“Games will feed your stats, but party-based arranged games will not. They know you’re just playing for fun –not for stats- when you’re gaming with your buds. As for the chat system? We have two different types of voice in the game; proximity voice and broadcast voice, Jarrard says. “In team games you have to hold down your white button to talk to all of your teammates. If you don’t use the white button and you just talk, then it’s proximity; so anybody – friend or foe – within earshot can hear you talk.
Finally, parsons belts out, “come on boys, let’s fire it up!” with all the enthusiasm of someone playing the game for the first time.
Instructed to now create a profile and get ready to play, I do so and immediately begin scouring the Halo2 interface for secrets. I find a ton of clan logo’s, and the ability to tying a guest on your live account and play two-player split-screen in online games
IT’S ON
With the pre-assigned gamertag of Bungie22c, my first game is a Team Slayer match on Zanzibar, the one game map I do know. Hitting the beach and hopping into the drivers seat of a chaingun Warthog, I immediately begin focusing on teamplay – and winning – by honking the horn with the right trigger and escorting a pair of teammates through the sea wail, past the windmill, and into enemy territory. I hit Y to switch weapons and find that the pistol is back, and you start with it as a secondary weapon as default. Bungie went on record as saying they know it was too powerful in halo1, and so they’ve toned it down and taken away the ability to fire while zoomed in, as is also the case with the SMG.
Side note: I never noticed at E3 that the glass in the Zanzibar base can be shot and fragments realistically. You have to shoot at the chunks in order to get through it. After the dust settles, my team claims victory, as it will for most of the day.
Time for a new map with the same team. Waterworks is its name, and vehicular mayhem is it’s game. A large subterranean cave with a bottomless pit bisecting the center and bases at opposite ends. Waterworks loads each team up with a Banshee on top of their base, along with a pair of warthogs (Chaingun and Gauss Cannon variants), a Ghost, and a Scorpion Tank just outside in front of it. The latter of which, by the way, has been tuned down, with both its reverent speed and turning speed slowed, and its cannon reduced a bit in potency. The bases consist of two levels, with the flag in a room on the lower level, accessible via a front door and a back door. On the roof upstairs is a stationary gun turret, and up a bit more via a ramp, sits your friend the Banshee. I take a ghost and use it’s left trigger boost function ti zip around the map, quickly getting it’s basic layout down. After having my covenant speeder destroyed – with me still on it – I respawn and head in search of the Banshee. The Banshee, similar to the aircraft in Crimson Skies, can perform special aerial maneuvers. Pressing left on the thumbstick executes a barrel roll to the left, Right and A rolls right. And down and A sends the Banshee knocking upward. And like it’s Halo1 PC cousin, the Banshee in Halo2 can lob plasma mortars with a press of the B button.
Next up is Team Slayer on Ivory Tower, a two-level arena-like indoor map with a sunny, central atrium of death, and a lot of weapon variety. Everything is here, including a single covenant energy sword in the center of the atrium, and a covenant sniper rifle tucked appealingly on a high walkway. We first revealed the particle beam rifle back in our June 2004 cover story, and in practise it’s as awesome as you’d expect. It can zoom and fire as rapidly as the human sniper rifle. The alien version overheats after four successive rounds, just as the human ones require reloading after four shots.
The highlight of this match was running through the middle area, dual wielding a needler and an SMG, using the former to bring down my enemies’ shields, and the latter to kill them.
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