ScrewAttack shows us some love.

If you're not familiar with what ScrewAttack does, it's about time you got acclimated. And what better way to introduce yourself than with a video where they sing our praises? Bam!

Cover your ears if you aren't into naughty language. Thanks to HBO for pointing us in the right direction.

I Hardly Knew Thee...

Forward Unto Dawn is taking a look back at Halo 2 with a fresh perspective. Get your own eyes on at the jump below. Thanks to HBO for the heads up (and the bandwidth).

I Hardly Knew Thee...

Halo 2 is still going strong!

Looks like the Xbox LIVE team has yet to flip the switch. Halo 2 is still online and operational. If you're looking to get some last minute games in, now's the time - there's no telling when it's going down!

Goodbye to you.

Killtacular.

"This is the amazing Walshy's second montage on youtube. No description needed, but I'll give one anyway. Walshy is an amazing Halo 2 player, and is on one of the best teams, Final Boss, with players like him, Ogre 1, Ogre 2, and Strongside. This montage is a very honest montage with great editing and gameplay. Many snipes, sticks, multikills, and no scopes etc. I hope you enjoy it and leave a comment for me to read!?"



YouTube - Walshy - 2nd Halo 2 Montage

Halo 2's LIVE support is shutting down.

If you're planning on sending Halo 2 out with a bang with us, tonight's the night. Xbox Original support is getting unLIVEd in less than 14 hours. To facilitate some meet and greets, we'll be in the mix in full force from 6-11pm PST in Team Slayer (4v4 Ranked) and Big Team Battle (8v8 Social).

You don't need to find us and make us dead to win some free stuff. We'll have Halo: Reach flair for anyone who plays and plenty of other prizes on offer for anyone that achieves one of many super secret metrics we're not disclosing. Just play. That's all we ask.

If you haven't already downloaded the Halo 2 DLC, expect to invest 15-30 minutes grabbing up all the free map packs.

See you on the battlefield, Seventh Column. One last time.

You never really know until the end.

Eurogamer had a nice chat with Bungie's Halo 2 team. Find out what went wrong and what went right with Halo 2's development. Link below.

Better Than Halo: The Making of Halo 2

Microsoft announced today that Xbox LIVE support for original Xbox games will be discontinued on April 15, 2010.

Halo 2 fans take note - you have ten weeks left to play multiplayer games over Xbox LIVE before the service will be discontinued.  Microsoft announced today that as of April 15th they will no longer be supporting the original Xbox console or software on Xbox LIVE. This also applies to original games being played on an Xbox 360.

You can read their official announcement HERE.

We're all saddened at the realization that an era is coming to an end but looking back, we're incredibly fortunate to have had such a great run and such strong support from our fans. Halo 2 has been at or near the top of the Xbox LIVE charts for original games since it launched over five years ago.  We're extremely thankful to everyone who has played, enjoyed and supported Halo 2 over Xbox LIVE.  We've had some great fun together, including far too many humpday losses to even recount. 

That said, mark your calendars now - on April 14th let's all rally to go online for one last hoorah. One final farewell and one final opportunity for all of you to kick our asses at Halo 2. 

Stay tuned to Bungie.net  in the weeks to come for more details.

...were you blinded by its majesty?

Okay, admittedly that title and subject are more than a touch self-serving, but we figured hey, if we were gonna make mention that today is the five year anniversary of the second installment of our dear Halo franchise, we figured we might as well go all out.  How awesome are we?  So awesome.

Of course, Halo 2 would have been far less awesome without all the players.  If you counted yourself among the masses that made it your business to give our inaugural matchmaking run a good, hearty spin, thanks for playing.  If you're among the tens of thousands of players who are still going round and round in the Halo 2 hoppers, trading Battle Rifle blows and rushing headlong into, well...Headlong, double thanks. 

That's two times the thanks!

