Halo 2
Halo 2 is a 2004 first-person shooter game developed by Bungie and published by Microsoft Game Studios for the Xbox console. Halo 2 is the second installment in the Halo franchise and the sequel to 2001's critically acclaimed Halo: Combat Evolved. The game features new weapons, enemies, and vehicles, another player character, and shipped with online multiplayer via Microsoft's Xbox Live service. In Halo 2's story mode, the player assumes the roles of the human Master Chief and alien Arbiter in a 26th-century conflict between the United Nations Space Command, the genocidal Covenant, and later, the parasitic Flood.
This article is about the video game. For the Nine Inch Nails album that uses this pseudonym, see Pretty Hate Machine.Halo 2
After the success of Halo: Combat Evolved, a sequel was expected and highly anticipated. Bungie found inspiration in plot points and gameplay elements that had been left out of their first game, including online multiplayer. A troubled development and time constraints forced cuts to the scope of the game, including the wholesale removal of a more ambitious multiplayer mode, and necessitated a cliffhanger ending to the game's campaign mode. Among Halo 2's marketing was an early alternate reality game called "I Love Bees" that involved players solving real-world puzzles. Bungie supported the game after release with new multiplayer maps and updates to address cheating and glitches. The game was followed by a sequel, Halo 3, in September 2007.
Halo 2 was a commercial and critical success and is often listed as one of the greatest video games of all time. The game became the most popular title on Xbox Live, holding that rank until the release of Gears of War for the Xbox 360 nearly two years later. Halo 2 is the best-selling first-generation Xbox game, with more than 8 million copies sold worldwide. The game received critical acclaim, with the multiplayer lauded; in comparison, the campaign and its cliffhanger ending was divisive. The game's online component was highly influential and cemented many features as standard in future games and online services, including matchmaking, lobbies, and clans. Halo 2's marketing heralded the beginnings of video games as blockbuster media. A port of the game for Windows Vista was released in 2007, followed by a high-definition remake as part of Halo: The Master Chief Collection in 2014.
Post-release
Updates and DLC
Halo 2's multiplayer suffered from widespread cheating on release. Some players used "standbying" or "lag killing" to cheat, where the player hosting the game intentionally pressed the standby button on his or her modem. This resulted in all other players freezing in place and allowed the cheater to kill other players or capture objectives.[84]: 115 Another exploit called "BXR" allowed players to cancel melee animations and quickly attack for an instant kill.[85] Rather than rely solely on user reports of misbehavior, Bungie leveraged its game statistics collection to proactively find cheating players, creating an automated banning system.[86]
Bungie released several map packs for Halo 2, adding new environments for multiplayer matches.[86] The Multiplayer Map Pack, released July 5, 2005, made Xbox Live content and updates available to offline players. The disc contains the game's software update, nine new multiplayer maps, a making-of documentary, and a bonus cinematic called "Another Day on the Beach", among other features.[87] The Blastacular Map Pack contained two additional maps and released April 2007.[88][89] On July 7 Bungie made the Blastacular Map Pack free.[90]
Halo 2 was one of the Xbox games that was backwards-compatible on the Xbox 360. On the newer console, the game runs at high-definition 720p with scene-wide anti-aliasing.[91] The online services of the Halo 2 were discontinued alongside other original Xbox console games in 2010.[92]
Ports and rereleases
In February 2006, Microsoft announced a PC port of Halo 2, exclusively for the Windows Vista operating system. Like the Xbox version, the release of Halo 2 Vista was repeatedly delayed.[93][94] The May 22, 2007, release date was pushed to May 31 after the discovery of partial nudity in the game's map editor—a photograph of Charlie Gough, one of the Lead Engineers, mooning Steve Ballmer during his visit to the studio, was presented as part of the ".ass" error message.[95][96] Microsoft offered patches to remove the nude content and revised the box ratings.[97] The game could be enabled to play on Windows XP through an unauthorized third-party patch.[98] Halo 2 Vista was ported by a small team at Microsoft Game Studios (codenamed Hired Gun) who worked closely with Bungie. 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.[99]
In January 2013, a blog post on Halo Waypoint indicated that online services for Halo 2 for Windows Vista would shut down on February 15, 2013. This date was pushed back multiple times, and the servers finally ceased operations in 2015.[100]
A high-definition remaster of Halo 2 titled Halo 2 Anniversary was released as part of Halo: The Master Chief Collection on November 11, 2014, for the Xbox One,[101] later being released on PC for Steam and Windows Store.[102]
Legacy
Halo 2's release was part of a shift towards blockbuster gaming releases. In 2004, the video game industry was estimated to gross $7.76 billion in the United States, behind the $9.4 billion gross of the domestic box office.[51] Halo 2's success was seen by the press as evidence of a generational shift in entertainment. The CBC's Greg Bolton remarked that prior to Halo 2's splashy release, "the video-game industry hadn’t yet found a recognizable public face, a universally acclaimed megastar."[51] The Ringer called Halo 2 "the birth of the video game as we know it today: a mass shared experience," and credited it with birthing modern multiplayer infrastructure and popularizing American esports.[15]
Halo 2's matchmaking technology was one of the turning points in the gaming industry during the 2000s, setting a new standard for other games.[15][103][104][105] G4's Sterling McGarvey wrote that "Bungie's sequel was a shot in the arm for Xbox Live subscriptions and previewed many of the features that would set the standard for Microsoft's online service on the next machine".[106] Critics credited the game with bringing online multiplayer to the console masses,[107] and as serving as Xbox Live's killer app.[108] The Province's Paul Chapman wrote that games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 would not be enjoyable if not for the ground Halo 2 broke.[109]