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Do the Dew - and Halo 2Mountain Dew held a contest - take pictures involving you, your friends, Mountain Dew, and Halo, and win a trip to Bungie Headquarters to play Halo 2. On July 28, we saw a writeup from one of the winning crews - today, we bring you the writeup of BDaiber, another winner. An update might be coming in the future. (This information, minus the pictures, was originally posted on the Bungie.net forums.
Update 1.So, details on Halo 2... where to begin. Before I get to the game, I'll talk about the event. We met the other team from California in the lobby. After that, we saw the E3 walkthrough of all the new features. Then we all had to go to a makeup artist, and get all done up. This was around 12:30. We started playing right after the makeup went on. Then they took about 2 1/2 hours of pictures with different setups. There was plenty of playing and messing around during and between pictures. The Xbox offices were badass; trophies all over, Halo kiosks everywhere, foosball, couches, and crazy halo 2 stuff (including a lifesize master chief sporting 2 SMGs). We met a bunch of different people from Bungie, Microsoft and Mountain Dew. Everyone there was wicked nice. We were set up on 6 45"-50" (give or take) high def plasmas with Bose surround sound. Giant bean bag chairs and couches to sit on. After all the photos, we ended up playing non stop for about 3 hours. I'd say all in all I had about 4 hours of intense play, and maybe an hour of tinkering around. So the game begins. The majority of the games were Single Flag CTF in Zanzibar. It was the E3 build, or at least something close. One team starts on the beach, the other in the base. The team from the beach tries to steal the ever so important flag, and run like hell back to the beach. We also tried out slayer one time. The build we played had most older game modes on it, and 4 modes simply listed as *classified*. The rules of single flag CTF (for those that don't know) are as follows: One team starts in the base and defends the flag, the other team starts on the beach and needs to get it. The timer starts at 3 minutes. The attacking team has 3 minutes to get the flag back to their little base on the beach. If the flag is scored before 3 minutes is up, the round ends. If time expires the round also ends. Then the sides are switched. Attackers become the defenders, defenders become the attackers. This alternates in 3 minute rounds until one team has captured 3 flags. When it came time to pick a stage, we tried to pick something other than Zanzibar, and it would show an overview picture, but would not tell a name or details, and they weren't selectable. I didn't witness this first hand, but one of the players in my group, Conrad, told me about it after we left. I wish I coulda seen some of the other stages pics. Anyway, there is a 10 second start time, and then the action begins. Some notes about Zanzibar: This stage is sweet. The people on the beach start opposite a large wall. There they can pick up the 2 ghosts or Rocket Hog. The beach players then proceed through a giant wall, with 5 or 6 different paths and weapons waiting in the wall. About 200 yards in front of the wall is the Giant windmill, with the Plasma sword cubby. On the left of the windmill is a raised platform which holds the Sniper Rifle. On the right side is a tower which is two stories. On the second floor, a small platform leads to the base of little bridge dealy. You actually have to blow up a connector on the bridge to make it accessible, giving you full access to the plasma sword. On the other side of the windmill is four pillars, and inside rests the levels only shotgun. By the sniper platform, there are 4 rocks with Rocket ammo in between. Past the rocks is a closed gate into the middle of the base. The front of the base is two stories. There are machine gun turrets on the top of either side. There are two doors if you approach the base from the front offset to the left and the right. By both the doors, there are both explosive and non explosive crates and barrels. On the far right, there is a large ramp with scattered rocks that leads to an entrance on the second floor. Outside the base on the second level, there are two recessed doors that lead to a corridor. From the corridor you can access the level with the gate opening switch, the upper level gallery above the flag room, and a staircase to the flag room. Finally, the flag is stationed between four giant pillars. Thats pretty much it. Without opening the gate, its wicked hard getting a vehicle in the base. None of us could do it, at least. When play starts there are a few things you'll notice right away. The health bar is different. There is a shield, with no health blocks under it. Once the shield goes down, you don't know how much health you have left. I personally liked it. Bottom right was the old HUD. Nothing new. OK, other new features. At any time, you can click the right stick, and zoom in 2x. (It's a cool view through Master Chiefs visor) With any weapon. Problem is, unless the weapon has a scope, you have