If you haven't played Halo 2 in a while, go ahead and slap our old gal in the disc tray tonight and get your nostalgia on.  You might have finished the fight, but the war still rages.  Rumors of its demise have been greatly exaggerated.  Oh, and there's this one multiplayer map where a friggin' runaway train comes blastin' down the tracks like a lightning bolt shot sideways out of Zeus' blamhole.  It's awesome.  Trust us.


Halo 2
November 9th, 2004
Earth will never be the same...

How about a nice game of Tag?


Since we know not everyone has access to an Xbox 360 for Bungie Day, Roger thought it would be cool to run a Bungie.net contest for Recon. If you were planning on spending the rest of the day wallowing in your own terrible misery while everyone else jumped into Halo 3’s Matchmaking for their shot at Recon, it’s time to dry those tears and get focused - iIt’s puzzle time.



Hi everyone,

It's Bungie Day, and I feel like handing out some Recon. So let me tell you a story...

There's a cool event that happens every year or so at Microsoft called Puzzlehunt. Teams of a dozen, many of whom work at Microsoft, spend an entire weekend without sleep solving puzzles created by that year's hosts, fitting into a theme. Two years ago (when we were still at Microsoft), the team hosting Puzzlehunt 11 invited me to join them in writing game-themed puzzles. How could I resist coding a puzzle into the stats result of a made-up game of Halo 2? What's more, the guys at RvB were about to stop by for an early look at Halo 3, so I whipped up a quick script and asked if they'd perform and record it. They were happy to, and it became the intro to this puzzle.

The puzzle been sitting, hidden, on Bungie.net for almost two years since then, so just for fun, we'll let you take a crack at it for a chance to win Recon. Be warned: it's not at all easy, since it's meant to be a challenge to the types of people in and around Microsoft who spend a weekend each year solving puzzles for 36 hours straight. But it is solvable, since most of the teams got it.
Keep reading to see how you can get Recon.

The theme for this Puzzlehunt was Tron - teams were zapped into the computer by an evil program, and had to solve puzzles to do battle with him, and eventually escape with the help of friendly video game programs they'd meet along the way. This video introduced the Halo puzzle:

Red vs. Blue: How About a Nice Game of Tag?

Players were then directed to this page, which is the puzzle itself. You don't need to navigate away from this page to solve it. Just click the links that change what you see in the main image.

Want to play for recon? We've set up a Bungie.net account to receive your answer. Simply send a Bungie.net private message to this user with your answer as the subject. The answer is a single word. We'll search through the PMs and give Recon to the first five correct answers who we deem to be provided by legitimate solvers (so don't write a script to submit a word list! And we'll check for answers automatically, so be sure to spell correctly.) We’ll also pull a couple of random users with the correct answer out of the pile too, so if you don’t get it right away, keep at it until you have it solved.

Employees of Bungie or Microsoft, participants in Puzzlehunt 11, or others who have had similar exposure to the correct answer, are not eligible. Players who post the puzzle answer to our public forums, share it via PM, or otherwise distribute the answer will be banned from both winning Recon and from Bungie.net. Plus, they’ll only be hurting their own chances by adding more players to the random drawing.  Oh, and there's a discussion thread attached to this article.  Please use it.

Happy Hunting.

There are those that said this day would never come.


You know the rest.

Announced over at HBO, this band of merry men have tackled Halo 2 in record time.  For a look at the entire run in all its astounding glory, check out the link below.  If you find yourself without the time to ingest it all in one sitting, they've burned some extra seconds to segment it for you.  Well played.

Halo 2 Best Time (Legendary Difficulty) 1:30:29

Segmented by Level

One-of-a-kind soda machine from the offices we call home is being auctioned for the Make A Wish foundation.


We're auctioning our Halo 2 Mountain Dew soda machine. The fully-operational soda station has been at Bungie since the Halo 2 Dew promotion and we're ready to send it to a new home. The send-off will include a bunch of Bungie staffers signing and doodling on the box. Check out the auction and bid here.

