The sequel Halo 2 was already destined for success even before it was released, as publisher Microsoft received more than one and a half million orders for Halo 2 a week before the game's release, which simultaneously proves how much Halo Fans trust this sequel. The sequel to the action game that defined it on Xbox is an absolutely gorgeous, feature-filled game that has excellent graphics to boast about, a campaign with great replayability, and the best, most complete online multiplayer mode in a shooter for this platform to date. Still, it has some notable drawbacks in the form of a disappointing storyline and a short single-player section, but despite this, Halo 2 is still one of the best action games for the Xbox. And Halo 3 arrives three years after the release of Halo 2. The engine used in this game is an enhanced version of its predecessor's engine, and the approaching ten million sales once again proved the success of the Halo series. As to why the original Halo stands out from the crowd of first-person shooters as one of the definitive games of the genre, there are several reasons: first, Halo manages to create an engaging, memorable, and novel sci-fi world. Second, Halo's protagonist, the Master Chief, is successfully portrayed as a great hero. The mysterious Master Chief wins the battle against the Covenant and the Flood, and he succeeds where pure flesh-and-blood humans cannot, which makes him a hero for all time. In the end, the story of the hero is so compelling that, combined with an intense and satisfying gameplay experience, it ultimately contributes to the success of Halo. Halo's gameplay content is nothing short of amazing, seamlessly combining outstanding first-person shooter gameplay with an incredibly fun third-person multiplier perspective and outstanding friendly and enemy AI. The game's subtle innovations - things of great strategic importance, such as energy shields that can be refueled for multiple uses, the ability to carry several weapons at a time, the ability to throw powerful grenades during a shooter, and the option that lets you rush forward for a melee fight - -all set Halo apart from other shooters and influenced later games. Halo's well-balanced multiple difficulty settings, two-player cooperative campaign options, and a full assortment of multiplayer modes also ensured that the game had a large and consistent appeal. All of these factors contributed to the game's success, and as such, they are all present in Halo 2. To a great extent, the sequel takes a " if it ain't broke, leave it alone" view of this gameplay content - everything you loved in Halo is once again in perfect effect. At the same time, Halo 2 adds some well-designed and well-implemented new things to the mix, making for a richer gameplay component and a paradoxical feeling of both newness and familiarity. However, perhaps almost all of the things that were unwelcome in Halo are also present in Halo 2. While Halo is an amazing masterpiece, it still has aspects that are relatively weak. Most notably, many players felt that the game had occasionally repetitive level design, that the structure of the game was roughly the same throughout the trilogy, and that it gradually harmed the game's plot, for example, in the infamous Library level when the Sergeant Major battles the Flood Demon. In addition, while Halo's graphics work very well when the battles are at their most intense, the cinematic screenshots using the 3D engine leave too much to be desired, and they look undeniably rough in comparison to the rest of the game. These shortcomings rear their ugly heads once again in Halo 2, at least during the game's campaign. While the screenshots built into the game engine are much better than those in the first generation, there are still some that are rather brown. In between, the battles themselves are still intense and very dynamic, and it's pertinent to say that it's because of them that the player will replay the same chapters over and over again multiple times, and it gives the player a ton of enjoyment to realize that the friendlies and enemies you're fighting with will never act the same way twice. Perhaps all of the player's attention is focused on the action itself, because Halo 2's action presentation is really on point, and because the game's scenarios often fail to hold the player's attention. The game's level design is quite compelling at times, and you may even find yourself stopping to stare at the buildings and view them, but at other times it can be very monotonous and repetitive, and again, it's easy to get lost. Players will sometimes even wander aimlessly for several minutes not being able to tell which way is forward and which way is backward until they stumble upon an enemy firing at you to find the right way. Basically, the campaigns remain linear and continuous firefights, some of which do give the player a lot of fun with the ability to use multiple weapons or vehicles.