to zoom back out to fire. Grenades bounce a lot more. Jumping is a LOT higher, and LOT farther. You can quite easily jump right over a ghost. The jump/duck technique still works for higher jumps. Another change is how close you are for a melee. You need to be much, much closer to melee. I think cutting melee distance down worked out well. Also, carrying the flag has changed a bit too. Gone are the days of grabbing the flag, hopping in a Ghost, and streaking back to victory. When you have the flag, not only do you walk about half as fast, but you can't pilot or man any vehicle or turret. The passenger seat of the warthog was the only vehicle seat you could have. The only way we found to move faster was jump, throw the flag, and chase it down. From the pause menu there is a lot of stuff people would have killed for last game. Team swap, edit your control scheme, set handicaps, and so forth. OK, so here's a funny story. While I was playing there were all these onscreen indicators. They were kinda like the green arrows in Halo, except above the arrow there were these weird boxes with symbols in them. Occasionally they would change color. There was one indicator, with giant red X which appeared to me to be an indicator which showed where a weapon that was dual wield compatible weapon was. It took me about 2 hours to realize that it was actually my teammate indicators. They boxes were all green, and the symbols inside the little box matched the symbols used to customize characters. The arrow was green when the player was not in a conflict, yellow when the player was firing a gun, and red when the player took damage. The red X remained for a short bit to tell you where your teammate had fallen. It's funny because, typically wherever a teammate died, there was a weapon there to dual wield with, so for a long time my theory about the red X made sense. Anyway, after arriving at the hotel and telling my buddies how long it took me to figure it out, they all told me that all day that had been wondering what the indicators were for, and none of them could figure it out. They are sweet though, and not as distracting as they sound. One of the biggest changes was the destructible environments. While not every wall was able to be obliterated, walls in high action areas and strategic positions were definitely not made to be permanent. Grenades, rockets and gunfire were all good ways to turn your buddies hiding spot into an early gravesite. The cement barriers around the turrets melted away under fire, and most of the cement around high action areas blew apart from the constant grenades and rockets. I actually think that you might be able to sustain damage from the debris. One time, I guarding the flag when a rocket hit the pillar above my head. It did a little bit of damage at first, then a second later, I died and my body was under a few large chunks of rock that had fallen off the pillar. My death looked like the same animation getting run over with a warthog looked like. I might have died from being shot, but I'm fairly confident the falling cement did me in. Besides that, the exploding canisters littering the level proved to be interesting. A few times I found it better to shoot the canisters as someone approached them on Ghost, only to watch as they all went up in a fireball. This proved far easier than tagging someone on a turbo ghost. There were crates and barrels around the level that didn't explode, but they could all be moved and used for cover. Vehicle damage is Bungie's gift to me. When we LAN at my house, I'm the guy that always bitches about someone waiting by spawn points in a ghost. Or by teleporter drop-offs. Or really doing anything in those crazy indestructible vehicles. Things have changed. In our build, you had two Ghosts, and one warthog. If you lost them, good luck carrying the flag back on foot. All the damage to the vehicles took place in the spot it was hit, as promised, and it's sweet. I cannot express the joy of watching my rocket obliterate my friend Chris and his precious Ghost. That sight alone was completely worth the cost of the trip. A close second was watching some poor sucker get in a badly busted warthog and start driving, only to have a secondary explosion wipe him out. Another gameplay change was the interaction with the flag. The defending team did not return the flag simply by touching it. There was a set time until the flag returned to the base. The twist on this is a little status called a 'contested flag'. Anytime a player of the opposite team was near the flag, the message "The flag is contested." would appear at the bottom of the screen. As long as the flag was contested, the timer for the flag return would not go down. So rather than worrying about keeping the flag from returning when it was 5 feet way, you could focus your attention on wrecking the suckers trying to stop you. It worked out very nicely. Also, you have to hold X to pick up the flag, which took some getting used too, but was much appreciated. No longer will you throw accidentally pick up the flag and throw it at your opponent when you mean to be shooting him in the