Halo 2

aka: Halo 2 Vista
Moby ID: 15499
Xbox Specs
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Description official descriptions

In the sequel to Halo, Spartan-117, better known as the Master Chief, has returned to Earth, where he is promptly needed: despite all precautions taken, the Covenant have discovered the location of humanity's homeworld and are launching their attack. For some reason, however, their fleet is much smaller than expected. To solve this mystery, the Chief must return to the stars, learning more about the mysterious Halo rings and their constructors.

Meanwhile, the Covenant Elite who commanded the fleet at the Halo construct is blamed for the destruction of the ring and branded a heretic. The High Prophets grant him another chance, however: he is made the Arbiter, a special operative for the Prophets, ordered to carry out impossible missions. He will be dealing with dissent and rebellion among the Covenant - a conflict where he might find himself to be on the wrong side.

The player controls both the Chief and the Arbiter in Halo 2, a first-person shooter in the same style as the first game. Its main gameplay characteristics are the same: only two weapons can be carried at a time (leading to a tactical choice as to which are to be taken), instead of a standard health points system there is the recharging energy shield (leading to an emphasis on finding cover during firefights), AI-controlled teammates will fight along with the protagonist, and there are lots of sections involving vehicles.

New features include the ability to double-wield certain weapons, doubling the firing rate at the expense of accuracy, and the ability to execute melee attacks or throw grenades. Part of the weapon arsenal is unchanged from the first game, but there are also some additions. The human projectile weapons are mostly new and include a pistol, shotgun, SMG, and battle rifle. Returning are the sniper rifle and the rocket launcher. The Covenant energy-based weapons (still prone to overheating) from Halo all return, and new additions include several heavy hitters like the Brute Shot and Fuel Rod Gun along with the projectile-based Carbine and the Beam Rifle, both useful for sniping. The Energy Sword is a powerful melee weapon, able to kill most enemies with a single strike.

All vehicles from the original game also return: Warthog jeeps and Scorpion tanks for the Humans, Banshee fliers, Ghost gliders, and Wraith tanks for the Covenant. A new addition is the Covenant Spectre, which with its rear-mounted cannon wielded by a dedicated gunner is comparable to the Warthog. A new player ability concerning vehicles is to board them while in use and either kick off the driver and take over or in the case of heavy tanks, throw in a grenade.

The multiplayer component of the game has been greatly expanded. On the Xbox, Xbox Live is now supported in addition to split-screen and system link. The campaign can be played by two players on split-screen. Competitive game types include Slayer and Team Slayer (standard free-for-all deathmatch), Capture the Flag, Assault (planting a bomb in the enemy base), Territories (controlling sections of a map for a certain amount of time), Oddball (finding a skull on the map and then holding on to it as long as possible) and more. All types have several built-in variants and can also be customized further. Players can choose from Spartan and Covenant Elite skins. The PC version comes with a map editor.

Spellings

  • 光晕2 - Simplified Chinese spelling
  • 最後一戰 2 - Traditional Chinese spelling

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Credits (Xbox version)

182 People (172 developers, 10 thanks) · View all

Project Lead
Executive Producer
Engineering Leads
Design Leads
Art Director
Writer, Director of Cinematics
Composer, Audio Director
Multiplayer & User-Interface Lead
Producers
Test Manager, Producer Bungie.net
Engineering
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 89% (based on 120 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.5 out of 5 (based on 164 ratings with 7 reviews)

The most anticipated game of all time!

The Good
Since this is Halo 2 the game is very, very, well made, such as the graphics engine and will get you well immersed. I like how the soundtrack is done, a very, symphonic music, mostly in a rock kind of way. also the design and game plot is well planned out, their are many features in the game like hijacking vehicles or duel-wielding making you addict on the game for hours. But their is to much stuff in the game for me to explain, overall you NEED TO BUY THIS GAME!!! IT IS THE BEST!!! Oh, and character design can't be ignored, the Master Chief talks more, and even Elites talk! which puts you more in depth, I am finished with the positive side of the game because I don't want to spoil anything for the newbies.

