Let's build the hype machine up just a little bit further shall we? Goldeneye, Timesplitters, XIII, Quake, Doom, Wolfenstein, Return to Wolfenstein, Rainbow Six, Soldier of Fortune, Medal of Honour and of course, the original Halo. It's time to dismiss all these and the other great first person shooters from your game collection because Halo 2 is finally here and with it comes a new age of enlightenment and dreams of a perfect game fulfilled. A flawless masterpiece, action filled, lag free! A game that will solve world hunger, blind all other unworthy lesser games and console owners with its pious glow, snuggle up to you at night keeping you warm and safe.

Well come on, hasn't this been what we're all expecting? Halo 2 is the single biggest game that will ever hit the Xbox and has been hyped and marketed to total saturation point. The words Halo 2 and 'Only on Xbox' have been heard around the globe and even featured on numerous news, current affairs stories and even a 60 Minutes article!

So is Halo 2 the finest first person shooter ever made? You really want to know? All I can honestly say that it's one of my top 3 and unless somebody physically puts a pistol to my head, I refuse to pick a winner. I would have to rate Goldeneye on the N64 and the original Halo as having a bigger impact on me while playing through their respective single player stories the first time around. Goldeneye revolutionized the movie/game tie in, Halo was the one game that convinced me to lay down $500 to buy an Xbox and create a damn website! Memories of glorious past games can tend to cloud reality sometimes, but while those 2 games I just mentioned kicked arse in their day, their day is now over.

Halo 2 is an incredible game. Most likely you all have copies already, and are onto your second run through the campaign mode, but if you aren't I refuse to totally spoil the story for those who may be waiting for Santa to deliver it. I will be as careful as I can but it isn't possible for me to explain a few things without giving a couple of small plot elements away. You have been warned.

I've read some harsh criticisms about the story in Halo 2, but I have absolutely no issues with it at all. It picks up right where the original Halo left off, dealing with the consequences of the final heart-racing events. Obviously the Master Chief is a hero to the people of Earth for obliterating the Halo ring and the Flood, but what Bungie are keen to remind us about is that there are always two sides to any story. The game's introduction also follows what happens to the Covenant commander in charge of the alien forces that pursued the Pillar of Autumn to Halo. Who, well, isn't met with the same warm, fuzzy feelings by his own superiors. I always like a detailed story and while people have been criticizing this aspect of the game with comments like 'who gives a shit about the covenant, I just want to waste em' I enjoyed the new perspective and being able to see the Halo universe through alien eyes, and it's obvious that Bungie made a real effort to flesh out your adversaries instead of glossing over them and just leaving them as cannon fodder.

Right from the start of Halo 2 players will be right at home with the movement controls as they are identical to the first game, tight and responsive as ever. A few new additions have been made to vehicle handling such as the handbrake for the warthog and the speed boost for the ghost but these additions have been slipped into the control scheme so well that within seconds you'll feel right at home. You will be splattering your foes on the front of your Ghost or Warthog, and taking down Jackals, Grunts, Elites and the other Covenant baddies in no time at all.

The other thing you will notice is that there is no health bar. That's right! In a truly insightful act, someone at Bungie realised that making gamers search around and even backtrack for health packs is a pain in the bum and a total waste of time. All that exists now is your shield and when it's depleted you simply find cover and wait for it to recharge. When your shields are down you can only take a few hits and seeing as the Master Chief sports his brand new Mjolnir armour, you would think that it would offer a bit more protection but eliminating the need for health packs far outweighs any negative aspects.

Pretty quickly you will also notice the other great feature promised by Bungie, and the one that we've all seen in the videos: Dual Wielding. When you walk across a weapon now you have the option of not only holding X to pick it up, but also holding Y to Dual Wield it. It was one of the gameplay elements that made Goldeneye so damn addictive, and it has finally been re-introduced'and it's pretty damn sweet! It brings loads of additional strategy and fun to Halo 2 that I never expected it to. Holding a blaster pistol in one hand to take down Jackal shields and a Sub machine gun in the other hand to finish them off is just awesome and only one of the many combinations available. All single handed weapons can be Dual Weilded and mixed and matched between Covenant and Human weaponry. There are two minor problems with guns akimbo however; first-off, if you go for a melee attack the Chief drops one of the two weapons to lay down some melee smack, and likewise if you try to switch to your second weapon slot, your dual-wielded weapon gets dropped too. Neither is a major problem however, because in true Halo tradition, the dropped weapon is always nearby on the ground ready for retrieval.