face. Also, if the attacking team had possession of the flag in the last 4 seconds, the round timer would freeze. It would only start counting again when the flag was no longer contested. This made for some crazy last ditch struggles. Update 2:I'll start with hopefully a new piece of information. In the old game, when you killed someone, on your screen it would say "you killed {insert asinine name here}" Now, you get all the action. Every kill made by every player appears on your screen. And gone are the days of monotony. Kills give different modifiers such as "Bill killed Hell Hor" (for shooting and exploding kills) "Bill beat down Anomaly" (melee kills) and "Bill splattered assclown" (vehicle kills). It's just nice to know when a key player gets dropped without shouting it across the room. OK, onto more game play stuff.... Boarding. When Bungie says the vehicle has to be moving slowly, they mean moving really really slowly. I guess the most opportune time to board is when someone is cornering or has hit an obstacle. If someone is moving straight at you, forget about boarding. Not going to happen. On the other side of the coin, I can understand not wanting it to be too easy to board. I personally saw every seat boarded, except the passenger seat in the warthog. An interesting note, taking someone off the gunner seat of the warthog does not put you in the gunner seat. There were times when I thought a vehicle was moving reasonably slow enough to be boarded, and I couldn't do it. I guess my suggestion would be make it just a wee little bit faster speed at which you can board. Because at the current speed, I can only see a select few times when boarding will really be effective. Of course, maybe that's Bungie's goal. Either way, the feature is good, it just seems to be stifled. The other new feature - dual wielding. This is a pretty sweet feature. Unfortunately for myself, I don't think I utilized this feature enough. I generally dual wielded about once a game. Hold Y over any weapon you can dual wield, and you'll pick it up. Bang, dual wielding. Press Y to switch to your other weapon. So for instance, you could be dual-wielding an SMG and Needler, with Rockets in waiting. However if you switch to your rocket launcher, you'll drop the second dual wielding weapon you picked up. The weapons that I found dual-wieldable were the SMG, Needler, Plasma Rifle. I didn't try to pick anything up with the plasma sword, but I'm fairly confident you can't dual wield Plasma sword with anything else. I wrecked a fair amount of people with the plasma sword, and I don't ever remember seeing the dual wield message standing over their dropped weapons. When you reload while dual wielding, it takes a lot longer. Well, at least the SMG does. You can fire one gun while reloading the other. L trigger fires left gun, R Trigger fires the R gun. Besides just having twice the firepower, there were no other obvious advantages or disadvantages. Except you can't throw grenades while dual wielding, you have to drop a gun. If I had to do the whole experience over again, I would have spent more time checking out dual wielding. In the end, dual wielding didn't seem extraordinarily ground-breaking, but it was still sweet to have. Here's a big section... the weapons. Sniper Rifle - One is definitely located on the large cement platform on the left. There might be another one in the giant beach wall. Pretty much the same as the last game. 2 and 10x scope. Four round clip. The biggest difference is the recoil. Gone are the days of 4 quick shots from a sniper rifle. The recoil throws you pretty far off your target. It's a lot better to take an extra second to line your shot up then just fire. To make up for the recoil, the trail left by the bullet is a lot less noticeable. It's much more transparent, and is not around for very long. Finding a sniper is going to be a more difficult task in this game. Shotgun - Virtually unchanged. Close range domination. 12 Shells. Reloads with a single shell at a time. The only shotgun in Zanzibar to my knowledge is right next to the windmill, between 4 pillars. The old shotgun blast/melee combo still works really well. Not much to say, some old shotgun. Except for the green glowy bits. I'm not kidding. There are about three areas on the shotgun that glow green. Rocket Launcher - Found on the second level, outside of the base. Another sweet, sweet change made by Bungie. I personally believe the rocket launcher was way over powered in Halo. This is almost an entirely different weapon. First off, the fatal blast radius feels to be about 50% smaller than Halo. If your looking to kill someone with a rocket, it needs to be a lot closer. Also, to make it harder to get that pinpoint accuracy with your rocket launcher, its rate of fire is dynamic. When you first fire the rocket, it moves really slowly. Then it picks up a fair amount of speed really fast. This may sound like it evens out, but my one buddy that was there, Kemmerer, is a rocket fiend, and the new rockets completely threw him for a loop. There is also the homing feature of the rocket launcher. If you get a red aiming