount of variety to choose from when it came to completing levels.

While some levels in the game were reminiscent of tightly knit corridor shooter sections from the DOOM series which satisfied some players, it was its large environments outside these sections which featured amazing vehicle options including tanks, armed jeeps and piloting enemy aircraft to rain hell down on the enemy it gave players a large degree of choice when playing. This doesn't even include the weapon variety and an enemyA.I which made players think on their feet.

The game took away the percent based health and armor system which many games in the past had used and replaced with a recharging shield bar and health icons which depleted when the shield was lost and the player took hits. This system proved preferable by players over its predecessors as it allowed players to regain their protection if lost rather than needing to stumble around a level with 1 percent health looking for a med-kit and cowering in fear of any enemy. This is what gave us an amazing gaming experience, and that's just the single player campaign.

The story focuses on the human resistance against a collection of alien races named "The Covenant", with the game taking place on this large ring shaped structure in space, dubbed "Halo". The story follows the main character, The Master Chief, a SPARTAN super-soldier and who is considered one of humanity's best chances for victory against this threat. Along the way the player discovers many twists and turns in the story and realizing that there are bigger threats than just the Covenant.

Halo offered player a competitive multi-player experience which, for its time, was new and wowed many players. Large maps made players choose their positions carefully and a variety of weapons, vehicles and game modes including capture the flag, making players work in teams to capture the enemy flag and Juggernaut, making one player super strong and forcing the other players to bring them down together kept players entertained for many hours a day.

Amazing game-play complimented the beautiful graphics, a wonderfully composed orchestral soundtrack and the intuitive story all combined into the experience of Halo, the universe of which has been expanded on many times since 2001.
The game was one of the most successful on the Xbox and is one of the best selling games of all time. It has been ported onto the PC and Xbox 360 in both its original form and a remade for its tenth anniversary in 2011 with a new graphic engine but still the same game-play, although this was developed by 343 Industries.

Bungie would eventually follow up the game with Halo 2 which we will be looking at in the next post.

Welcome

Hello and Welcome to my blog. As you can probably tell from the title this blog will be focusing on the Halo game series. With the popular series finished by its original creator Bungie it looks like the developers 343 Industries will be taking over the reigns and starting an entirely new trilogy of games for the series.

This Blog will feature a run down of all the games in the Halo series and we will also be taking a look into the future with what we can expect with Halo 4-6. I hope that this will give you an insight into the Halo series and maybe help understand it a little better and for all of those who haven't yet played any of the games maybe influence you to do so.

First post will be Halo: Combat Evolved. The Beginning of an Era