The Bad
The End. End of the Halo story, which is kinda disappointing because their will be no other halo games going to be made! Sorry if I broke your heart. Sorry peeps.

The Bottom Line
Bottom line is the game going to be a big-time award winner, the game is good for new players too because if you play it on easy, it's easy, Overall the best game, graphics, sound, design, the works, this is a must for everyone, especially for the ones who have Xbox Live because Live support is awesome, now this is a mighty game so buy it, gear up Master Chief!

Xbox · by Chase Bowen (35) · 2004

Fantastic but doesn't have the impact of Halo

The Good
Graphically this game is stunning. Back in 2003 when they showed the teaser I thought those were cinematics but they are actually the in game graphics. Its amazing. The duel wielding of the weapons and jacking cars is huge fun. The plot is probably the best ever for a First Person Shooter and the soundtrack is an extremely well done epic style of music. Master Chief has way more lines than before and now the Elites speak English. Speaking of Elites did I mention you PLAY AS ONE!?! Now lets talk multiplayer. I have many fond split screen and Xbox Tunnel Halo multiplayer memories for Halo and now with Halo 2 I can drop the split screen and Gamespy and play on Xbox Live!

The Bad
This game didn't have the impact of the first Halo. When I got Halo I was amazed and just didn't stop playing. With Halo 2 it does amaze me but my first time playing through the Halo campaign was much fun than I had playing through Halo 2 the first time. The levels in this game are insanely long and even on Normal they can be quite hard. One more little thing about Halo 2 is when you select a level you don't see the medal that tells which difficulty you have beaten the game on. That means no more showing off to friends. :(

The Bottom Line
Fantastic, Epic game. The essential for Xbox. If you havn't bought it yet get off your ass and go down to the store and Buy it, BUY IT!!!!

Xbox · by MegaMegaMan (2257) · 2005

Everything you could want and then some

The Good
After waiting for so long being carried along by the hype I started to wonder if I'd be disappointed by the real thing. Well I wasn't, in fact all the hype didn't do the game justice. Playing as Master Chief and as an Elite all in one game means you play two story lines at once running parallel to each other. More enemies, vehicles and weapons make Halo 2 a manic battle from start to end. The multiplayer is amazing, with stats being kept and displayed on the Bungie website for everyone who plays the game online.

The Bad
The lack of Xbox Live! or LAN Co-Op play which was rumoured, but never confirmed didn't appear in the game which would have finished the game off just right.

The Bottom Line
Think of Halo : Combat Evolved. Now think of what was missing from Halo that would have made it even better. That's what Halo 2 is like.

Xbox · by Baza (1877) · 2004

[ View all 7 player reviews ]

Trivia

1001 Video Games

Halo 2 appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Cheats

Since its release in November of 2004 Halo 2 has been plagued with many forms of cheating. It started with gamers discovering that if they pushed the "standby" button on their modem it would allow them to move about the game doing anything while everything else was frozen. Later on the "Dummy Glitch" was discovered where players could turn invisible and capture a flag without the opposing team even knowing. In April 2005 Bungie released a patch that completely got rid of the Dummy Glitch and made it so that using standby was much harder and only a small percentage of modems can still use it to manipulate the game. All seemed well but unfortunately in June 2005 people with Mod Chips in their Xbox found out that because the downloaded content maps were stored on the Xbox hard drive rather than the disc that it was possible to hack them and use special cheats in the game. Examples of these cheats are the "Super bounce", Super speed, Rapid fire, Needlers that act as rockets, auto aim snipers, and many others. Most of these issues were eventually dealt with through patches.