reticule on a vehicle, and fire, the rocket will chase the vehicle. It's nice. Definitely makes those Ghosts easier targets. The homing rockets don't always connect, but they are very very effective. If Bungie was trying to make the rocket launcher more anti-vehicle and less anti-infantry, they did a good job. All in all, I love the changes to the rockets. Plasma Rifle - Near the right tower on the way to the plasma sword bridge. Probably in the base somewhere too. I didn't use this much. I did use it enough to notice the wierd wings that pop out during overheating. It still freezes opponents I think... no one ever used it on me. The people I used it on typically looked sorta frozen. It has some nice particle effects. I don't think there were many changes made to this weapon. That's about it. I never really liked this gun. Needler - Next to the staircase in the base. Probably somewhere else too. Get ready to break yourselves of an old habit. From now own, you'll consider picking this bad boy up. The needles move a lot faster, and track opponents a lot better. If you've got an opponent in an open area, and tear a whole clip off at them, odds are, they are gonna die. Dual Needlers is actually pretty formidable for close to mid-range combat. It has a quick reload while dual wielding. Bungie wasn't kidding, the needler is now worth picking up. SMG - We started with it. I don't know where it would be found in the stage. This gun is interesting. High rate of fire, does decent damage, but the recoil is terrible. As you shoot, you steadily shoot farther and farther above your opponent. So anyone who has trained themselves to go for the headshot, you'll spend a lot of time firing over your target's head. The recoil only gets worse with dual wielding. Reload time is bad with dual wielding as well. It's close to 4 seconds. Up close, however, dual SMG's is a really quick kill. Also, if your opponent jumps they are meat. This is the only gun in which recoil is a problem. Its not bad enough that you need to get rid of it at the start, but it's not good enough that you can kill from a reasonable distance. An interesting weapon. Battle Rifle - Found a few places in the wall, and I think on the second level of the base. Three shot burst owns. No recoil, minimal spread on the shots, and 3 three shot bursts will lay an opponent out. I really liked this weapon. Everything from rate of fire, to accuracy, to reload speed, to stopping power; this is the new pistol. It's a pretty reliable weapon to have with you. The only problem was the zoom mode. It's nice to zoom in and shoot, but the rate of fire drops to one shot. I think the least amount of shots I fired while zoomed in for a kill was 6. I think there's minor recoil when zoomed in, but it's very minimal. Trust me when I say that this gun still rules. Plasma Sword - found in a recess in the windmill. Save the best for last? Maybe. I really liked this weapon. It feels right at home in the Halo battle environment. To get it, your supposed to infiltrate the right tower, climb up, break the seal on a bridge, cross the bridge, jump through the windmill, and into the compartment. {Funny sidenote: In the first 5 minutes of the very first game, Chris (one of my crew) threw a grenade into the compartment, and blasted the plasma sword directly to him. The Bungie rep was disheartened.} Anyway, this sword rocks pretty hard. The B button melee is quick, and can be done several times in succession. The regular melee with the sword seems to be just a bit stronger than a melee with another weapon. The range on the plasma sword feels to be about the range of a typical Halo melee. There is very little delay between swings either. Then there is the uppercut dash. Get within a certain distance of your opponents, and the reticule turns red. Pull the R trigger, and you dash right through your opponents, leaving them dead in their tracks. The dash is quick, but not instantaneous. I actually killed a guy mid dash. But I think it was a fluke. The problem is, if you miss with your trigger dash, you stand prone in one spot for quite literally 2 or 3 seconds. I had my only triple kill of the day with this weapon, and seeing as it was 3 on 3 most of the day, that's not bad. I really liked this weapon and thought it made a really awesome and balanced addition to the current weapon roster. Grenades - Scattered all around. Both varieties are back; plasmas and frags. There are some changes. The plasmas remained the same for the most part. The frags changed a bit. They bounce a lot more than they used too. Also, the fuse is triggered on first impact, while in the last game, I believe grenades had to explode on the ground. This game, grenades will explode in the air if it's timed right. The kill radius has been reduced much in the same way as the rockets. Besides that grenades still blow stuff up. Update 3.Added 10 August 2004 I'm sorry for anyone who was looking forward to my third update from last week. I went on a vacation, and didn't have time to squeeze it in before I left. Anyway, better late then never I suppose. On with the update. Vehicles Warthog - The