Features • Halo 2 • Eurogamer.net

FeatureWhy online shooting peaked with Bungie's decade-old Halo 2

Halo, goodbye.

Let me tell you the story of the number 33, an American teenager called Marine14, and how I never became a doctor of film.

FeatureBungie bids Halo farewell

Eric Osborne looks back at 10 years of Master Chief.

It's a big year for Bungie. Not only does it celebrate its 20th birthday but, with the impending release of Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, it's also formally signing off custodianship of Master Chief to 343 Industries.

FeatureWhy I hate… Halo

I say goodbye.

In this new series of opinion pieces, some of Eurogamer's favourite writers reveal how they really feel about some of the world's most renowned, or most reviled, videogames.

FeatureBetter Than Halo: The Making of Halo 2

As Microsoft prepares to switch off Xbox 1, Bungie reveals the painful birth of the game that defined Xbox Live.

On April 14th, the Xbox Live service for the original Xbox shuts down for the final time. It takes with it the multiplayer support for Halo 2 - the game which showed the world how console multiplayer should be done, and proceeded to dominate the Xbox Live stats for years. Eurogamer took the opportunity to speak to the team behind the game, and discover the tortured development process behind a modern classic.

FeatureBungie's Damian Isla

Bungie's AI guru on the thinking behind Halo.

Most big, modern games are, of necessity, a team effort - so much so that it's often hard to ascribe any particular part of the experience to one person. In the Halo series, for instance, all manner of people contributed to the games, and for the most part, you'd be hard pressed to pick out a great moment and say, "this person made this". It's a team effort. Everyone's fingers are in all sorts of pies, and every pie has all sorts of fingers in it.

Feature2005 UK Sales Review

Part One: How current-gen consoles did in 2005.

With Chart-Track's Annual Report now published and available for sale to publishers, Kristan prepares his own annual Statto impression and wades through the facts and figures to offer an interesting picture of UK retail. In part one, we look at the state of the market and the fate of the current generation of console platforms. (Data from Chart-Track's annual report. Used with permission.)

The backdrop of 2005 was one of doom and gloom, with independent retailers in particular feeling the squeeze as all the major high street firms went to war with each other. After years of tolerating online retailers undercutting them by over �10 on a full price title, the high street was seeing their market share steadily eroded and decided to strike back with full force.

Suddenly, with all the mainstream types forced to price-match, UK retailers were making next to nothing on the games they were selling, and putting pressure on publishers to reduce their selling price - something that many under-pressure publishers were extremely reluctant to do.