Tag Archives: halo 2

Halo 2′s PC multiplayer severs will remain upon through June at least, 343 Industries’ David Ellis announced on Twitter. The servers had been expected to close this month, but Ellis said the developer is ‘investigating further support options’. Mysterious. Halo 2 released in 2004; Xbox Live multiplayer was discontinued in 2010.

Thanks, CVG.

Microsoft will switch off Halo 2′s PC multiplayer on February 15. The decision comes due to dwindling population numbers accessing the game.

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According to the rumor section in the latest Official Xbox Magazine, a Halo 2: Anniversary Edition is in the works from 343 Industries. “Following the success of remake Halo: Anniversary, 343 Industries has now started development of Halo 2: Anniversary,” reads the rumor blurb per CVG. We’ll send a mail. Currently, 343 is hard at work on finishing up Halo 4 for release in November.

Bungie comms boss Brian Jarrard didn’t have the best experience playing a bit of nostalgic Halo 2 when the game was finally turned off alongside the original Xbox Live in April.

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Ladies and gentlemen, we bring you the sad news that the original Xbox Live is now… still alive?

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Today’s your last full day to get in some Halo 2 multiplayer action: Live for the original Xbox shuts down tomorrow.

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As much as we loved our original Xbox and its Tonka-tough, bullet-deflecting exterior, we jumped ship to the Xbox 360 seconds after it launched.

Some people, though, aren’t so fickle. “Loyal” is what Microsoft’s calling them, and we agree. But Microsoft’s officially declared it curtains for the original Xbox’s Live service on April 15. The console maker isn’t, however, callously bulldozing players’ online homes and leaving them high and dry. So, what’s up for grabs?

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Bungie’s issued a statement on the closing of Xbox Live for original Xbox games, saying it’s “saddened” by the loss.

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Splash Damage head Paul Wedgwood may be an expert at PC FPS, but his experiences of sorting out console control for multi-platformer Brink left him bloodied.

“I went out and played with some of the pro clans, in games like Halo 2 and stuff, and they just kicked my ass,” he said, talking in a VG247 interview. “Absolutely annihilated me.”

He added: “I could see that that skill they had achieved on an analog controller was similar to the skill we’d achieved as mouse-and-keyboard players.”

Splash Damage had to create a proprietary control method for Brink called SMART, in order marry PC, 360 and PS3 interfaces.

“It’s the idea that it’s not on autopilot,” he said. “It’s not 1,000 entities placed telling the game what you can and can’t do.

“It’s just simply a fluid, platformer-style interface that involves real-time traces out across the environment that figure out what you could do if you’re near something.”

Hit the link for the full chat. The game’s out early next year, published by Bethesda.

Bungie’s Brian Jarrard has said that the matchmaking system in Halo 2 caused some concern with some of the team members working on the game, as some weren’t too sure it was the right decision.

“I remember matchmaking, when we rolled that out with Halo 2 it was such a big risk,” Jarrard told OXM. “We walked away from the established norm, there were no server lists – we turned the whole thing upside down and it was a big leap of faith.

“Even internally there were a lot of people saying, ‘I don’t know’. But I think it’s really important that that social simplicity, finding people who are similar skill very quickly, in two button presses.

“Even in the beginning, we were watching it very carefully for backlash. But then, over a couple of months people warmed up to it, and now it’s funny to see it come full circle. In a lot of ways its become one of the new standards for how people expect to play online.”

Via CVG.

Hey Mr. or Ms. Popular, is the inability to have more than 100 Xbox Live friends the only fly buzzing around the delicious cake that is your perfect life? Well, we can’t help you, but we can give you something to blame: Halo 2.

Speaking with a “high level source,” G4 discovered that Halo 2′s still-active community is the main reason you can’t complete preparations for your 101-person online orgy.

Since Halo 2 is an original Xbox game, it adheres to the original Xbox’s technical limits. The exact specifics of why Microsoft can’t just patch the whole darn thing weren’t given, but suffice it to say, they can’t. Otherwise, they’d have already done it.

So that’s that. G4 recommends that you pester Microsoft until they cave and find a way to up the friend count. We think that’s a good idea. So then, get to it!

GameDaily‘s gone back over its 10/10 reviews, finding some of them distinctly lacking.

Not news as such, but an interesting exercise nonetheless. The Call of Duty 3 write-up’s pretty funny.

“Our ridiculous Call of Duty 3 review dares to ask the question, ‘Greatest World War II video game?’ and then follows it up with the erroneous ‘best war game, period.’ We’d love to know how that’s possible with a game that features lame vehicle segments and an unbalanced multiplayer mode that makes it almost impossible for the Germans to win.

Halo 2 doesn’t fare much better.

Much like Call of Duty 3, we still cry over our decision to award Halo 2 a perfect score. The romantic story of a rogue alien and a super soldier with zero personality arguably ruined the franchise, and yet, we felt the need to call it “the mother of all first person shooters” and “a milestone in video game history.”

We’re looking at you. Worth a nose.