Salvation finally arrives for Xbox fans awaiting 'HALO 2'

In a scene reminiscent of the recent remake of "Dawn of the Dead," hundreds of people poured into College Mall late Monday night to satiate an incredible hunger.\nBut unlike the zombies in that movie who were after brains, these "zombies" only craved a freshly shrink-wrapped copy of the Microsoft Xbox game "HALO 2."\n"'HALO' was possibly the greatest game of all time" said junior Aaron Lush as he shivered in the cold waiting at the front of the line for the mall doors to open. "With 'HALO,' there's a whole social factor behind it. Get 15 friends together and just blow each other up. It's always a good time."\nTwo stores in the mall, EB Games and Gamestop, opened at midnight Tuesday to sell the game to hundreds of eager fans. The line for Gamestop was nearly 300 people long. The EB line, nearly twice that. At 2 a.m. there were still people waiting to purchase the new game.\nAround 7,000 stores nationwide participated in the event.\nLocal Gamestop manager Aron Deppert said more than 500 people had reserved 'HALO 2' at the store, some since 2001, when the original game was announced. Last week, Microsoft announced that more than 1.5 million pre-orders had been sold for the game.\n"I have no idea why it's so popular," Deppert said. "I think people just like to hurt each other, just not in real life."\nThe original "HALO," released as an Xbox launch title in November 2001, has made such an impression on people that the first fans began waiting outside the mall at 7 p.m. for the game. Some of the predominantly male crowd even brought chairs.\n"I got a call from EB that said it might not be there if I don't take advantage of the midnight opening," said junior Ryan Murphy. "I can't imagine getting here five or six hours earlier, maybe a half hour, though."\n"HALO 2" comes in two forms. The first is the standard edition, packaged like any other Xbox game, and retails for $49.99. The second "limited edition" retails for $54.99 and comes in a metal case with a special "making of" DVD.\nBesides the standard graphic, sound and gameplay updates, the real hook of this sequel is online play -- something many gamers felt was sorely missing from the original once they experienced 16-player LAN games.\n"The game is not made for one player. It's made for Xbox Live," said Bloomington South High School junior Tyler DeLong.\nMeanwhile, Deppert still doesn't understand the widespread appeal of the game.\n"If I had a friend I wanted to shoot, I wouldn't play video games with him," he said.\n-- Contact campus editor Chris Frieberg at wfreiber@indiana.edu.