Backstory
Having perfected the technology of space jumping, humanity began to migrate to the many planets between the stars to exploit new space.On April 20, 2525, contact with the distant colony of Harvest was broken. After a failed attempt to re-establish contact, the Colonial Military Administration (CMA) sent a scout ship, the Argo, to investigate. However, once the Argo reached the Bountiful Galaxy, contact with the ship was suddenly lost. The UNSC (United Nations Space Command) quickly dispatched a fleet of one destroyer and two frigates to the planet. Only the Heracles, the fleet's lead flagship, returned to Fountainhead, battle-scarred and with heavy casualties. The ship's commander reported that an alien warship armed with powerful plasma weapons had appeared and had trampled the planet, bloodied the colonies, melted the planet into glass, and destroyed three million people. Since then, the alien race Star Alliance - the Covenant (Covenant) on the invasion of mankind on the prelude, the Covenant people's technology is far better than the Earth, forcing the Earth's military forces to retreat, the most important military base of mankind to the Star Alliance invasion of the Star Alliance, the fleet's legendary captain Keith was at the edge of the galaxy to the far side of the leadership of the cruiser "Autumn". At that time, the legendary captain of the fleet Keith was leading the cruiser "Autumn Pier" and the 28 Spartan-II fighters on board to the core area of the Star Alliance to carry out the mission of kidnapping the Great Prophet, and forced by the Covenant people's attack on the planet ZhiYuan, the majority of Spartan fighters were sent to ZhiYuan to carry out the task of defending the important facilities of the planet, and a number of them unfortunately died in the course of the fight and when they were entering the atmosphere of ZhiYuan. A few of them died during the battle and in the process of entering the Farscape's atmosphere, while a few of them survived. However, the Battle of Farscape was a failure for humanity. In order to avoid capture by the Covenant and the exposure of Earth's position after capture, the captain and his crew were spotted by a Covenant fleet and overtaken as they were preparing to enter the Leap Fault. While in peril, through the Leap Fault, they discover Halo, a giant alien ring world with a diameter of 10,000 kilometers and breathable air. This vast ring of life is inhabited by incredible creatures, strange plants, twisted subterranean lairs, massive mountains, and an endless number of angry alien beings. After the destruction of the human ship, part of the human crew landed on the surface of Halo to begin a war against the Covenant! Players will take on the role of the ultimate warrior in this battle, "Master Chief" (MASTERCHIEF), the game's Master Chief is a series of genetically enhanced warriors after a series of classified military program "Spartan - Ⅱ (SPARTAN II)". The captain is a series of genetically enhanced fighters in the secret military program "Spartan - II (SPARTAN II)" in the game, but also "Autumn Pier" on the only one can be fought on the Spartan warriors, this is what you will be equipped with the top of the human science and technology of the super warrior, he is the last human fight against the covenant man's trust. In the game, you'll be the savior who unravels the secrets of Halo and saves mankind
The Origin of the Ring
The Flood, the rage-filled aliens of Halo, are parasitic organisms that infect and control any intelligent creature that meets the conditions of their hosts. This huge halo ring was created to target the Corpse Brain Worm, on the one hand, to isolate the few Corpse Brain Worms left behind due to research, so as to prevent them from flooding the entire galaxy; on the other hand the Halo is also a weapon against the Corpse Brain Worms, and once activated, stops the spread of the Flood at the cost of wiping out all life (of all sorts of Floods that may be infected) within a certain range. The builder of Halo is an ancient intelligent race, the Forerunner Light (The forerunner)
The Halo trilogy centers around Spartan 117 John, also known as the Master Chief, a hi-tech modified human, and his artificially intelligent comrade-in-arms Cortana (Cortana). Halo 1 was the most popular title on the XBOX and PC, a status that was not ended until the release of Halo 2 in 2004. The final installment of the trilogy, Halo 3 was released in mid-2007, and following Halo 3 was Halo 3: Paratroopers from Hell (ODST), released in late 2008. The newest game in the Halo series that is in the development stage is called Halo: To the Stars (Reach), and the Network Matchmaking Edition demo was released in April 2010, and the full version will be released on September 14, 2010.
