In the player's ability to dispose of various types of weapons, both human specimens and alien futuristic means to destroy opponents. The energy shield protects the main character from incoming damage. In cover and in the absence of firing at the player, the charge of the shield is restored again. Some types of cannons can be held in two hands, turning into firepower under the pressure of enemy forces.

Grenades will stop the accumulation of opponents, and a melee attack will help in a difficult situation. Alien weapons are susceptible to barrel overheating. Human weapons are less effective against energy shields. Campaign mode is available for single and multiplayer games. The levels alternate between Master Chief and Arbiter, but there are few gameplay differences between both.

There are four difficulty levels in campaign mode: Easy, Normal, Heroic, and Legendary. The primary characters are Colonel Grant Thompson and Doctor Cassandra 'Cassie' Aklin Katee Sackhoff, and is also the protagonist; with all written and recorded content either directed towards or generated by Aklin so far , but other characters, civilian, military, or otherwise were mentioned.

The other main characters are seven soldiers who volunteered for the project from different army units, all brought together at the Project Abraham Compound in Alaska the specific location is classified. Apart from the project itself, the files and videos reveal the personal situation with the project's personnel; the soldiers, willing to endure the possibility of death, have detailed history, military careers, and personality profiles collected by Aklin , which is often reflected in their actions towards others.

More information about Hale's history, family, and military career are revealed as well, along with allusions to a romantic relationship between Hale and Cassie. A second website named America first America only is the website of an organization called the 'Alliance For American Autonomy'. The Alliance is a group of radicals bent on exposing the U.

Government and its secrets to the public. When a new article is posted the old ones are stored in the file cabinets for reference and can be viewed at any time. A recent update for the site has seemed to have ransacked the area and shows a letter that seems to have been written in a hurry. The latest updates show a typewriter with various American cities listed on it. When a 'dead-drop' has been reported in a city, fans may go to the given location to retrieve a canvas bag containing a personal item of one of the Project Abraham participants, a compass, a SRPA T-shirt, and a card listing a serial number.

This serial number is used to unlock two comic panels at the second new addition to the AFAO website, Metastasis. The business card to the left may be called, toll free, to hear an inspirational recruiting message for the military. The latest update for the site seems to have burned nearly everything in view and the registration form is no longer available. A fourth website named SrpaNet has also been discovered.

It is an old computer interface used by the Project Abraham staff and the U. So far hidden and overt serial codes, found in various places on Project Abraham, have led to hidden documents and images relating to the Chimera and what is known about them.

The collector's edition includes a hardcover art book, special cover art, an in-game weapon skin a Chimeran HVAP Wraith called the Brute Minigun, the same kind Ravagers use , and an action figure of the game's 'Hybrids', the Chimera.

The collector's edition was only sold in North America, and not in Europe due to the hassle of translating each aspect of the Collector's Edition to the various main languages in the continent, such as English, French, Spanish etc. The Collector's Edition Blu-ray also contains a hidden Easter Egg which can be accessed by watching the 'scale' featurette, pressing Left on the arrow keys upon returning to the menu, and then pressing right.

The player must shoot down incoming Chimeran ships varying in size. The game is divided into waves. The player must shoot down ships for points.

Occasionally the player must defend 2 incoming VTOL transports one carrying health the other carrying modified ammo.

If the VTOLs are defended the player's turret is repaired and the damage dealt by the turret's shots will be strengthened as long as the ammo lasts. There are three different rewards for reaching a certain wave or score in the mini-game. The first reward is a male and female Resistance 2 T-shirt for beating Wave 4.

For a limited time in the European Home, in the place of where the video screen is in the Asian and North American versions, there was a poster with a promotional code on it. The first 3, users that redeemed the code received a male and female Resistance: Retribution T-shirt. The trailer for Resistance: Retribution has replaced the poster.

This space was released to the Japanese version on September 10, In addition to the space, users can fully game launch into Resistance 2. Game launching lets users set up a competitive or co-op game in Home, have people join the game, then launch directly from Home into the game. Users can set up a competitive game of up to 32 players and up to 8 players for co-op.

Resistance 2 received 'generally favorable reviews' according to the review aggregation website Metacritic. PlayStation Official Magazine — UK said the game was, as they would have liked, 'prettier and shootier'. The firefights are intense, the pacing will keep you on the edge of your seat and quite a few scenes prove absolutely breathtaking, but the game's chief strength is the story that binds it all together, and the multiplayer modes that should keep us amused for quite some time. Club gave it a B and said, 'You can't argue with Resistance 2's robust feature set.

But the once-relatable, ragtag protagonist Nathan Hale has been transformed into a generic square-jawed action hero, the kind who's been the subject of satire since 's Duke Nukem. Clearly Nathan isn't just battling the Chimeran virus; he's also suffering from a severe case of John McClane-itis.

Ultimate moment: The Silent Cartographer level has to be one of our favorites in any game, ever. It kicks off with a Normandy-like beach invasion, followed by general tear-assing around in a Warthog jeep with your rowdy marine pals, and then its a great mix of indoor and outdoor action, culminating in a showdown with a one-hit-and-youre-dead blade-wielding alien.

But for the expert snipers out there, beating Halo on the Legendary difficulty setting is the ultimate bragging right. This follow-up to the hit sci-fi first-person shooter is by far the most important game in the history of Xbox, and Microsoft and developer Bungie know it.

