Halo 2 Beta Love -- Page 2
- September 10, 2004 09:24 AM PST
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In many Live games the first player to setup the game hosts. In Halo 2, the game automatically chooses a host based on the player with the best connection, however that choice is not fixed. If a host drops out of the game, the host will switch on-the-fly to another machine allowing for a seamless gameplay experience. In order to play with your friends you must form a ?party? and then move from game to game as a whole. The idea sounds a bit weird when it is explained -- Bungie said to think of it as a group of friends gathering around a TV -- but it works quite well in practice. We wouldn?t be surprised if other developers start copying this implementation.
Up to 16 players can join in a match, with up to four of those players playing on the same Xbox via split-screen and one Live account. The beta build was limited to two, but Bungie assured us that the four-player play would make it into the final build. This is great news for roommates and friends who want to play together instead of trying to setup remote matches.
Choosing a Game Type
Only three game types were available in the beta build: Assault, Capture the Flag and Slayer. Assault places two teams onto the map and has them attempting to blow up each other?s base with a time bomb. Variations on this mode allow for team specific bombs or a single neutral bomb that can be used by anyone. Capture the Flag is the traditional CTF gameplay that everyone knows and loves while Slayer is Deathmatch in all its glory.
A number of different game variables can be set before the match in order to customize play. If you want everyone to be limited to shotguns, so be it. Another game type (that was quite popular among the journalists at the event) was Swords and ?Nades. In this mode all players were limited to grenades and the Covenant Energy Sword. While the grenades were great for laying down cover, the one-hit-kill Energy Sword attack ensured that nearly the whole match was played very up close and personal.
Customization options in the matched games are severely limited when compared to the arranged games and for good reason -- in order to ensure fairness, game specifics will be chosen by the computer from a pre-approved Bungie list. This list can be swapped out at any time and Bungie has the ability to implement tournaments or special ?theme? days on-the-fly. If certain game configurations are extremely unpopular with players they will be removed from the list.
Bungie has designed the ranking system so that players who are well-rounded will excel and not masters of a specific mode. This means that just because someone can dominate, say, Slayer games with Swords and ?Nades enabled does not mean that they will be number one. A player who isn?t quite as good at that one mode, but can also play all of the other modes well will end up higher in the rankings.
Viewing the current rankings will be done at a special website setup by Bungie. Players will be able to view all of their individual statistics as well as checking out the overall stats on their competition.
