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"