Development

  • The development team included 70 people.
  • Microsoft lawyers forced Bungie Studio to change the name of the alien antagonist because it carried Muslim overtones.
  • Contains 17,000 lines of combat dialog.
  • Just like in the first Halo, Halo 2 also has a weird enemy that's been hidden in the game's code. It's called the Juggernaut and it can only be found using a modchip. It looks much like the Engineers from the first Halo, except it looks more like a flood. It just floats around.

Leaked Copy

On Wednesday, 13 October 2004, a pirated copy of of the game leaked out to the public, and quickly spread on peer-to-peer networks and IRC.

References

  • The hippo heads that appeared on the shotgun shells in the first Halo are visible on the walls in the map "Headlong".
  • The Halo maps "Blood Gulch" and "Battle Creek" return in this game under the new names "Coagulation" and "Beaver Creek".

Sales

  • In the US and Canada alone, 2.4 million copies of the game were sold in the first 24 hours of its release. That averages out to roughly 27 copies a second.
  • Had 1.5 Million preorders before its release, making it an XBox "Platinum Hit" months before it was even released.

Soundtrack

The game's soundtrack includes contributions from legendary guitar legend and G3 member Steve Vai, who performs most guitar riffs in the game and did the main theme. You can find his work in the Halo 2 , Vol. 1 Soundtrack CD, which includes all of the orchestral and incidental music in the game.

Secrets

Right at the end of the game there's a grunt that doesn't do anything, its just like the grunt from the first game except it says: "I wish that food nipple was waiting for me at the starship, cos man have I worked up a big grunty thirst"

Trailer

The largest trailer for this game was released in movie theaters. Near the end of this trailer, the usual www.xbox.com URL is replaced with "www.ilovebees.com" for a moment. If someone goes to the website, they encountered a website which seemed to be under the control of a Halo-type artificial intelligence. This website continues to be changed, telling a multifaceted story which many believe explain how the Covenant find Earth in Halo 2.

Awards

  • 4Players
    • 2004 – Best Console Multiplayer Game of the Year
    • 2007 – #3 Biggest Disappointment of the Year
  • GameSpy
    • 2004 – Game of the Year
    • 2004 – Xbox Game of the Year
    • 2004 – Xbox Shooter of the Year
    • 2004 – Xbox Game of the Year (Readers' Vote)
    • 2004 - Best Use of Xbox Live of the Year
    • 2004 - Best and Worst Ending of the Year (Xbox)
  • Golden Joystick Awards
    • 2004 - Runner up to Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas as Most Wanted Game for Xmas
    • 2004 - Runner up to Sonig the Hedgehog as Ultimate Gaming Hero (for Master Chief)
    • 2005 - Xbox Game of the Year

Information also contributed by ~~, Tiago Jaques, MegaMegaMan, piltdown man and Zovni

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Related Games

Halo 4
Released 2012 on Xbox 360
Halo 3
Released 2007 on Xbox 360
Halo: Reach
Released 2010 on Xbox 360, 2015 on Xbox One
Halo: Combat Evolved
Released 2001 on Xbox, Windows, 2007 on Xbox 360
Halo: Infinite - Campaign
Released 2021 on Windows, Windows Apps, Xbox One
Halo 2: Multiplayer Map Pack
Released 2005 on Xbox
Pixel Force: Halo
Released 2011 on Windows
Halo 3: ODST
Released 2009 on Xbox 360

Related Sites +

  • Bungie.net
    Bungie website. Official home to Halo 2
  • Halo 2 Australia
    The official Australian based website for Halo 2
  • Halo 2 Stats
    Stats including how many games of Halo 2 have been played online and how many players.
  • Halopedia
    A wiki covering all Halo games

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 15499
  • [ Please login / register to view all identifiers ]

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Baza.

Windows added by Terok Nor.

Additional contributors: Kartanym, Unicorn Lynx, Jeanne, Kabushi, Paulus18950, Patrick Bregger, FatherJack.

Game added November 11, 2004. Last modified March 7, 2024.