Released titles in the Halo series
Halo: War Evolved Release date: January 2001 Platform: XBOX, PC Halo: War Evolved is a first-person shooter. It takes place in the year 2552 AD on a mysterious ring belt called Halo. The story centers around a war between humanity and the Star Covenant and several high-tech alien race nations linked by religion. Two days before the start of the game's story, the Star League sends its main fleet to attack the last of the human colonies, Planet Farsight. The human space fleet was almost completely wiped out, leaving only the Autumn Wind Pier (also known as the Autumn Pier). The Autumn Wind's Pier attempted to lure Star League forces away from the planet via a random hyperspace jump. The ship carries the last of the Spartan warriors (it is later revealed in the novel Halo: The First Strike that several other Spartan warriors still survive) - a group of bioengineered super-soldiers trained under the Spartan II program --Spartan 117 John, the story's protagonist, the Master Sergeant. The ship breaks out of hyperspace near a mysterious ring, which the Star League calls the "Halo". When the trailing Star League fleet hits the Autumn Wind Tunnel hard, Captain Jacob Keyes awakens the Chief Petty Officer and the other Marines in a deep sleep and decides to abandon the ship, handing the Chief Petty Officer the ship's AI, Cortana, to lead the troops into the Halo while he forces the ship to land on the ring. The story unfolds from there. The game*** has 10 levels in which the Sergeant Major must fight side-by-side with Cortana, the AI system that is aboard him, to defeat the Star League and a mysterious creature, the Corpse Brain Worm (Flood) (Domestic Translation: Corpse Brain Worm) and ultimately discover the truth about what's going on in the Halo. Corpse Brain Worms: Corpse Brain Worms are creatures brought by the Forerunners outside the galaxy. Corpse Brain Worms were originally sealed for transmission, but were accidentally opened and spread throughout the Halo. They are an incredibly adaptable, lethal, and reproducing parasite that feeds on almost any sentient being.
Halo: CE Platform: PC Halo: CE is a player-made enhanced version of Halo: Combat Evolved on the PC. It adds some Halo 2 weapons, loadouts and versus maps. Halo: CE allows users to create their own mods by editing the toolkit. This is a player-customized version. BUNGIE believes that the release of Halo 2 has led to a significant decline in the popularity of Halo 1, and so they have decided to share their important tool: the Halo editing kit. Halo: CE doesn't require a CD-ROM and is available directly from the Internet, as legitimate players who already have a serial number for Halo 1 won't have to pay for a serial number for CE.
"Halo 2" Release date: November 9, 2004 Platform: XBOX, PC "Halo 2" is the sequel to "Halo: Combat Evolved". The game*** has 14 levels. Two versions were released: the Standard Edition was shipped in regular XBOX game packaging with just a game disc and manual; the Collector's Edition was packaged in a specially designed metal case, which contained, in addition to the game disc, an accompanying DVD video disc, extra booklets and a slightly different game manual than the Standard Edition (with an added view of the Star League army). The game brought in over $1.2 billion for Microsoft on its first day of sales and became the fastest-selling U.S. media product in sales history. More than 7 million copies have been sold worldwide since its release. A computerized version of Halo 2, developed by Microsoft Game Studios in conjunction with Bungie***, is coming out in 2007, and this version will only run on Windows Vista. In addition to the Master Chief Petty Officer, this episode features a new protagonist, Kamikaze Martyr (The Arbiter), a Star League Elite (elite), who carries out death-defying missions for the Star League, and it is a Star League captain who was dismissed from his post for failing to destroy the human fleet and for the destruction of Halo 04. This is a change in the role of the Star League's treacherous characters. This is a dual story development game, with the story beginning with the Chief Petty Officer returning to Earth a month after he destroyed Halo 04. At the same time, Thel'Vadamee (later known as the Kamikaze Martyr), the captain of the Star League's Ultimate Justice ship responsible for destroying the human race, is dismissed from his post and reviled by the League, but his death sentence is temporarily revoked when the League's leader, the Prophet, understands the whole thing, and he is made a Kamikaze Martyr (The Arbiter), which is actually to make him keep on going on suicide missions until he dies a hero's death. At the time, the Star League forces stationed in the gas mines within the gas planet next to Halo 04 suddenly mutinied, forming a cult and separating themselves from the Star League's religion, and Kamikaze Martyr's first mission was to kill the leader of the cult. In fact, the Pagan had learned from Halo 04's "guides" that the Halo was built for a reason, and that it was a weapon capable of destroying all living things. But when he tried to explain this to Kamikaze, his impatience got him killed. Shortly after the Sergeant Major's return, the Star League invades Earth, but this time sends fewer troops than before; it turns out that they don't realize that Earth is the home of the humans, and are merely trying to find something, so they are quickly repulsed and end up leaving in hyperspace, and the humans follow suit, discovering a new Halo, the Delta, and a new battle begins again. Halo 2 adds several new vehicles and weapons, adds 3 types of enemies to the levels, The Truth of Prophet, Brute and Drone, and enhances the game's AI system, and the game is more realistic in its mechanics and adds the ability to loot vehicles. Unlike its predecessor, Halo 2 can be played over XBOX Live with other players*** fighting together. The original Halo game engine has been rewritten for this game with an improved physics engine, as well as regular mapping and HDR technology for the Halo effect. This game also tracks and evaluates each online online combat match by tracking and evaluating it. In addition to supporting LAN matches like its predecessor, Halo 2 adds a split-screen multiplayer mode that supports XBOX LIVE online matches. ※ Starting April 15, 2010 the online matchmaking server for the XBOX version of Halo 2 is out of service and all XBOX players will not be able to enjoy Halo 2 online matchmaking.
