Brian "SketchFactor" Jarrard talked to 1UP.com about the changes in the 1.1 Halo 2 Update, touching on one particular weapon tweak (or rather the lack thereof) that was close to the hearts of the author:
Well, the 1.1 update is here, with its modified weapon balance, anti-cheating measures, flag bouncing reduced, sword flying removed, and lots of other little tweaks.
What do people think so far? Like it? Hate it? Why or why not?
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Sistimatic has written the latest of Rampancy's series of Halo 2 Impressions. This one covers the indoor/outdoor snowdrifted Flood-fest that is Quarantine Zone.
Bungie.net has seen a flurry of updates in the past few days. Here's a quick rundown:
Heya! Just wanted to get the word out quick about our upcoming Halo 2 4-Man Team Skirmish Tournament. It's on April 30th at 11:30 AM at Game Junkie, the largest specialty video game store in Cincinnati.
Instead of giving you all the info here, let me give you the URL of the tournament information directly:
http://www.gamejunkie.com/tournaments/halo2_4/
Or, you can surf from http://www.gamejunkie.com and it's under our tournaments page.
The update itself doesn't seem to be quite large at all, and as of this writing, it has become available even at my undisclosed location. After successfully downloading the update, you'll see the number "1.1" in the lower right-hand corner of Halo 2's main menu screen. This disappears once you login to Live and reappears when you logout.
The Art of Controller Tossing, the latest Making of a Spartan article by Furiont at Tabula Rasa, touches on the value of knowing when to hold 'em, when to fold 'em, when to walk away, and when to run, vis a vis lowering the number of times you die in a Halo 2 match.
Xbox365 today has a press release that US registration for the World Cyber Games 2005 championship tourney is due to open April 15 at us.worldcybergames.com. At the time of this writing, the site was not yet up. Halo 2 is one of the WCG events.
The Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL) has announced that their Halo 2 Xbox tournament is changing format from 5x5 to 4x4, due to "overwhelming support" for that format. Thanks Louis Wu at HBO.
SketchFactor has posted the summary of the latest Humpday Challenge-- after a short hiatus following their humiliation against typical Japanese Halo players, Bungie rewrote the rules (they now pick one of the gametypes and actually practice as a team beforehand) and rebounded with a solid victory over Art Vand3lay, flechette, goatrope, Ducain, Sorahn, and Jphan7om of
Lance Ulanoff wants to know Who's Afraid of Mature Games. What I want to know is, who's afraid of sex? Why is killing aliens good and killing prostitutes bad? Why is the f-word worse than killing aliens? Why is killing aliens better than killing humans? This and other inconsistencies probed in Who's Afraid Of Sex, the latest of Narc's Retorts.
HBO recently provided a link to Lance Ulanoff's column at PC Magazine entitled Who's Afraid of Mature Games. It's a look at the ESRB rating system vis-a-vis his experience deciding whether or not his 10-year-old son should be allowed to play the M-rated Halo 2.