Halo 2 Full HD Wallpapers

Description

Development
Halo had never been planned as a trilogy, but with the critical and commercial success of Combat Evolved, a sequel was expected. Bungie writer and cinematic director Joseph Staten recalled that during Combat Evolved's development, Bungie "certainly had strong ideas for extending the story and gameplay experience that we knew we couldn't fit into one game". The added publisher support for a sequel allowed greater leeway and the ability to return to more ambitious ideas lost during Combat Evolved's development.An important feature for Halo 2 was multiplayer. Multiplayer in Combat Evolved was accomplished via System Link, and only came together weeks before the game was released. Most players never played large maps, while a subset greatly enjoyed 16-player action via four networked consoles. "We looked at the small set of fans who were able to do this," said engineering lead Chris Butcher, "and just how much they were enjoying themselves, and asked ourselves if we could bring that to everybody. That would be something really special, really unique."The story for Halo 2 grew out of all the elements that were not seen in Halo: Combat Evolved. Jason Jones organized his core ideas for the sequel's story and approached Staten for input. According to Staten, among the elements that did not make it to the finished game was a "horrible scene of betrayal" where Miranda Keyes straps a bomb to the Master Chief's back and throws him into a hole; "Jason was going through a rather difficult breakup at the time and I think that had something to do with it," he said.Halo 2 was officially announced in September 2002 with a cinematic trailer, subsequently packaged with Halo: Combat Evolved DVDs. A real-time gameplay video was shown at E3 2003, which was the first actual gameplay seen by the public; it showcased new features such as dual-wielding and improved graphics. Many elements of the trailer, however, were not game-ready; the entire graphics engine used in the footage had to be discarded, and the trailer's environment never appeared in the final game due to limitations on how big the game environments could be. The restructuring of the engine meant that there was no playable build of Halo 2 for nearly a year, and assets and environments produced by art and design teams could not be prototyped.In order to ship the game, Bungie began paring back their ambitions for the single- and multiplayer parts of the game. Chris Butcher commented, "For Halo 2 we had our sights set very high on networking. ... Going from having no Internet multiplayer to developing a completely new online model was a big challenge to tackle all at once, and as a result we had to leave a lot of things undone in order to meet the ship date commitment that we made to our fans." With only a year to go until release, Bungie went into the "mother of all crunches" in order to finish the game; in a 2007 interview, Jamie Griesemer, one of Halo's design leads, said that this lack of a "polish" period near the end of the development cycle was the main reason for Halo 2's shortcomings. Butcher retrospectively described Halo 2's multiplayer mode as "a pale shadow of what it could and should have been if we had gotten the timing of our schedule right"; the campaign mode's abrupt cliffhanger ending also resulted from the frenzy to ship on time.


Windows version

On February 9, 2006, Nick Baron announced that a version of Halo 2 would be released on PC, exclusively for the Windows Vista operating system. While this was a deliberate decision by Microsoft to push sales of Vista, the game could be enabled to play on Windows XP through an unauthorized third-party patch. The game was ported by a small team at Microsoft Game Studios 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.Halo 2 for Windows Vista was originally scheduled for release on May 8, 2007, but the release was pushed back to May 31 on the discovery of partial nudity in the game's map editor – a photograph of a man mooning the camera was presented as part of the ".ass" error message. Microsoft offered patches to remove the nude content and revised the box ratings.


Cheating and updates
A common complaint regarding Halo 2's online play was widespread cheating, which began occurring almost immediately after the game's release. Users exploited bugs in the game and vulnerabilities of the network to win ranked games and thus increase their matchmaking rank.Some players used "standbying" to cheat, in which the player hosting the game intentionally presses the standby button on his or her modem; this results in all players except the cheaters freezing in place. This way, the cheater would be given time to accomplish an objective in the game. "Dummying" involves using an Elite character and a vehicle, exploiting a glitch which would cause a doppelganger of the player to appear. Cheating also includes softmodding, in which a player uses devices such as Action Replay and computer programs to gain unfair advantages, and bridging, which uses computer programs to give a player "host" status, and therefore the ability to disconnect other players from the game session. A game exploitation called "superbouncing" or "superjumping" is labeled cheating by many in the Xbox Live community, and Bungie employees have described it as cheating when used in matchmaking. Another exploit called "BXR" allowed players to melee, cancel the animation, and quickly attack for an instant kill; this exploit and many others were removed from the game's sequel.Bungie released several map packs for Halo 2, both over Xbox Live and on game discs. The Multiplayer Map Pack is an expansion pack intended to make Xbox Live content and updates available to offline players, and was released on July 5, 2005. The disk contains the game's software update, all nine new multiplayer maps, a documentary about the making of the maps, and a bonus cinematic called "Another Day on the Beach", among other features.On March 30, 2007, Bungie announced that two new maps would be available on April 17, 2007. Bungie's own Frank O'Connor confirmed that both Xbox and Xbox 360 users would have access to the content. The two new maps were remakes of maps from the original Halo: Combat Evolved, "Hang em' High" and "Derelict". Due to issues with distribution of the maps, the updates which made the maps mandatory was released on May 9, 2007, later than planned. Bungie also reset all ranks for Halo 2 at the same time. On July 7, also known as "Bungie Day", Bungie released the map pack called the "Blastacular Map Pack" for free.


