Considering the overwhelming success of the popular Halo 2, it’s strange to see a retail follow up like the Halo 2 Multiplayer Map Pack, which is a great addition to the popular genre known as Halo. Diehard fans will love this new content, although nearly half of it is already available for free to download on XBOX live.

The map pack is indeed quality work. In general, the new maps are more complex than the ones that shipped with Halo 2. The new maps run the gamut from sprawling battlefields that are suitable for up to 16 players and lots of vehicular traffic and other elements of destruction. If you come to Halo 2 today for the first time, you’d be hard pressed to pick the new maps out of a lineup containing the old ones – which is a very good thing.

As with Halo 2’s prefab maps, the new maps have a simplistic design that makes them work with any of Halo 2’s different multiplayer modes.  In most cases, different modes of play will have a noticeable impact on the layout and features of a map, so the 9 new maps here are loaded with a lot of potential.  These new maps fill the need for even more variety within Halo 2, making marathon multiplayer sessions on XBOX live.

Surprisingly enough, all of this new content looks like more Halo 2.  Some of the new maps in fact, appear quite similar to some of the old ones at first glance.  A number of new ambient sound effects can also be heard in various maps, although multiplayer Halo 2 is dominated by the excellent sounds of the games weapons and awesome vehicles.  Halo 2’s presentation overall has aged wonderfully - which is to say that it hasn’t really aged at all.  This is still one of the best looking, best sounding, and best acting console games available – bar none.

The manual that comes with the Map Pack offers a slew of information, including a visual shot of each map pointing out weapon locations, as well as a little bit of history about how the map fits into the war between the humans and the Covenant. Even better, there’s a game play focused description of each map, including quotations from the artists and designers that contributed to each one. This is excellent material that sheds light on what motivated each of the particular maps and pieces.

When you consider the number of copies that Halo 2 sold across the world, it’s almost appalling to realize that only a relatively small fraction of people who have played the game have experienced it on XBOX live. In general, this explains the need for the Halo 2 Map Pack, which makes great multiplayer sessions available to offline players.

The collection of maps here are totally first rate, and helps to freshen up an extremely exciting multiplayer game, making it great for many months of fun. If you like Halo 2 – rest assured that the Map Pack is a worthy purchase that helps to make a great game even better.

- TopXboxGames.com