only fast means of transportation we had for the flag carrier was the passenger seat of the Warthog. Our particular model of Warthog was outfitted with a rocket launcher in the back. The rate of fire on the rocket launcher in the back is just a bit slower than the rocket launcher from Halo. The controls for steering the Warthog have not been changed. Also, two new features have been added for the driver. Pulling the R trigger sounds a horn, which you can use to distract, taunt, or annoy your opponents and teammates alike. With the new 3D sound system, which I'll talk about in a moment, sometimes it can even let you know where someone is. The other feature is an E-brake. Pulling the L trigger causes the brake lights in the back to light up, and brings the warthog to a stop. The brake doesn't seem very useful, because this Warthog is much tamer than its Halo brethren. The new Warthog does a lot less skidding around, and drives much more like an actual vehicle. Old Warthog driving veterans are going to have to adjust to the new Warthog. It still catches crazy air, though. The vehicle damage on the Warthog is pretty sweet as well. You can tell they put a lot of work into the vehicle damage, and it pays off. It seems like every surface on the vehicle is ready to react to a bullet. Even the turret on the back is capable of being destroyed. There wasn't a whole lot of change in the way the Warthog drove when damaged. I didn't actually notice any at all, but then again, I kept my Warthog out of harms way. Someone from my crew said he thought it drove different damaged, so I guess we'll have to wait and see. One interesting change is the damage you take inside the Warthog. While driving one time, I drove head on into a rocket. I had about half of my shield damaged, and the Warthog flipped up. It wasn't until the second rocket hit that I died. It was interesting. Either way, I think that the new Warthog is a fair change from the old one. (And vehicle damage kicks ass) Ghost - My old arch nemesis. I really hated this vehicle in the first game. I always thought it was so cheap, since it couldn't blow up, and it hovered, and it's plasma bullets stunned people, and it was fast, and since the person on it was usually running me over as I spawned. Well, it's still fast, it still hovers, and its ammo still stuns, but now it blows up. And not only does it blow up, but it looks spectacular when it happens. In all seriousness, this Ghost is a lot like its predecessor. It handles the same, and losing a wing or two didn't seem to affect its flight too much. It has some cool new visual effects... pulsing energy spasms where you lose a wing, and a nice glow underneath. Pulling the L trigger causes you to streak forward in turbo mode, and pretty much lose all turning, maneuvering, and shooting capacity. An interesting note... Ghosts did not automatically kill a player if they got run over. The faster you were moving, the more damage you did with the Ghost. There were a few times I got clipped by a Ghost and lived through it. A turbo Ghost killed every time. The durability of the Ghost isn't as great as that of the Warthog. One or two explosions would render a ghost unusable, while the warthog would take 4 or 5. The new Ghost has been somewhat toned down and balanced in Halo 2, but I don't think I'll ever get over my hatred for it. Sound - I really should have mentioned this sooner, but it's not something you think of right away. If you have a 5.1 setup, prepare to crap your pants. From what the Bungie Rep said, all the sounds were recorded in some 3D, 5.1, crazy method. All I know is, the sound is unrivaled. During some of the quiet time when we were in between photo sessions, and eating, and hobnobbing with the Microsoft and Bungie people (I met Alta), I got to play on around with some 1v1. This is where I really noticed the directional sound, because the other setup had its speakers turned off. When someone fired at me, I knew where to turn before the arrow appeared. I heard a grenade skip right across the path in front of me. I've never really taken notice to outstanding audio in a game before, but the audio really was impressive. Actually, I think this game hosts my favorite sound effect ever. After you shoot someone's shield's down with dual SMG's from up close, all the bullets that enter your victim make this wet flesh tearing sound, it's spine-tingling. Oh, and the blood that accompanies those bullets just sweetens the effect. (I'm really not a violent person. This was just really well done) I was going to go into detail about the screen at the end of the match, but odds are its gonna change. It listed the team score and individual score and whatnot, over this blue and white background. It was actually kinda disappointing, I want something a little more like Perfect Dark, where it lists who you killed and how many times, as well as who killed you and how many times. The screen I saw listed the same info as the last one. And I think it was buggy. Because there was a match where I scored the flag twice, and I didn't have any game points. Hopefully, the final screen will show the