Halo 2 's marketing heralded the beginnings of video games as blockbuster media. The game's online component was highly influential and cemented many features as standard in future games and online services, including matchmaking, lobbies, and clans. The game received critical acclaim, with the multiplayer lauded in comparison, the campaign and its cliffhanger ending was divisive. Halo 2 is the best-selling first-generation Xbox game, with more than 8 million copies sold worldwide. The game became the most popular title on Xbox Live, holding that rank until the release of Gears of War for the Xbox 360 nearly two years later. Halo 2 was a commercial and critical success and is often listed as one of the greatest video games of all time. The game was followed by a sequel, Halo 3, in September 2007. Bungie supported the game after release with new multiplayer maps and updates to address cheating and glitches.

Among Halo 2 's marketing was an early alternate reality game called ' I Love Bees' that involved players solving real-world puzzles. A troubled development and time constraints forced cuts to the scope of the game, including the wholesale removal of a more ambitious multiplayer mode, and necessitated a cliffhanger ending to the game's campaign mode. Bungie found inspiration in plot points and gameplay elements that had been left out of their first game, including online multiplayer. In Halo 2 's story mode, the player assumes the roles of the human Master Chief and alien Arbiter in a 26th-century conflict between the United Nations Space Command, the genocidal Covenant, and the parasitic Flood.Īfter the success of Halo: Combat Evolved, a sequel was expected and highly anticipated. The game features new weapons, enemies, and vehicles, another player character, and shipped with online multiplayer via Microsoft's Xbox Live service. Halo 2 is the second installment in the Halo franchise and the sequel to 2001's critically acclaimed Halo: Combat Evolved. Halo 2 is a 2004 first-person shooter game developed by Bungie and published by Microsoft Game Studios for the Xbox console.

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