The player assumes the roles of Master Chief and the Arbiter, and fights enemies on foot or with a collection of alien and human vehicles.

In the game, humans, who have developed faster-than-light travel and colonized hundreds of worlds, have been engaged in a war against a collective of genocidal alien races, the Covenant. The game features a new game engine, the Havok physics engine added weapons and vehicles new multi-player maps and a continuation of the storyline from Halo: Combat Evolved. As of September 25, 2007, Halo 2 is the fifth best-selling video game in the US with 6.3 million copies sold in the United States alone.

As of May 9, 2006, Halo 2 is the best-selling first-generation Xbox game with 8 million copies sold worldwide. By June 20, 2006, more than 500 million games of Halo 2 had been played and more than 710 million hours have been spent playing it on Xbox Live by May 9, 2007, this number had risen to more than five million unique players on Xbox Live. After its initial release, Halo 2 was the most popular video game on Xbox Live, holding that rank until the release of Gears of War for the Xbox 360 nearly two years later. Released for the Xbox game console on November 9, 2004, the game is the sequel to Halo: Combat Evolved. Halo 2 is a science fiction first-person shooter video game developed by Bungie Studios.

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