Xbox Halo 2 News

News From Lik Sang

Easily Xbox's most anticipated game, Halo 2 is the sequel to Halo - the best-selling Xbox game to date.

Halo, the original has sold more than 4 million copies worldwide, with over ½ a million of those just last Christmas season alone, and now the sequel is confirmed to arrive later this year.

Pushing the Xbox hardware to its very limits and utilizing Xbox Live in a way that Bungie believes will redefine online play, "Halo 2" will expand on everything that made the original game great. At its heart a compelling and captivating story, "Halo 2" makes revolutionary advances in design and technology.

Super solider Master Chief and his AI computer clone of a human, Cortana, are taking on the Covenant once again, but this time the battlefield is planet Earth. A quick run down of reported Halo 2 features include Xbox Live with new multiplayer games like Assault mode, having teams plant bombs at enemy camps, new weapons, including the ability to hold two different weapons at once, new vehicles, including flying units in multiplayer, new enemies, partly destructible environments, a whole new graphics engine, and much more already spilling out of E3 2004. Vehicles for example are totally destructible, and get harder to drive the more damaged they are, and multiplayer matches have been spiced up by letting players choose between master chief or a covenant alien. The Warthog has also been upgraded to include a rocket-launcher on-board.

While many of us have been frustrated with the wait, it’s important to remember the original Halo was so rushed that some parts weren’t even designed to be in the final game. “The Library” level is a great example, which was originally created just for Bungie’s testers. Well they are taking their sweet time with Halo 2 to ensure that everything aspect of the game is perfect before Halo 2 releases in early November.

No doubt this weeks E3 expo will blow the lid off a lot more, and bring anticipation for Halo 2 to an explosive point. Even at our offices, we are already planning a special LAN party for the release night!