Halo 3 Release date: September 25, 2007 Platform: XBOX360 Halo 3, the final installment of the trilogy, was announced at the 2006 E3 show. The earliest promotional video released depicted the Sergeant Major walking across the desert and seeing a giant device that looks like a space elevator on the island of New Mombasa. As the Sergeant Major walks forward, Cortana says, "I challenge the gods and demons. I am your shield, I am your sharp edge. I know you, and your past and future well. This is the path to the end of the world. (I have defied Gods and Demons.I am your shield, I am your Swords.I know you; your past; your future.This is the way the world ends.)" Cortana is inferred to have been be captured by the Gravemind, the mastermind of the Bugs, as at the end of Halo 2. The Sergeant Major walks to the edge of the cliff and stops, overlooking the Forerunner's work (aka the space elevator) that is surrounded by Star League ships. This sequence takes place roughly 1/3 of the way through the game's flow. This **** is divided into 9 levels and has more bugs than ever before, with the addition of the Ghostface Bugs and 3 new types of bugs. It is worth noting that the previous Star League Elite race allied with the humans after learning the truth about Halo, and their leadership was replaced by the Ghostfacers, which is the reason why Halo 3 specifically mentions about the creation of the Ghostfacers, and restores the original novel's persona. The story is a close follow-up to Halo 2, where the Sergeant Major returns to Earth and meets Kamikaze Martyr, and the two of them have been fighting side by side ever since. The story ends with the Ark, which controls all the Halos, destroyed and the 7 Halos disabled. As humanity begins to rebuild, all of the released Bugs are unable to survive without their leader (the Corpse Brain Beast), and the Star League collapses, Kamikaze becomes the leader of the Elites and returns to his homeworld with another hero, Elites Captain "Half-Mouth" Vatumi. The final animation of the game shows that after the Battle of the Ark, the Master Chief and Kamikaze are at the last minute piloting a chariot onto a battleship and heading back to Earth, but the battleship is accidentally sliced in half as it enters a fault line in space, with the first half of the battleship in which Kamikaze was on board returning to Earth, while the second half of the battleship in which the Master Chief was on board loses its power and arrives at an uncharted planet, floating alone on a gravity-defying world. floating alone in a gravity-defying world. The Chief Petty Officer went into cryo-sleep, apparently, as a way for the game company to lay down a marker for the next installment, Halo 4. Halo 4's battles are likely to take place on this unknown and distant planet.
Halo Wars (This is the only RTS in the Halo series) Release date: February 26, 2009 Platform: XBOX360 Halo Wars is a real-time strategy game. This game takes place 20 years before the story of Halo 1. In the game, the player will lead the entire crew of UNSC's Spirit of Fire to stop the Prophet of Pathos and Kamikaze Martyr from excavating the Forerunner's ruins, and to stop the proliferation of the Bugs and the conspiracy of the Star League Prophet. The CG animation of this work is a major highlight, it abandoned the "Halo" series has always been instant algorithm animation, but with CG beautifully produced marines, elites, the Prophet's model, the picture and its beautiful and detailed. And then a CG animated cutscene was released on PC. Many vehicles not seen in the Halo series appeared in this game, each of which was distinctive and each trooper had its own special ability. Years before Halo Wars was released, Ground Control II: Project Escape had already adopted the setting of one unit with two states and special abilities. It was an inevitable event, and there was no way that the production staff could overturn a well-designed game for the sake of such a "special ability", as the gameplay would have changed dramatically once it was added). In addition to the campaign, the player can choose from three commanders from each of the two races (UNSC and Star League) in the Area Battle Mode, each with their own special units and special abilities. This game is produced by Ensemble Studios, the same studio that developed the Century Empire series. In addition to that, this is Ensemble's last title for Microsoft
