Halo 2: landing on the second halo

Lots of progress today - I destroyed the scarab, and the covenant fleet flew, warping away from Earth (causing much destruction as it went). I was on a ship that got carried along with them.

And then the game switched to follow the fortunes of the army commander who the covenant held responsible for the destruction of the first halo. At the start of the game you see him being shamed and humiliated, but he was then offered a way out of eternal damnation - become the suicidal arbiter and be sent to kill heretics. And then you get given control of him.

It plays pretty much the same as when playing the Master Chief, though your allies are more numerous to start with and are normal covenant forces. And you have the energy sword (which, unlike in multiplayer, has a limited number of uses). And you have an invisibility cloak. This last piece really changes the game - you can be much more exploratory, making sure you know how a room's structured before revealing yourself. The cloak only lasts for a short time, and disappears if you shoot or attack, but it does mean you can be much more strategic.

After fighting my way through the facility - I'm not entirely sure what it was meant to be - flying around the top in a banshee and destroying many guns, and coming across the flood (oh, great), the leader of the heretics locked himself in a room. I was instructed to go and cut the cables - and the facility started to fall. To start with, there was much shaking and I felt that I could jump higher than normal ... but then it all seemed to settle down and it was if the facility wasn't moving at all. Very odd. I went and found the leader, chased him outside, and jumped on a banshee to follow him. He flew off somewhere else, and I started to follow him, but then there was a checkpoint so I went there instead - and somehow I'd caught up with him. He then created two holographic clones of himself and they started to fire at me - but I kept an eye on the real him, grabbed a sword and killed him.

Back to Master Chief, and the covenant ship appears next to another halo. So far I've landed on it, had some great firefights, and have just crawled through a cave to find a very leafy valley filled with snipers. Luckily, there was one sniper in the cave itself, and I've stolen his beam rifle. This should be fun.