The update for Halo 2 occured last week and pretty much fixed everything that I thought was wrong with the multiplayer game, fixed most of the glitches that people were exploiting online, and most of all, managed to make the game fun again. The increased melee damage, the increased blast radius and damage from grenades, and the increased power of the Battle Rifle and decrease in power and accuracy on anything duel-wielded makes the game really feel like Halo 1, IMHO.
Add to all of this that Bungie just released the first 4 new maps for download on Xbox Live, and they've made me one extremely happy Halo fan. The four new maps: Containment, Turf, Warlock, and Sanctuary are all very cool, and have some really interesting personality to them that I'll get into if you keep reading.
Turf is a close-quarters earth-based map that deals with the back alleys of a city presumably in New Mombasa. It's much smaller than most of the maps, but it's still big enough to make looking for enemies to be a bit of a challenge to hunt people down.
I haven't gotten a chance to try out Sanctuary yet, but from what I have heard, it is a very cool map, I just haven't found any games that have been playing it yet.
Warlock is an updated Wizard from Halo 1. Wizard was probably one of my most despised Halo 1 maps because of the many times I played CTF on there, but with Warlock, I can begin to see the method to the madness of the level, and exactly why it just works so well. This level is great, and it's a worthy addition to Halo 2.
The final map that was added in this pack was Contamination, which is probably the crown jewel of this map pack. Think of a huge level, kinda like Sidewinder from Halo, set in snow again, but with two really elaborate bases on each end, and then more open ground in the middle of the two with not many places to hide. Very cool stuff, and should be a great map for CTF and other objective-based games.
If you've got Halo 2 and Xbox Live, I highly recommend picking up at least the two free maps, and if you really want a treat, you can pick up the other two for an extra $5.99 total. If you don't have XBL, you can always wait until Bungie releases the Halo 2 Map Pack on June 28th, or you can just wait until all of the maps will be free to download, which will be June 29th. It's up to you. I paid the money, and I'm not really regretting it so far. I hope to see you all in Halo 2…again!
-Jack