Halo 3: Paratroopers from Hell Release Date: September 22, 2009 Platform: Xbox 360 In the second half of 2008, an all-new Halo appeared on gamers' radar. Originally to be announced at the E3 gaming conference, Halo 3: Paratroopers from Hell (formerly known as HALO3: RECON, later changed to HALO3: ODST) has finally been announced, with the Paratroopers from Hell as the protagonists, and is set in the time when the city of New Mombasa was destroyed in Halo 2. The storyline will be based on the protagonist "Rookie" searching for his lost teammates in the dark, star-aligned city of New Mombasa six hours after being airborne, and with the help of the central computer, he will carry out battle sequences related to his lost ODST teammates within the six hours after he has found a clue. This Halo 3 sourcebook features a number of night battle scenes, and the new VISR system gives the gameplay a big boost. Our ODST is not as fragile as we thought, there is no energy shield system in this game, but it uses a hybrid life value design similar to Call of Duty 4 and Halo 1 blood bars: when attacked, the viewpoint will slowly turn red, and when injured to a certain level it will start to reduce the blood bar above the HUD. Injuries can be recovered automatically, while the blood bar can only be recovered with a medkit. This game reduces a lot of carriers. However, there are still the classic Halo vehicles such as the Cat Glaze, Judas Hog, Scorpion, Undead Soul, Ghost, Ghostface Windjammer, and Siren. This game eliminates the two-handed split weapon, because the ODST two-handed control of a M7S microcharger are slightly strenuous, but in Halo 2, Captain Miranda two-handed microcharger strafing Ghostface and the Prophet, which was not taken into account during the design of Halo 3: Paratroopers from Hell, is the ODST not as strong as Miranda, who is a woman? The VISR system is a special Navy tool for ODSTs that brightens the image they see through their helmets several times during the night, and through networking with the city's central control computer, it can outline the basic outline of city buildings and walls in bright yellow, while outlining enemies and friendlies in red and green. This allows the ODST to travel in total darkness. You can also download city maps from the city computer, set target points, and indicate distances, so you'll never get lost again. The plot of this work is mainly sad color, the use of linear plot trigger mode, about the hell of paratroopers rookie ROOKIE in the new Mombasa looking for teammates experience and some of their teammates' memories. In terms of network battles, it supports multiplayer CO-OP to complete seemingly impossible missions with your friends. The graphics have been enhanced with some subtle enhancements, and the model details and texture resolution of ODST have been greatly improved compared to its predecessor. In addition, there is another versus disc for this game, thus revealing the richness of its versus section. Halo 3: Paratroopers from Hell is a great game that Light fans can't afford to miss.
Halo 3: Mythic Release date: September 22, 2009 Halo 3: Mythic, bundled with Halo 3: Paratroopers from Hell, is a multiplayer, networked version of Halo 3, with only pairing and online functionality and no single-player missions. It has all of Halo 3's matchmaking maps built in, including all maps from the Heroic, Legendary, and Mythic map packs, as well as two new maps.
Growth:
When it comes to Halo, you have to start with Marathon, BUNGIE's claim to fame. Starting with two people working from nothing, Bungie is now one of the largest game design studios in the industry.In 1990 college students Alex Seropian and Jason Jones worked together in Jones's basement in Chicago to create games for Apple's Macintosh platform. Their first big hit was Marathon, a first-person shooter. Most shooters at the time, like Doom and Wolfenstein 3D, had little to no plot, and accomplishing a mission was simply a matter of killing your way to the end. Seropian and Jones, however, have incorporated complex plot threads and vivid characters into their games. Marathon and its sequels were also technologically advanced for their time. Through AppleTalk, two players could team up to complete a game in co-op mode, and up to eight players could play against each other in a virtual arena. With the Marathon series and another title, Myth, Bungie had a loyal and hardcore player base. In the late '90s, Bungie's designers began planning a new strategy game that would allow players to take control of an entire army of Star Marines fighting a group of chirpy, cunning aliens. This was accomplished by moving and deploying a large group of combat units on the battlefield at once, while the player's battles resembled a sci-fi version of Risk, a tabletop wargame. But no sooner had work on the project begun than the design team realized they had to go back to the first-person, kill-oriented action game format of Marathon. In the end, they decided that instead of a whole army, the subject of the new game would be a single warrior-the Master Chief-who would be pitted against the Star League (the Covenant, which translates in the novel as " Covenant"), an alien race driven by mysterious religious prophecies. Thus Halo was born. From the earliest days, the folks at Bungie had a mantra that would eventually become the guiding principle for every aspect of the Halo gameplay experience: "30 seconds of fun." ("30 seconds of fun.") The idea is that Halo will repeatedly expose the player to intense battles of about half a minute's length before taking a break; 30 seconds is enough to create a heart-pounding scene of chaos and death. At the same time, each level will include scripted cinematic scenes to drive the plot. It's a balanced strategy that's a lot of fun: in