Soundtrack

Halo 2's soundtrack was composed primarily by Martin O'Donnell and his musical partner Michael Salvatori, the team that had composed the critically acclaimed music of Halo. O'Donnell noted in composing the music for Halo 2 that "Making a sequel is never a simple proposition. You want to make everything that was cool even better, and leave out all the stuff that was weak." O'Donnell made sure that no part of the game would be completely silent, noting "Ambient sound is one of the main ways to immerse people psychologically. A dark room is spooky, but add a creaking floorboard and rats skittering in the walls and it becomes really creepy." Halo 2, unlike its predecessor, was mixed to take full advantage of Dolby 5.1 Digital surround sound.In the summer of 2004, producer Nile Rodgers and O'Donnell decided to release the music from Halo 2 on two separate CDs; the first would contain all the themes present in the game as well as music "inspired" by the game; the second would contain the rest of the music from the game, much of which was incomplete, as the first CD was shipped before the game was released. The first CD was released on November 9, 2004, and featured guitar backing by Steve Vai. Additional tracks included various outside musicians, including Steve Vai, Incubus, Breaking Benjamin, and Hoobastank. The Halo 2 Original Soundtrack: Volume Two CD, containing the game music organized in suite form, was released on April 25, 2006.


Release

The release of Halo 2 was preceded with numerous promotions, product tie-ins, and movie trailer-like commercials. There was a Halo 2 Celebrity Pre-Release Party at E3 2004, in which a private home was transformed to replicate the world of Halo, complete with camouflaged Marines and roaming Cortanas.In addition to more traditional forms of promotion, Halo 2 was also part of an elaborate Alternate Reality Game project titled "I Love Bees," which cost an estimated one million dollars. This "game" centered on a hacked website, supposedly a site about beekeeping, where an AI from the future was residing. The project garnered significant attention from sites including Slashdot and Wired News; Wired noted that the game was drawing attention away from the 2004 Presidential Election. The game won an award for creativity at the 5th annual Game Developers Choice Awards and was nominated for a Webby award. On the morning of October 14, 2004, a leak of the French version of the game was posted on the Internet, and circulated widely.Halo 2 was sold in both a standard and "Limited Collector's Edition". The Collector's Edition features the regular edition and includes several promotional offers, a special cover and a special DVD of the making of Halo 2. The instructional booklet is also written from the Covenant point of view rather than from the UNSC point of view used in the regular edition. Also enclosed is the "Conversations from the Universe" booklet that contains additional information from both the human and the Covenant side of the Halo storyline; transcripts are available online. The game is enclosed in an aluminum case with the Halo 2 logo.
The first official release of Halo 2 was in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United States on November 9, 2004. Anticipation for the game was high; three weeks before this release, a record 1.5 million copies had already been pre-ordered. Massive lines formed at midnight releases of the game; the event garnered significant media attention. This was followed by releases on November 10, 2004 in France and other European countries, and November 11 in the UK. The game sold 2.4 million copies and earned up to US$125 million in its first 24 hours on store shelves, thus out-grossing the film Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest as the highest grossing release in entertainment history. The game sold 260,000 units in the United Kingdom in its first week, making it the third fastest-selling title in that territory. It ultimately received a "Double Platinum" sales award from the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association , indicating sales of at least 600,000 copies in the United Kingdom. On June 20, 2006, Xbox.com reported that more than a half-billion games of Halo 2 have been played on Xbox Live since its debut. Halo 2 is the best-selling first-generation Xbox game with 8.46 million copies sold by November 2008. As of September 25, 2007, Halo 2 was the fifth best-selling video game in the United States with 6.3 million copies sold, according to the NPD Group. From the day of its initial release and up until mid-November 2006, Halo 2 was the most popular video game on Xbox Live, even after the release of the Xbox 360; its position was eventually surpassed in 2006 by the 360-exclusive Gears of War. Halo and Halo 2 are still some of the most played games for the Xbox console.


Reception
Halo 2 has received critical acclaim. On review aggregate site Metacritic, the game has attained overall scores of 95 out of 100, respectively. Halo 2 received multiple awards, including Best Console game and Best Sound Design from the Interactive Achievement Awards. According to Xbox.com, the game has received more than 38 individual awards.Many reviewers praised the audio for being especially vivid. Multiplayer especially was noted in being the best on Xbox Live at the time. Game Informer, along with numerous other publications, rated it higher than Halo: Combat Evolved, citing enhanced multiplayer and less repetitive gameplay. Most critics noted that Halo 2 stuck with the formula that made its predecessor successful, and was alternatively praised and faulted for this decision. Edge's review concluded that Halo 2 could be summed up with a line from its script: "It's not a new plan. But we know it'll work."The game's campaign mode received some criticism for being too short, and for featuring an abrupt cliffhanger ending. GameSpot noted that although the story's switching between the Covenant and human factions made the plot more intricate, it distracted the player from Earth's survival and the main point of the game; while Edge labeled the plot "a confusing mess of fan-fiction sci-fi and bemusing Episode-II-style politics. Slotomania™ Vegas Casino Slots
."The Windows version of the game received mixed reviews, with IGN rating it a 7. Deal or No Deal
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. Most criticism was due to the late release date, and the graphics being dated. Word Crossy - A crossword game
. It received an aggregate score of 72 out of 100 from Metacritic.


Legacy
Several publications have listed Halo 2's innovative matchmaking technology as one of the turning points in the gaming industry during the 2000s. Television channel 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". The editors of Popular Mechanics listed Halo 2 as one of the top fifteen events of the decade, crediting the game with bringing online multiplayer to the console masses. The Province's Paul Chapman concurred, writing that games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 would not be as enjoyable to play if not for the ground Halo 2 broke.