So it's no surprise that everyone involved wants to take the time to get it right. One concern: Microsoft claims Halo 2 will be out early next year, but Bungie will only say Both parties even tried to convince us they never "officially announced" the date they did, and we have the press releases to prove it. But lest we forget, Bungie delivered the first Halo under the unbreakable deadline of the Xbox system launch. And we hear that game turned out pretty good.

Jones' response brings us right to the bright news: The Bungie team is spending those 13 months doting so feverishly on every piece of the Halo 2 puzzle-- from the intricacies of its galaxy-spanning story right down to the textured knitting on each space marine's T-shirt--that this sequel will surely wallop its predecessor in every way.

This ain't Halo 1. Bungie says that the pseudo-sequel was pure make-believe and "wishful thinking" on the part of eager-beaver journalists. Halo 2 will pack twice as many vehicles, including troop carriers and more flying machines.

It will feature destructible environments and missions set in low gravity. It will deliver full-blown online battles between an army of armor-suited Master Chiefs and alien Elites. It's sequel with so much more of Jones ceases concentration on the design process for a sec and tries: "I think the game is gonna be And wrapped in bacon.

The Bungie guys call it a "shield ship. Squads of space marines march from the main hatch and prep for an alien assault the instant the ship touches down. A few troopers hop on the back of all-terrain four-wheelers--one of Halo 2's many new vehicles --and zip up a hillside.

These guys are snipers, and when they reach the hilltop they dismount and take up positions. Then everything happens at once. Enemy Grunts, Jackals and Elites--the various races of the troublemaking alien alliance known as the Covenant--pour from their bunker and begin blasting at the marines. Some marines dash headlong into the fight. Others cover their compadres from behind trees and rocks. Explosions erupt. Glowing volleys from rapid-fire energy weapons criss-cross the terrain.

The snipers on the hillsides take beads on targets. Everyone works together. It's like a bona-fide military attack force. Don't worry--he'll show up eventually, once the level is fully designed. But anyone who's played the original game's Silent Cartographer beach battle think Saving Private Ryan with rayguns and supersonic troop characters knows that the battleground we just described is Master Chief's ultimate playground.

And it's the kind of big-scale, teamwork-oriented commotion that Bungie plans to evolve for Halo 2's single-player experience. And now I'm not talking about ordering your squad around or anything like that, but you're going to be fighting alongside marines and against organized aliens a lot more than in Halo 2. The shield-ship skirmish we just watched is actually a Bungie test level that'll wind up highly modified in the final Halo 2 product. We dunno where the battle fits into Halo 2's overall plot.

And even if we did, we wouldn't tell you. Why spoil the story of a game that's still more than a year away? But if you've seen Halo 2's wowie-zowie teaser trailer and if you haven't, go to www. That's where Halo 2 kicks off, although the trailer isn't the game's opening cinema. A brief period has passed since Halo i's finale, in which we saw Master Chief obliterate the enigmatic Halo ring-world.

He had just crushed a Covenant force and an army of mushball space mutants known as The Flood. Now he's returned to Earth with Cortana--the chatty female A. The Covenant have wiped out every last human-colony world. Earth is all that's left. Master Chief and Cortana's mission is clear: Hightail it planetside to back up Earth's forces and repel the alien blitz.

Sounds like more than enough mission for one game, right? Well, that ain't the half of it. So far, we've seen concepts for a level set in a hydroponic plant; on an orbiting space outpost; and on a mining station floating in the upper wisps of a gas giant, where hurricane-force gales make it tough just to walk, let alone massacre Covenant bad guys. One mission's set on a moon we're not sure if it's Earth's or another world's , complete with weak gravity that drops the game's hyper-realistic physics into slow-mo.

We watched Master Chief leap three times his height to reach a secret door to the Covenant's moon base. The kick from his rifle even slowed his descent when he fired downward while falling. Bungie is working on moon-buggy-style vehicles, which'll take stratospheric jumps in the low lunar gravity. And just think of all the low-G tricks you'll be able to try in multiplayer But we'll get to network play later. At some point in Halo 2, the Covenant's assault on our home planet comes to a close.

Just don't expect the end-game credits to roll when it happens. Instead, Master Chief and Cortana will zip deep into the heart of Covenant territory, attacking the source of the enemy's power. The climactic battle that follows will bring a measure of closure to the Halo saga, something that was missing from the first game.

Ultimately, humanity was in the same place as when the game started. We do know Halo 2 will reveal a lot more about the aliens and the motives behind their intergalactic assault and battery on humanity. Jones says, "or they just came across as the stupid cliche of an alien race that ruthlessly attacks mankind. Nobody knew about their social structure or anything, but I had hoped people would give us credit and realize there's more to the Covenant than what we showed.

We're really expanding on them in Halo 2. There's a whole bunch of the story we still have left to tell, and that's going to be a lot of fun. Some revelations will even come from the original Halo--at least once the sequel shows you what to look for. He's referring to the first game's mysterious little details, such as the scattered symbols on Halo and the funky history lessons from Guilty Spark. Chat with Jason Jones about sequels--any kind of sequels, even the movie variety--and he'll tell you exactly how not to do them.

And that's what you don't want to do. Likewise, we don't want to make a different game. Why eliminate the reasons people played our first game?