Halo, players won't be bored by overly lengthy narrative animations, and they won't get their fingers numb from aimless combat. In 1999, Bungie made its public debut at the Macworld Expo (translation: Apple's hardware and software show.). The earliest platform for Halo was the Mac) show to demo Halo, causing a stir among fans. Also alarmed were the executives in charge of the gaming business at Microsoft. They were looking for the right hot hit for the upcoming Xbox and Xbox Live networking services. Microsoft acquired Bungie in 2000 for about $50 million; a year later, Halo, which reemerged as a Microsoft console exclusive, became the best must-have game of the year. Halo immediately transformed the Xbox from an awkwardly positioned console to a trusted alternative to the dominant PlayStation 2, and Bill Gates and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer immediately began personally overseeing development of a sequel. The pressure to deliver a sequel nearly broke Bungie, as the original Halo was designed by a team of 10 people. They could sit in the same room, hooking up and shouting, looking at each other's screens to communicate and work on their brilliant ideas. By the time it came time to make Halo 2, the company had swelled to over 60 people. Different groups were created to design the game's various levels, but there was a lot of resistance to this kind of collaboration taking place: the first time the project leads put the pieces together, they realized that the entire story was incomprehensible, and that the game's difficulty was either too difficult or too easy. "The episodic campaign portion of the game was a disaster," studio manager Harold Ryan admits, "We watched a room full of people complaining 'I don't want to play this,' I don't want to do that'." They reversed 80% of their work and started from scratch. But now they have almost almost a year and a half to rebuild the entire game. Good thing Bungie has its own secret weapon. Because gaming had gradually become Microsoft's new focus, the company set up a dedicated lab to do stress-testing on these titles, and Bungie brought in Pagulayan, a recent graduate of the University of Cincinnati with a PhD in experimental psychology, to optimize Halo 2. Pagulayan's team quickly got to work building tools for exporting game data. This data contains the location of each player's death, when and where they fired, sat in a vehicle, killed an enemy, or died. They did weekly tests, analyzing 2,300 hours of game data left behind by 400 players over the course of two months. So on and so forth, they'd find the sticking point - some overpowered alien mutant monster, some lava trap that too many players would accidentally fall into. But the demoralizing time constraints remained, and the lab was too late to figure it all out. Ultimately, Halo 2 becomes an undercomplicated and under-satisfying entry compared to the first generation. In the original, players had three equally powerful attacks: guns, grenades, and elbow strikes-the so-called Golden Triangle, in the words of Bungie's lead game designer Jamie Griesemer. In the words of Jamie Griesemer, Bungie's lead game designer. It's a game of rock, paper, scissors, and a big part of the fun is deciding which strategy will work best in the heat of the moment. But in Halo 2, the designers allowed the player to hold two guns, an overpowering option that virtually eliminates the use of other attacks. And perhaps worst of all, Bungie's development team didn't have time to finish the plot. Halo 2 comes to a grinding halt after the sergeant major claims he's going back to Earth to "finish the fight" with the aliens. Then ...... goes blank. The credits start rolling straight away. While in public, Bungie employees are all glowing and pleased with themselves, in private, they're more than a little embarrassed. "Right at the moment the game was going out the door, everyone realized, holy shit - this isn't what we want." Brian Jarrard, Bungie's head of community relations, recalls. One saving grace allowed Halo 2 to knock all of its rivals out of the ring: multiplayer matches over the Internet. At the time, no console game had fully tapped into the appeal of connected gaming, and Bungie worked with network engineers at Microsoft's Xbox Live service to make networking easier than ever. Within minutes, Halo 2 players could quickly join a "death match"-killing all your opponents before they kill you-or Gather your friends and team up to capture the flag. Taking it up a notch, players can also be automatically paired with players of a similar level, ensuring that they won't be humiliated by some 12-year-old internet addict who spends his days headshotting for fun. Fans flocked to the internet. Halo 2 was once again a console seller: a full two-thirds of the population of the six million members who signed up for the Xbox Live Gold membership service had played Halo.Redmond (translation: home of Microsoft's Seattle headquarters) wept with joy. Online gaming has long been considered a key next step for console game makers, and thanks to Bungie, Microsoft got there first.