Halo 2 switch-off: Bungie's Jarrard got his "ass kicked"

Bungie comms boss Brian Jarrard didn't have the best experience playing a bit of nostalgic Halo 2 when the game was finally turned off alongside the original Xbox Live in April.

"I personally had a terrible time trying to play; I got my ass kicked and it wasn't super-fun," the dev told VG247 in Germany last week.

"But we've had some awesome memories, and at least we can bring some of those maps and some of the gameplay back into Reach, and hopefully, for people that still love Halo 2, we can rekindle a little bit of that with our new game."

"Sad"

Jarrard said the studio shed a tear at the game's passing, noting just how successful a shooter Halo 2 was for Live on the original Xbox.

"It was sad, for sure," he said. "It was kind of remarkable that it had the life that it did. My understanding is that Halo 2 was the number one original game on Xbox Live from the day it launched to the day it was turned off.

"Even when it was decommissioned, there were several thousand players a day actively playing Halo 2."

Bungie gathered round for the final few hours of multiplay, but Brian's reactions aren't what they used to be, from the sound of it.

"We had a great final send-off," he said, adding: "The game was pretty hard to get back into, because it's so radically different, and it's kind of unforgiving in terms of that hit-scan-battle-rifle experience when you're getting pegged from across the map and you're immediately dead.

"It was just a different game that from where Halo is nowadays."

Bungie is about to release its last Halo game, Reach. It hits worldwide on September 14.