I promised in my Halo 2 First Impressions entry last week to review the Halo 2 online multiplayer and online experience. Time to deliver.
Last Friday, my friend Brehan hosted a Halo 2 LAN party at his friends house. We had 4 xboxes, 3 TVs and 1 digital projector. We had as many as 9 people playing at once and it was fantastic. Very true to the experience of Halo 1 multiplayer, but it is now even easier to setup and modify game types in a LAN environment. I hope that I can attend some future Halo 2 LAN parties, but with the advent of online Halo 2 multiplayer I'm not sure it will happen.
I have now logged on to play Halo 2 on Xbox Live (the online gaming service) 3 times and I have enjoyed it each time. The ranking system works well, and drives my competitiveness. It also insures that I play against similarly skilled players. I get to play against enough better players that I am definitely improving. The biggest problem is the wait for a new game. The system is pretty slow at finding appropriate game type and players, but Bungie says they are aware of the problem and have a solution.
One thing I have really noticed is how much playing multiplayer Halo reminds me of multiplayer Marathon. If you aren't a current or former Mac gamer or a Bungie fan boy, you probably never heard of Marathon. Marathon was Bungie's first big game. It had a great LAN multiplayer mode that was a lot of fun during college. I can personally blame 1 failed college class and many sleepless nights on this game. Many of my best memories of college revolve around playing Marathon late at night in the school newspaper office.
UPDATE: I mentioned above that Bungie had promised an update to fix the waiting problem. Well wouldn't you know, they released it this morning without me noticing it. Not only does it fix the wait time issue and an annoying bug for people using HDTVs, it also provides a new multiplayer map for everybody!
Posted by Noah Brimhall at November 17, 2004 12:24 PMDid you see episode 43 of Red vs. Blue? It deals with the transition to Halo 2 and has a really cool bit on Marathon. But even watching a still shot of Marathon made me sick.
Posted by: Andy at November 17, 2004 01:20 PMI haven't watched Red vs. Blue since season 2, so I need to catch up.
Posted by: Noah at November 17, 2004 01:53 PMSO over halo 2... i was tired of this game before it was even released. bryan has been forcing me to watch clips and stills and all sorts of stuff for several months now. by the time the game was finally released, i never wanted to hear of it again.
and yet we've already attended at least 3 halo 2 parties.
to try to pry him away from this game, i bought x-men legends for the xbox. i'm not a fan of the xbox in general, or x-men, for that matter. but it combines the two genres that bryan and i enjoy the most. he likes the fighting games like street fighter, and i prefer rpg's like diablo II. it's a pretty good balance for us in that respect. not the best game ever, in terms of graphics, voice acting, or plot line, but it's got the little thought provoking rpg'ness, and sheer button mashing fun. :)
Posted by: Miss Shigatsu at November 17, 2004 05:17 PM