- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
I am not sure if this has been mentioned in any previous forms of media before, but I have found things that have struck my attention while reading an article about MLG (with some new in-game MP pics). The text in bold is the things I believe are new information:
Alright now for the good stuff, Halo2. I will try and give as many details that may have been left out of other reviews, stuff that is more useful then just knowing that there is dual wielding or you can board vehicles.
When we first got there, we got a very brief run-through of the game. Basically it was me and Anakin running around on the beach testing out the weapons. First gun I looked for, was the battle rifle of course, because I was interested to see how it compares to the pistol in Halo1. So I pick it up, and tell Anakin to hold still while I zoom in and shoot. !, 2, 3…..8 shots to kill! At this point, I am thinking to myself, oh man what did they do, because anyone that plays Halo1 a lot, knows how much of the game revolves around the pistol and the ability to kill someone in 3 shots. After that, we had about 1 minute left and kinda just messed around. We left that first five minute demo, thinking that Bungie had made some major mistakes, and we were worried about how fun Halo2 might be...
Picture 1
About an hour passed, and we were invited back up to the hotel room for a 3 hour lan battle with 10 xbox and 1 player per xbox. This time around the game felt SO much better. Instead of just running around 1v1 on the beach, we were now playing 5v5 CTF on Zanzibar, the map you all have seen from the E3 videos. It took us only a few minutes to learn the basics of the stage and where most of the guns were. In comparison, Zanzibar is a mid sized CTF map, the size might be compared to damnation but with outdoor elements that add a lot more things you can do. One team would start off on the beach, and the other in the base, your goal being either to attack or defend your flag. Some of the first things we noticed was how similar the feel is to Halo1. All of the original aiming is still in tact, if you are comfortable with Halo1, and can shoot well, then you will shoot just as well right off the bat in Halo2. We quickly realized that out of the playable weapons, the battle rifle is definitely the best and most useful gun. Some of the specifics that you might not have read about in other places are as follows: Battle Rifle shoots 3 shot bursts unzoomed, 3 of these series of bursts in the head, will kill the enemy. With zoom, the battle rifle takes 8 shots to kill, which seems like a lot. However, unlike in Halo1, you can shoot the battle rifle very quickly, whereas the pistol had an optimal speed which was pretty slow, the faster you click the trigger, the faster the battle rifle shoots, enabling you to get off 8 shots really quickly.
Next was the sniper, again people that were good snipers in Halo1, will be great snipers in Halo2. I felt it was easier for some reason to get headshots. The zoom now is 5x and 10x instead of 2x and 10x.
The SMG was the starting weapon with the settings we played on, Bungie said you can completely customize starting equipment, but it so happened that the SMG was the begin weapon when we tried it. Unlike Halo1, the assault rifle actually kills people in a reasonable amount of time and is useful throughout the enemy base. Dual wielding is even better since u completely dominate the guy with 2 SMG’s.
The Melee is Halo2 is Much quicker then Halo1. The graphics weren’t completed on the version we tried, meaning it didn’t quite look smooth when you chop, but the actual chop itself is a lot quicker, and you wait until you are closer to the enemy to click the melee button. Another cool thing about Halo2, is that different weapons have different levels of damage from melee, the sword is the most damaging of course, and one of those burst attacks kills you instantly.
Picture 2
Other things we noticed about the game are the new shield system. Basically, the health meter is gone now; all you have is a shield. If your shield gets depleted, one more shot to the head will kill you. What’s new however, is that if you hide after your shield is depleted, it returns and it means that you once again have “full health” and take a full number of shots to die again. There are no health packs, and it potentially means you can stay alive a lot longer.
Also a big change is the spawn system. If you play Halo a lot, you know how frustrating it can be to get spawn killed over and over, you also know how useful it is to spawn kill the other team, and I personally really like that part of the game. This however is changed up in Halo2. Lots of times I would kill a few enemy and be standing at a point where I could see the main spawn spot of the other team, but every time I would be waiting they would never spawn there. It seems as if Bungie has put in some kind of a system to randomly spawn teammates away from the enemy if they are surrounding the base. This will change up the way teams play CTF bigtime.
Picture 3
The icon system is also very useful. Each of your teammates has an icon over their head that lets you know a little bit about what’s going on. Blinking red means your teammate is currently in combat, a red X means they are dead, and you can also tell which guy has the flag and where he is. All these things are extremely useful especially in big games when you might not be able to keep track of what the announcer is saying.
In addition to those gameplay upgrades, the graphics are also completely amazing, there was NO noticeable lag or delay in a 10 box game, and it features the ability for a client box to continue hosting if the original host drops out. There will also be full live support with clans supported, and tons of new features they haven’t even mentioned. All in all, it was Awesome getting a chance to try out all these games, meet some of the guys like Sketch Factor from Bungie who is cool as hell. Thanks to Sundance and all the MLG crew for having me, and get ready for nov. 9th cuz it’s going to change the way we all play games and it’s going to redefine MLG.
Picture 4
The site I took this from is here.
[Edited on 8/7/2004 8:42:09 PM]