Halo Multiplayer Retrospective

10 Sep, 2010

Halo Reach is coming next week.  Bungie’s swan-song for the juggernaut franchise is ready to fall and millions of Xbox 360 fans are ready to sink hundreds and thousands of hours into what is (hopefully)! Bungie’s latest masterpiece.

People love Halo have different reasons: Some like the single player sandbox gameplay with its tight controls and intelligent AI.   Others love the Sci-fi space opera and regard it as “this generation’s Star Wars”.  Whereas others bow to the greatness of Halo’s epic multiplayer suite.  Regardless of your reasons to like — or not like — the Halo series, nobody can deny that it paved the way for many of the shooters we have today, especially on consoles.

I myself am a huge Halo fan (I have my multiplayer emblem tattooed on my arm), and I checked my Halo stats and Halo 2 and 3 multiplayer combined I have spent a total of 90 DAYS online scoring head-shots.  So, I hope you agree that I am kind of qualified to talk about the franchise.  So before we drop into Reach, lets look into the past and look at the history of Halo multiplayer.

Halo.  The definitive monarch of console multiplayer action.  For almost a decade, fans have enjoyed Bungie’s take on online combat across two major platforms, with each title only getting better.  How did it all start, how did it change the online space and most importantly, where is it going?

In November 2001, Microsoft launched the Xbox console with a questionable at best launch line up and pricing scheme.  However with Halo at it’s side, it helped get the brand off the ground.  Halo: Combat Evolved was a surprise hit both critically and commercially, with controls that worked on a controller and gameplay which finally rivaled games PC players have grown accustomed to.  However after fans finished the epic campaign, they went on to discover the multiplayer was just as good; if not better than anything else on the market.

Never before had a console shooter captured the fun of gunning down your friends as well as redefine the genre it occupied.  New concepts almost became standards over night: Melees from behind were an instant kill (assassination), sniper rifles only had four rounds, you could only have two weapons at a time and vehicles were now part of the multiplayer experience.  Overall it was a success, but the fun was only getting started.

Fast forward to 2004 and the world was stunned again with Halo 2.  Microsoft had already introduced the world to Xbox Live, but Halo 2 was the game that officially pushed the service to what we have today.  Players finally had the opportunity to take down their friends (and teabag) online.  To keep the LAN party feeling alive, Bungie introduced the lobby system, or in their words the “virtual couch”.  Thus allowing you and your friends to play together and keep playing together as you take on the world to see who is best.

Rather than browsing for games as expected on PC, the online matchmaking system would look for games, find one with enough free spaces for you and then match you with random players of equal skill so you had a balanced and enjoyable game.  It was a revolution in online multiplayer that made everything so simple and easy to use.  Besides this though, what kept players coming back were the new features and gameplay mechanics.

The Assault Rifle was gone, but in stepped the concept of dual-wielding to the series, allowing you to hold two guns at once for more firepower at the expense of accuracy and range.  To make up for this, the Battle Rifle was introduced and quickly became everybody‘s new best friend.  The (broken sniper) pistol from Halo 1 was removed and made way for the Magnum, a quick-fire pistol great for dual-wielding.  To help with vehicles, the Rocket Launcher gained the ability to track targets for more accurate explosions.

With the introduction of the Elites as character models for multiplayer, to balance the complaints of the Covenant weapons being underpowered, almost every Covenant weapon became dual-wieldable and the plasma stun was removed allowing players to keep moving if hit.  Also Bungie gave players the chance to pimp out their character with customisable colours and emblems to help you stand out from the rest of the pack.  Halo 2 remained the most played Xbox original game on Xbox Live until its demise on April 15th 2010.

By 2007 Halo 2 had completely dominated Xbox Live and even when the Xbox 360 was launched, fans were playing Halo 2 more than any other game.  That was until a sneak peak that nobody saw coming.  With the purchase of Crackdown, fans could join the Halo 3 multiplayer beta.  Those who played were introduced to new concepts such as equipment.  New items like the trip mine, bubble shield and power drainer changed the landscape dramatically and added a whole new layer of depth and complexity.

A few months later, Halo 3 launched and fans had plenty of new features, armor unlocks and maps for everyone to enjoy.  With achievements unlocked, fans could equip hundreds of different combinations of armor pieces, colours, emblem designs and a service tag to give players an easy combo of letters and numbers to call out during battle.

As the map space grew, so did the vehicles and the ways to take them down.  The Spartan Laser became the new way to take down warthogs and banshees with efficiency and skill.  Support weapons such as detachable turrets such as the turret gun, plasma turret and missile pod were also introduced to make you a walking machine of death.  The equipment from the beta found their way in but items such as the trip mine were scaled back whereas the radar jammer and flare were taken out completely.

With the addition of Forge — Bungie’s map editing tool — fans could create their own weapon layouts along with custom game rules such as player damage, gravity and movement speed and could be shared with the Halo community.  What separated Halo 3 from the competition though was the introduction of the theater mode.  Not only could you replay your latest game, you could watch the action from any player’s perspective or roam free with the free-cam so you can finally see where that random grenade came from.  Sharing film clips and screenshots quickly took off into a staple in the community and is still used today to make machinima movies and gameplay videos.

Nearly a decade with Halo’s multiplayer and it is still going strong.  With Bungie’s determination and ability to innovate and evolve the franchise with every passing game, the multiplayer improves in every way possible.  Halo Reach is almost here and after the popular online beta, we can already say that the full game should have no problem keeping fans online for years to come.