Another new gameplay feature is the ability to 'Jack vehicles'. See that guy coming at you in a tank? Try your hardest to get around behind him and now you can force him out of it and drop a grenade into the hatch to ruin his fun. Warthogs, Ghosts, Banshees and even the Covenant Wraith tanks can now all be commandeered, which is awesome fun in single and multiplayer modes. In a multiplayer match I was constantly getting swooped by a some right royal pain in a Banshee (that'd be Dominus), they missed me and smacked into the ground so I ran up and kicked them out! Then before I could get away he did the same back to me, then I did it to him again, quickly gained altitude and rained plasma death down on him. Very, very satisfying. The vehicles now also all sport locational damage. You can shoot the wings of Ghosts, shoot hubcaps off the Warthogs and all the other vehicles show damage as they are being obliterated by enemy fire or by you slamming them into walls or the ground and it looks simply amazing.

The single player game takes place over 15 levels and if you thought that the first game looked great then prepare to be blown away. Halo 2 features the best shooter levels and environments ever seen on the Xbox, if not on any platform. Everything features fantastic looking bump mapping, giving great depth and detail to the game. The only place it looks kind of weird is on the faces of the other characters in the game. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. I won't ruin anyone's fun but a few of the levels you will experience at the start are an orbital space platform and some awesome levels on Earth that are loads of fun and highly detailed. If you want to know what else is in store for you, then buy the game!

There are unfortunately a few issues with the graphics, most noticeably in the cut scenes. There is a real weird texture 'pop-in' as the artwork on the characters and levels switches from a lower resolution version to the more detailed bump-mapped textures for the close up shots. If it wasn't really noticeable I probably wouldn't even mention it but the fact is it's a real eyesore and when you first see it, terribly distracting. No doubt it's part of the LOD (Level of Detail) system that is used to keep the framerate nice and solid but with all its years in development, how this ugly flaw wasn't smoothed out is beyond me. As you progress through the game it becomes less noticeable, but no doubt that's due to the shock value of it reducing and also because the game is so good a few of Halo 2's flaws can be overlooked. Remember, it's mostly during cut-scenes and occasionally during Xbox Live sessions, and takes nothing away from the gameplay and fun to be had. The other thing that I noticed within seconds is that the awesome 'detail textures' that were in Halo 1 are gone. Remember when you would walk up to a rock and see the tiny pit marks and loads of detail? No doubt due to memory restrictions these had to go and it's no great loss as Halo 2 features loads of truly mind blowing texture art and environments. Plus the action comes so fast now that you rarely have time to stop and check out these finer details.

To compliment the incredible visuals in Halo 2 Bungie have outdone themselves with the audio. Featuring full 5.1 support there's no other way to put it but say that the sound in Halo 2 simply goes off! Everything from the menu music, the in game music through to all the weapon effects is first rate. The Sub machine gun sounds a little like a pea shooter but generally all the weapons sound great. Loads of environmental effects lift the experience and the music score is amongst the greatest yet put into any game on any platform. The main Halo theme now sports a harder edge with the use of some electric guitar and the orchestrations are magic. Throughout the game you will be fighting alongside loads of Marines and you will rarely hear them say the same thing twice. Positional audio is a godsend, and those of you with a 5.1 setup will be at a distinct advantage in both offline and online play.

The single player campaign is engrossing and as much fun as the first game to play through, even more in most areas. How Bungie have managed to squeeze out such enormous levels, with virtually no loading times, on 3 year old technology is a marvel. The artwork, architecture and layout of the levels, the character art, the voice acting and gameplay experience is of the highest standard and every level drips quality. It can be tricky at times to work out what direction you have to head so a little waypoint prompt or a basic map would have helped enormously, but you eventually work out where the Master Chief needs to be. If you loved the first game you will love Halo 2 and for that reason alone it comes highly recommended. My only real complaints with the game is the horrible texture pop-in during the cut scenes and that experienced shooter fans will find everything over about 5 hours before they thought it might end. Halo 2 isn't a short game but it's not the lengthiest one I've ever played. Luckily it's just so damn awesome and it had me hooked non-stop. I won't mention the ending, but let's just say that reactions to it have been mixed at best.

No doubt one of the main reasons many of us have been looking forward to Halo 2 is because even 2 years after first playing Halo, we still lug a T.V and all our Xbox gear to a mates house for LAN parties. Multiplayer Halo has been responsible for some of the classic gaming moments between my mates and I, and Halo 2 basically kicks the first game in the nuts!

