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Behind the Game:
The 1,000 Luckiest People Alive: Inside the Halo 2 Alpha Test

By Mark Diller

All this time you’ve been waiting for Halo® 2. You’ve imagined the great gameplay. You’ve visualized the stunning graphics. You’ve drooled at the prospect of fragging your friends in Halo 2 multiplayer—and making (then killing) new friends on Xbox Live™. You’ve waited so long … but what would you say if you knew that there were 1,000 lucky souls who’ve already played the game?

It’s the truth. While we were all waiting impatiently for Halo 2 to hit the shelves, Bungie was conducting an alpha test of Halo 2 multiplayer. They invited 1,000 Microsoft employees to gather online and blow the hell out of each other on three multiplayer maps, all for the greater glory of the Halo universe. Meanwhile, the Bungie developers were gathering reams of data on connection rates, lag, usage patterns, and all the nuts and bolts that go into making the best first-person shooter the world has ever seen—but you don’t care about that stuff, do you? You want to know what it was like to play the game!. Fine, let’s get down to it.

Recently we spoke to some of the participants in the alpha program and got their first-hand impressions of Halo 2. Heads up: It’s coming for you, too, this holiday season …



Awakenings
First, the alpha participants heard they were “in”—and then came the waiting. Days went by while they waited impatiently for the alpha disc to arrive in the mail. One player, who went by the tag “char,” was particularly anxious.

I had been calling the concierge at my apartment complex all morning, since I was pretty sure the disc had been delivered. The [alpha test] newsgroups were buzzing with reports of discs arriving! Finally, in the afternoon, they admitted to having it. Clearly, I had to leave work early and go test it out. I blitzed home, got the disc, loaded it up, and started looking for games.

That’s when it started to go sour for char—he joined a game and promptly got run down by a Ghost. So, he joined another game, and the same thing happened. Again and again char found himself looking up at the bottom of a Ghost, and he could never figure out why he couldn’t frag the guy at the controls. The lesson char learned was that if you receive a game disc with a single sheet of paper labeled, “IMPORTANT! READ BEFORE PLAYING!” you should probably read it. As it turns out, he was playing a build of the game that included un-killable vehicles. Once char learned to get out of the way, things were much smoother—and more addictive. Another tester, daddy nathan, attests to that:

When I brought the alpha disc home that first weekend, [my son and I] didn’t play the game every waking moment (only because my wife wouldn’t let us), but we wanted to. After being sent to bed that first night, we were up at first light the next morning blasting away and getting blasted. We spent the next 10 hours or so on Saturday banging on the game, stopping only because my wife forced lunch upon us. We spent most of Sunday playing, as well.

The Game
The test took place over five weeks and covered three maps and three game types. The three maps were like the Three Bears: small, medium, and large. In the small category was Lockout, which is a high, narrow map built around a concrete structure. The map is designed for smaller games featuring two to four players, but nothing stops you from cranking things up by cramming in even more.

How does it play? Take it from one of the testers, who went by the name Lord Pi: It’s intense.

Imagine what would happen if Wizard and Chill Out hooked up and had a love child. We’re talking rockets, snipers, open areas, closed tunnels, catwalks, falling to your death, death by massive grenade explosions, and flags.

The test members favored Team Slayer on this map, with body count as the sole objective. Team Slayer in Halo 2 supports multiple teams, and that can lead to some fearsome action. Here, char tells his story:

I joined a Team Slayer game that had two teams of five or six people and immediately switched to a third team by myself. A few people in the lobby were confused and wanted me to join one of the other teams. I think the last thing one of the guys said before the game started was, “You’re gonna get schooled … ”

The game was a blast! I got a great spawn and was able to equip myself nicely very early in the game. After getting decent weapons, I went to town—I had probably 20 kills before my first death. Imagine standing over a pile of dead bodies, frantically reloading, as tracers whiz by and grenades explode, sending weapons and bodies flying everywhere. Both enemy teams are pouring in endlessly from opposite sides, rushing blindly in an attempt to crush me with sheer numbers.

When the game was finally over, one of the guys, who insisted I was going to get slaughtered, was absolutely incredulous. He was convinced I was one of the Bungie developers and had activated some sort of hack or cheat. That made my day!

Here’s a word of warning: If you happen to meet up with char in a Halo 2 multiplayer match on Xbox Live, he’s not cheating—he really is that good.

In the medium-sized category was Burial Mounds, a desert-themed map with a military base at the center. Most fun on this map was Assault, in which two teams go head to head, one attacking and the other defending. The attacking team has to move a bomb into the defender’s base, while the defenders get to amp up their firepower with new toys, such as mounted turrets. At the end of a round, the two teams switch roles, and the first team to three wins. But, other game types are almost as much fun, and Lord Pi tells the story of a particularly bloody eight-on-eight Capture the Flag game on this map.

It was one-flag CtF, and it ended up taking close to an hour to play. There were so many people that it was a constant struggle to just approach the base. And it wasn’t touch-return, either, which caused my team to have a few flag standoffs inside the enemy base. I remember that there were so many enemies spawning, and the flag was so close to scoring against us, that another player and I went back-to-back on the flag. Enemy players would spawn all around us, but all we could do was kill and wait … and pray for the sides to switch. It was really brutal …

Afterward, everyone was exhausted. Most people remarked that was the best game they had ever played. Yet, after all of the attrition, there were still eight people in the lobby. So, we did the most natural thing: We went for another game … It ended up going just as long, and it was even better.

In the large map category was Waterworks, a huge map featuring two bases at either end and a giant alien machine in the middle. Waterworks may have been inspired by Halo’s Blood Gulch. Like that venerable map, Waterworks is an enclosed area, but in this case, it’s an enormous underground cave lit by a hole in the ceiling. The players attest that this map is ideal for Capture the Flag and that the action was heightened by the range of vehicles available for both teams: Warthogs, Ghosts, and Banshees. But, don’t think you’ll spend your time on Waterworks just navigating from one end of the map to the other. Bungie implemented a “boost” function that allows the vehicles to accelerate to double-speed.

Halo 2 Will Own You
So, what can you expect when the game hits the market? Again, we’ll let char tell it:

Halo 2 is going to kick ass. Multiplayer is going to be a whole new world. I’m sure there are people all over who will have Halo LAN parties with their friends, fragging each other late into the night. Soon, all those people will be on Xbox Live, and it’ll be one big party.

As for daddy nathan and Lord Pi, they were left with great regrets—that Bungie made them return their discs. But, soon we’ll all have a chance to get Halo 2 game discs of our own, sign on to Xbox Live, and blow the bejeesus out of one another. I’ll see you there.