By now, many of you have gotten home from your local game store, tearing the wrapper off of your copy of Halo 2 before you even got your coat off. While many people will probably dive right into the Campaign mode, I'm sure there's plenty of fans who couldn't wait to login to Xbox Live for some mass carnage. I'd like to be one of the first to welcome you to what will surely go down in history as the greatest online console experience ever (well, at least in this generation). I'm sure you won't be disappointed.

However, there will be a time when you'll have to put the controller down, tear yourself away from the TV, and get back to your life. I know it sounds bad, but there are plenty of other things you can do to keep yourself entertained. You could walk your dog, volunteer at a soup kitchen, or even start writing your memoirs. Or, if you're like me, you can obsessively compare yourself to everyone else who's ever played Halo 2 on Live dreaming of what you can do to make yourself better than them. How can one do this, you ask? It's simple: just head on over to Bungie.net.


One of the biggest things that Bungie wanted to do when they decided to bring the Halo experience online was create a living, breathing community. It would have been easy to simply put the game online, maybe put out a few downloadable maps, and let people have a great time (and they would). However, if there's one thing Bungie knows, it's what its fans want, and what they want is more. More gametypes, more action, and most of all, more chances to show your friends that you're better than them.

The best way to do this, of course, is with solid, concrete numbers. By their very nature, multiplayer games defined by their numbers. Who had the most kills? Who captured the most flags? How many minutes did your team hold the ball for? With this in mind, the guys and girls at Bungie decided to go above and beyond the conventional wisdom by creating a stat tracking system that could tell you just about anything you want to know, from the big picture on down to the little details.

To start the process, you've got to play some Halo 2. That's it. Once you play your first game, you'll be in Bungie's database. After you're done, go to Bungie.net and select "Stats" from the menu on the bottom of the screen, then "View Online Stats" to be taken to the main stat page, which tells you how many players are online at any given moment, how many matches have been played, and who the top players are in a variety of preset gametypes. You've got to remember that, in order to be ranked, you've got to play some ranked matches by using the Quickmatch or Optimatch choices in the Xbox Live menu. While some of your stats will be recorded when you just play with your friends, they won't go onto the main leaderboards.