First up the fantastic co-operative mode is back. Two players can share a television via split screen and play through the whole single player campaign together! Unfortunately you can't play co-op online or system link and no doubt if it could have been done, Bungie would have given it to us. You'll have to head back to Rainbow Six 3 for your online co-op fix i'm afraid. System link multiplayer for 16 players is supported again but the 2 team limit has been removed and as well as the good old 'Red vs. Blue' now you can also have Yellow, Purple and loads more teams as well all sporting separate funky colours. 16 players spread into 4 teams of 4 playing 'King of the Hill' is going to create some truly frantic action!

But easily the best thing to hit the Xbox this year is the fact that Halo 2 supports full online multiplayer for 16 people. This is great news, but the real kicker is in the way everything is handled, which is nothing short of perfection. The amount of game modes on offer are huge, including Slayer (your normal Deathmatch), Capture the Flag (with loads of variations), Juggernaut, and King of the Hill. In addition to this there are new modes like Assault and territories, providing an extremely varied experience, with the ability to use these game modes on any multiplayer map and totally customise what you want.. well are you drooling yet? Favourites around the Xbox World Australia office include Slayer deathmatch with Elite Swords only on the Midship level, and team Slayer or CTF on the Blood Gulch Halo 1 map remake, Coagulation. Doing strafing runs in a Banshee at a warthog while the flag carrier tries to escape is online gaming at its greatest, especially when the Warthog blows up and you score a nice double or triple kill!

I will admit that my previous experiences with First Person Shooters on Xbox Live have been less than memorable. People connecting with crappy connections and lagging all over the place does not make for a great time. With those memories still lingering I am happy to report that the netcode in Halo 2 is easily the best I have ever experienced. With the upload speed of most residential broadband plans in Australia being capped at 128k (15kb/second) there's not a great deal of room for bandwidth to push itself around. I have been hosting almost lag free games with 8 and sometimes even 10 people in them with great success on my cable connection. I have also been involved in plenty of games where the hoster has been on a 512/128 ADSL connection and barring a few very minor instances of lag and dropouts the gameplay has been totally rock solid, almost bullet proof. But come on Telstra, how about some more upload bandwidth'would it kill you?

At first the online system in Halo 2 can be a bit confusing as there is no 'create game' option in the menu that most other Xbox Live games have. Rather, you create a 'Party' of friends and then hop from game to game through the matchmaking options or create your own public or private game. You can start up a custom game at anytime and invite your friends in or make it public and watch people you don't know start appearing. The benefits of using the matchmaking system is that as you play, in a small RPG twist, you gain experience points that are used to help rank you against other players. This way when using this system you are put against gamers around the same skill level as yourself and rewarded when killing those ranked higher than you. For a complete run down of how this system works, click here to visit Bungie.net as it is quite involved.

Halo 2 also has online support for Clans and some matches can only be entered if you are part of one. So if you find yourself regularly playing with the same people why not start one up and get competing against the other clans online! I can foresee some truly great online battles coming up and Bungie have included all the tools to make it as streamlined and fun as possible. You can also customise your appearance between a Master Chief or Elite character, your colour scheme and not only can you pick 1 of 56 logos to wear on your armour, but you can also change the primary and secondary colours of it so that you all look the same! This is actually the first thing you do in Halo 2 when creating your profile and can be revisited at anytime and edited if you get sick of running around online as a pink Elite soldier.

If the post game stats aren't enough for you then by signing up for a .NET passport and linking your XBL Gamertag to it a whole world of information is waiting for you at the Bungie website. You can view stats on every game you have played and it is so detailed that it almost defies belief. Not only can you see your kills, amount of ammo fired, your hit percentage and who killed who, but you can also bring up images of the maps that show you where you got killed and where you got all your own kills. There's nothing to say except that stats fanatics have been totally catered for and going through your own stats is awesome. If you haven't seen it yet go do so now!

Lastly, I've heard all the arguments and counter arguments, but would it have killed Bungie to include support for some computer controlled Bots for offline practice or just mucking around? No doubt Bungie worked their arses off getting Halo 2 completed but seeing as the short(ish) campaign puts the main focus of the game on multiplayer, some Bots would have been the icing on the cake. Saying that, let nothing take away from the simple fact that Halo 2 is easily the best First Person Shooter to hit the Xbox and an essential purchase for all Xbox owners.