polish the rest of the game had. Glitches - The fun stuff. There were a few bugs that surfaced in our time there, and even though the Bungie Rep assured us this game was built from the ground up, a few older errors were still present. No Fall Damage - Pretty self explanatory. No matter how high you jumped from, you'd be fine. I'm sure this will be changed for the final build. Or maybe not. Who knows with Bungie. Walk through walls - In the build we played, the walls were simply graphic place holders, and there was no collision detection. You could walk through them, shoot through them, and drive through them. We pretended they were solid, but I'm sure they will fill them in by November 9th. (Kidding) Actually, this was just the old glitch where you could enter a vehicle through a thin wall - like the power up gate in sidewinder. The Bungie Rep told me this glitch was already fixed in the Beta build. Shin Melee - Any weapon, when swung at your opponents' shins, immediately killed them. After seeing this, the Bungie rep made me go around and get a few different weapons and strike a few different spots, and said he was going to talk to the programmers. I think that means that I found a bug in Halo 2. I should be in the credits, damn it. Got that Bungie? Game Play Tester/Bug Squasher/New Hotness - Bill Daiber (Not Kidding) Unbreakable glass - I might have mentioned this before, but explosions did not break the glass in our build. Neither grenades nor rockets would break the glass. Bullets and melees, on the other hand, worked fine. (Side note: the glass was dynamic, it didn't shatter all at once, but rather in the fragments it was hit.) The Bungie Rep said that this problem had already been addressed. Trap Door - One of the times I was running to the flag and it was in the open field, and it just fell right through the floor. The indicator kept moving farther and farther away, and the flag eventually returned itself after 30 seconds. This happened towards the end of our playtime, and I'm not sure if anyone told the Bungie Rep about it. It fell through at the bottom of a small incline, after it slid down the hill. Invincibility - When around vehicles, explosions, and especially around exploding vehicles, your character would go flying, but you wouldn't take any damage. There was no set pattern, but a few times getting clipped by a Ghost or Warthog would push you 20 feet across a level, but you wouldn't take any damage. Same thing with explosions. One time, I was near a ghost and some exploding barrels, and when we all got hit by a rocket, and instead of dying, I was thrown into the air and almost out of the stage. I was right where the top wall met the sky, and although I tried, I couldn't walk out. I just stuttered a few times and slid down the wall. No one asked the Bungie Rep about this. Missing glitches - No more double melee. I don't think the quick reloads trick worked. Also, Sorry to all the Red vs Blue fans (myself included), but when you look straight down, not only do you see your feet and legs (not kidding), but your character model is actually looking down. Hopefully Bungie will heed put this glitch back in, and maybe one day we'll see Red vs Blue 2.0. In the mean time, the new DVD is sweet. Buy it if you haven't already. Also the rocket glitch was fixed. To clarify, in Halo if you jumped and turned in air, then fired any weapon, most noticeably the rocket launcher, the shots would travel in the direction you were originally facing during the jump. This was fixed, much to my buddy Kemmerer's delight. While we were there, we grilled the Bungie rep on a lot of different topics. Obviously, he wasn't allowed to answer all our questions. He told us that there would be up to 16 Xbox's for System Link. He also said that Multiplayer options were going to be a lot more customizable. This tied into our questions about power ups, and he said right now he thinks there is an option to turn them on or off. He couldn't confirm a lot, but this is what he did say to us when we played on July 24th (for all you ilovebee fanatics) "You'll know A LOT in a month." I think that's almost exactly what he said word for word. Anyway, I don't remember all the questions that were asked, but if someone asks me question, I'm sure I'll remember how he answered it. I paid very close attention to what he had to say. You can fire your questions to AIM name: BDaiber I think that pretty much wraps things up. It was an awesome experience, and I hope some of you enjoyed the updates. Just remember, that these are just the words of some dumb college kid that you probably don't know. In all honesty, I don't have the vocabulary to do this game justice. I can tell you about the features, but the incredible experience of playing the game surpasses my ability to communicate it to you with words. The whole time we played, it was as intense and enthralling as any video game I've ever played. And it was only 4v4. On one map. With a few strangers. For a few measly hours. But they were the best hours I've spent in front of a TV in a long time. -Bill |
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