Halo 2’s Lockout is the quintessential arena map

I hear three consecutive beeps and I stiffen. I used to believe that this reaction was thanks to Mario Kart 64 or some other Nintendo 64 game. Years later, I realized that it was by playing Halo 2 on weekends when I was younger, and only on weekends, because my grade-conscious Latino parents wanted the best for me. And while I enjoyed Big Team Battles on large maps like Coagulation and Zanzibar, I loved cutting my teeth on smaller Halo arena maps.

My favorite of these was always Lockout. The map was just one big square with four outlying areas. But its simplicity is what makes it the quintessential Halo stadium. Designed by Max Hoberman and Chris Carney for Halo 2, the map it acts like a crash course in the flow, or how a player moves seamlessly through a space. I spent so much time in the frozen facility, over a bottomless pit, that I began to resolve disputes within my friends by playing together.

Lockout’s simplicity is deceptive. Sure, it’s basically a few rooms connected by bridges. But its corridors and tight turns push players into a state of cross-flow, as players discover the best routes to attack and evade enemies. Combatants move in micro circles to hunt down other players, going up and down three levels as they search for powerful weapons and take into account the varied lines of sight of enemies.

Image: Bungie / 343 Industries

Moving through the arena requires weighing strategic options. There are several routes to get to the battle rifle tower, for example. Checking the location of the energy sword on its way to that landmark could mean jumping from the main plaza on the second level and going up the ramp, then returning to the course it started on and continuing to hunt. Instead, you could take a more conservative approach, going for the lower level to avoid getting stuck in the open space of the main square.

The lock also worked especially well for players who mastered the various jumps from the original Halo series, making the map even more of a playground. Risk takers could move rapidly through the levels by jumping between catwalks above the infinite abyss. An expert would simply maneuver through the primary rigid points, such as the gravity lift or the Sniper Tower. These points doubled as significant orientation markers for expert players, adding to the interconnectedness of the arena.

As Bungie and 343 Industries added more Halo maps to each installment in the franchise, I kept looking for the next lockdown. But I never found a multiplayer map that could match how good it felt to play the original. Even after its remake in Halo 3 like Blackout, I missed the cooler tones of the original map. And although Certain Affinity made minor changes to Halo 2: AnniversaryLockdown, like extending the elbow under the Grav Lift with an additional cover, still didn’t give me the same rush I was looking for.

Listen: I love The Rig, Midship and The Pit. But they don’t trigger those same youthful brain waves that I yearned for when I jumped into the blockade. Maybe you just have to accept that Lockout is always in the Halo conversation because his flow is perfect. I don’t think I will find something like that for a while.