The Unauthorized Halo 2 Battle Guide: Advanced Combat Techniques

This guide was immediately useful to me. I'm a fairly average shooter with a really inconsistent track record. I play no more than 8 or 10 hours a week, although sometimes I go on a binge. So it takes me a little time to get back into the swing of things. But even when I play all night, I get very frustrated at times. As I started to use the tips in this guide, it showed me a new way of thinking about the game as well as new things to look for during battle. I read it all in a day and couldn't wait to get back online. The difference was subtle at first, and then it really started working well. It was like when Neo suddenly started fighting Agent Smith with one hand. I could begin to see how other players were making errors, and as soon as I saw it, I could capitalize. The two biggest things I learned about weapons also made a big difference. So I have become a great deal more effective with the Battle Rifle and with grenades. Also, exploding the myths about headshots was a great revelation.

With just a few months since Halo 2 was released I'm impressed that Stephen Cawood (with the help of Crew 116) managed to produce and publish such an excellent Halo 2 battle guide this soon. The guide is timely for us new comers to Halo 2, since many dedicated players are already well advanced in their skills making game play rather frustrating without knowledge of good battle techniques. I really needed to go beyond the basics, learn team strategy and start thinking like a real player. The Unauthorized Halo 2 Battle Guide is helping me by giving me concise, meaty tips and pointers with plenty of full color Halo 2 game play screen shots to help visualize the technique being discussed. But, I'm finding it difficult to immediately translate Cawood's battle tips to actual game combat. It's one thing to describe battle techniques in a actionless situation - it's another to perform those techniques with an opponent blazing his guns at you or teammates that have their own strategy ideas. So, this guide will not give you an immediate edge just by reading it once. What I'm doing is referring to the guide after each game to glean from my mistakes in the actual game. It's a matter of internalizing the techniques - just reading them alone will not do it. Before I discovered this guide I was looking all over the Net for such tips, which came in a haphazard way mostly in Halo 2 forums sandwiched between distracting trash-talk. A few websites have attempted such a guide, but they fall way short of the content sequence, organization and highly focused pointers that are presented in Cawood's guide. When I start a Halo 2 clan, this guide will be required reading. This Halo 2 battle guide is a timely, well written, full color, highly focused battle strategy guide that exceeded my expectations. As such it gives me the incentive to stick with the game long enough to get past the frustration curve that comes with seemingly everyone else knowing Halo 2 battle techniques better than I. This battle guide is as important to me as my Xbox controller. Well done Stephen and Crew 116. I will purchase your next guide without hesitation.

I have read this big guide from cover to cover in hopes of being enlightened and it has worked. I have found that every single strategy in this book works great depending on the situation. I have gotten up to level 11 using almost every strategy in the book so whether you are new or a veteran to Halo 2 you will find something useful in this guide.

Unlike the "walk-throughs" that call themselves strategy guides, this book actually talks tactics. If you want to learn combat maneuvers and have a chance against the best on Xbox Live, you need to add this book to your arsenal.

Unlike most of the Halo 2 guides available Battle Guide provides more than a simple overview of Halo 2. The Battle Guide provides strategy guidance, weapon combination recommendations, detailed maps and descriptions of various team tactics and when to employ them. After completing the single player campaign on Legendary, I thought I would dominate on Live. However, I found that the tactics I employed to defeat Halo enemy AI's were of little use in the multiplayer context. The Advanced Combat Techniques was given to me as an early Christmas gift and I was able to use it to good advantage within a few hours. I would definitely recommend this Battle Guide to any serious Halo 2 - Live player.