Our friends over at Halo.Bungie.Org are kicking off a contest to give away FOUR brand new limited edition Halo Zunes. Visit their contest page for more details! And hurry, there isn't much time!

On June 15th the brand new Halo Zune is being released exclusively through Gamestop retailers around the country. It's a cool device that features custom Halo design stylings and comes pre-loaded with an array of Halo materials including concept art and paintings from Halo 3 (over 120 total pieces of Halo-related artwork). In addition, each device also comes loaded with an exclusive Red vs. Blue episode, many of their classic episodes and a variety of Halo trailers and VIDOCs from past and present.  There's a lot to like on there for Halo fans!

Now you could buy on one 6/15 for the bargain MSRP of $249.99 OR you can head over to Halo.Bungie.Org and win one for free!

You're going to have to work for it though - in order to win, you'll have to create either an awesome Halo song parody, original song, Halo 3 montage video or Halo machinima style video. You can get the full rules and requirements over at the HBO contest page.

We're thrilled to be able to provide the prizes for this cool contest but please be aware that Bungie Studios is not responsible for the program itself. Any questions or issues you have with the Zune Contest should be directed their way.

The Bungie Team will be looking forward to seeing and hearing some awesome community content in the weeks ahead. We'll be sure to share the best of the best with all of you.

Good luck and have fun!

Bungie isn't the only team with a Banhammer. The Xbox Live team has infinitely more powerful tools that obviously span beyond just the Halo games. Be warned that using hacked consoles will get you a one-way ticket to Banville - no matter which game you play.

We are continually fighting the good fight to keep modders and jerks out of the Halo 2 online population (and now Halo 3) but we can all sleep easier at night knowing that the Xbox Live team has their own group of agents working towards the betterment of the online community.

Major Nelson and Gamerscoreblog posted reminders today that people who log onto Live using modified consoles are being dealt with. As more and more people pour into the Halo 3 Beta, please take this warning to heart. Using modified content and hacked boxes is against the Terms of Use for Xbox Live and doing so will result in your console being permanently banned from the service. Forever. For all games.

If you get an error message "Status Code: Z: 8015 - 190D" it means you are done playing Xbox Live on that console. Congrats.

To all of the upstanding members of the Live community - we salute you and look forward to fun times throughout the Halo 3 Beta and beyond.

Sketch writes:

Tonight is the night for the long awaited Halo 2 Xbox Live Matchmaking Playlist update and ranking reset. Tombstone and Desolation will be required for some of the playlists and if you purchased them before Monday, 5/7, you will need to download them again before you can play online. Both maps will become free in early July.

It took a little longer than we would have liked but we're happy to announce that later tonight the new maps will finally be integrated into the Halo 2 Xbox Live matchmaking playlists. As you know by now, the original map release didn't go as smooth as we had hoped due to some billing and download issues and then a few wrinkles with the maps themselves. Over the past two weeks those problems were all addressed - everyone should be able to download the maps just fine and the geometry issues that were discovered in Tombstone have been addressed.

As a result of this map "repair", everyone who purchased the maps prior to Monday 5/7 will need to download them again. This is required if you want to play the maps online - only the new versions will work in Matchmaking and they are not compatible with the older versions for custom games or offilne play. You will not, I repeat, you will NOT be billed a second time if you already purchased the maps. However, do keep in mind that each purchase is tied to a single Xbox console. If you downloaded it on your Xbox 1 the first time and try to download it again on your Xbox 360, you will be charged again. Or, if you were one of the few who found the billing loop-hole the first time and weren't charged, you will be charged this time.

Tonight's update means that both new maps will be REQUIRED in order to participate in some of our matchmaking playlists. However, we are keeping several playlists in their oldschool state so if you don't have the new maps you will still have some options. Here's the breakdown of what will be available after this update:

Rumble Pit - Unranked - New Maps Required
Double Team - Ranked
Team Slayer - Ranked - New Maps Required
Team Skirmish - Ranked - New Maps Required
Team Training - Unranked 
Team Snipers - Ranked - New Maps Required
Team Hardcore - Ranked
Team SWAT - Unranked - New Maps Required
Big Team Battle - Unranked

Of course you can continue to play custom games with or without the new maps as much as you'd like.

