For whatever reason, I missed my chance to get hands-on time with Halo 2 at E3 2004. Sure, I was a bit jealous of my peers, but I didn't sweat it too much. Because really, at the end of the day, there's little doubt that Halo 2 won't impress fans of the first game. And, while I definitely feel it was flawed, I still enjoyed Halo and consider myself a fan. So, when a chance to get my hands on the most anticipated sequel of the year finally appeared today at the Game Stars Live event in London, I didn't hesitate for a moment.

After waiting in a queue (that's what they call "lines" here in England) for around an hour, I was allowed into the large booth with nine other individuals. While the gameplay mode on display at E3 was single-flag CTF, Microsoft placed players into Team Slayer matches for Halo 2's first appearance in the UK. As a fan of deathmatch, I wasn't one to argue. And, as it was my first experience with the game, I was a bit relieved that strategy and teamwork would take a back seat to simple gunplay. Unfortunately, the battle took place on Zanzibar, the same map available during the E3 playtest. I was hoping to get a glance at one of the game's other multiplayer environments, but alas, it was not meant to be.


I spawned inside the base at first, and quickly destroyed an incoming enemy Spartan with my submachine gun. The weapon feels decidedly similar to the assault rifle from the game's predecessor. After investigating the corpse, I was awarded with a new weapon: the battle rifle. As you probably recall, this gun fires in three-shot bursts; that is, unless you happen to be aiming through the scope. In such a case, the player will only be able to fire a single shot at a time. While I've always liked the idea of this weapon in theory, in practice I found it to be a bit useless. During a firefight against another Spartan, the shots simply don't feel powerful enough, especially given how long it takes to pump bullets into a foe. Maybe with practice my initial reaction will prove to be premature, but I simply couldn't attack fast enough to whittle away my opponent's shields. To be honest, the battle rifle simply feels like a crippled version of the SMG. I had much better luck with the default weapon.

After being fragged the first time, I ended up spawning on the beach following each consecutive death; it appeared that the same was true for everybody else in the game, as well. Soon after the start of the match, all ten players were situated on or around the beach. I can't say whether or not this was intentional or simply a bug in the early code. While it meant that little of the map was explored, it did keep the action fast-paced. And luckily, most of the weapons had been dropped on the beach near the vehicle spawn points giving us a chance to get our hands on some of the more coveted items available in Halo 2.