Clubberjack's Unfocused Ramblings

Halo 2 and Live

Just a quick word to say that I am now a member of Xbox Live, driven to get online finally by the release of Halo 2. If anyone wants a game of Halo, Crimson Skies, or Burnout, my gamertag is (appropriately enough) "Clubberjack."

I have to say that the Live experience is really a pleasure so far. I got hooked up and payed up without a problem. The voice communication is a lot better than I had anticipated. With other people who have decent connections, the sound quality is about as good as my cell phone, sometimes better.

I've only played Halo 2, but the Live experience for that game is incredible. I've only experienced lag in 16 player matches, and people are by-and-large decent. I haven't run into too many dumb-asses. It's very easy to slowly gather a group of teammates and continue playing together. Last night, a friend and I jumped into some team skirmishes and after a few matches, we had picked up a couple more people, finally having a big enough group to make up the better part of an 8-man team. When the lag in the 8-on-8 matches got to be too bad, we switched to straight up deathmatch between the 5 of us. The ease of staying together and switching games is really quite amazing.

Also, anyone playing Halo 2 online really owes it to themselves to check out bungie.net's stat tracking system. Registering for a bungie.net account (and linking your gamertag to it), opens up some really amazing features, namely the Game Viewer, which still blows my mind.

posted by Clubberjack @ 4:09 PM