We've been bracing you for this for a little while now but we're also resetting all Halo 2 online rankings tonight as part of this update. In light of the new maps, changes we've made to some banhammer functionality and a desire to regroup the population to better facilitate game matches, we are wiping the slate clean. Naturally this will cause joy for some and outrage for others. Hey, it's "just a number", right? And the people who were legitimate high level players should have no problem quickly ascending the ranks once again.

Lastly, we are finally happy to confirm that Tombstone and Desolation will be available for free download in early July. We don't have the exact date locked but it will be around the first week. Stay tuned to Bungie.net for the final details.

Thank you to everyone for your continued support of Halo 2 and your patience as we've been working through some of these issues. 

The Blastacular Map Pack has been updated to fix bugs and superjumps before being deployed to Matchmaking. The two new maps for Halo 2, Desolation and Tombstone, have both been replaced with updated versions, with the geometry fixes added. You will need these to use them in Matchmaking. More new on that later this week.

As we promised in the Weekly Update this Friday past, the Blastacular map pack has been updated to remove the superjumps and invisible walls that would have caused no end of misery in Matchmaking. That’s the good news. The bad news is that you will have to download them again to overwrite your old map files with the new, corrected ones. These will be required to play in matchmaking. The “old” maps will continue to function until then, or until you try to match with someone using the updated maps. Simplest solution? Go get ‘em.

The new maps can be found by simply returning to the content download screen from the main menu in Halo 2, and repeating the process you already used to download them the first time. We know this is a pain. Sorry.

NOTE: You will not be charged again if you already bought these maps.

You will be charged if for some reason you were not charged last time.

Remember - the maps are tied to your console, not your Gamertag. If you try to download to another console, you will be charged again.

We do apologize for this inconvenience. For some of you it’s a minor irritation, for some of you it’s the end to a long and annoying ordeal. Either way, we thank you for your patience and your understanding.

The recent downloading problems with the Halo 2 "Blastacular" map pack have been (mostly) fixed. Details inside.

Hooray! Map download problems are fixed! If you were one of the (significant) number of people unable for a variety of reasons, to download the recent “Blastacular” map pack, a fix implemented last night should have worked for you. Firstly, our apologies. We realize this has been inconvenient and annoying.

As we’ve explained previously, the problem was caused by either trying to get the maps for free (don’t worry, you’re not in trouble), accidentally trying to download on a Silver and then Gold account, or by various incompatible age rating problems between 360 dashboard and the original Xbox. Almost everyone should now be able to download the maps now, and the bonus is that we can now accelerate the maps’ introduction into matchmaking.

We’ll have more news on this soon, and if you’re still having problems with either the map pack or with billing, then try the usual support numbers and contact info here: www.xbox.com since Bungie does not deal with Xbox Live billing matters. At least not until I get that Paypal account set up…

Originally we indicated that this week was our target for updating the Halo 2 Xbox Live matchmaking playlists and resetting all player rankings. We are holding this update while we investigate and fix some of the Xbox Live download problems that people have been reporting.

Originally we indicated that this week was our target for updating the Halo 2 Xbox Live matchmaking playlists and resetting all player rankings. We are holding this update while we investigate and fix some of the Xbox Live download problems that people have been reporting. The good news is that almost everyone who initially had issues downloading the maps should now be able to do so. However, there may be some people who are still unable to download the maps for a variety of reasons and we’re working with the Xbox Live team to narrow down the potential cause and implement the solution.

This playlist update and rank reset will probably occur next week, pending the outcome of our ongoing work with the Xbox Live team. In the meantime, you are of course able to enjoy both Tombstone and Desolation in online custom games and offline Splitscreen/System Link play. Please stay tuned to Bungie.net for the latest info. Apologies for the inconvenience.