Playing through Halo 2 again.....

[Nophix]

So, my little brother came up to spend the night at my place on Friday. He brought his copy of Halo 2 with him, since I just picked up a 360. Now, I have Halo for the PC, and have played through it a few times. It was a decent storyline, and kinda fun on single player. Halo 2, I played through way back in the day.

So, all the Halo-hating aside, this is actually a pretty good game. I like the storyline. If you pay attention, it's pretty deep. The graphics are decent, but I do notice some lag in the cutscenes.

Controls... Wow, I just can't seem to get used to the dual analog on FPS. It isn't related to Halo. I've tried a bunch, with the same results. Too many years of the mouse and keyboard I guess.

I still hate the Live multiplayer scene. It sucks. Not the gameplay, but the people who can't seem to shut up and play. It's really hard to communicate with your team when some kid is trying to sing Got Crunk at the top of his lungs.


Anyways, I've noticed this in bargain bins for as low as $5.99. It's worth the play through at least once. I am a fan of the Halo storyline, though.

Next time, Halo 3!

[BHvrd]

I still hate the Live multiplayer scene. It sucks. Not the gameplay, but the people who can't seem to shut up and play. It's really hard to communicate with your team when some kid is trying to sing Got Crunk at the top of his lungs.



With that I agree...

[ubersaurus]

This is why Halo 3's mute button is such a welcome improvement :)

[carlcarlson]

I dunno, I really didn't care for Halo 2. I thought it was great at the beginning but quickly became tedious and boring. I didn't like having to switch characters all the time. There was also a lot of texture pop-in which I found very distracting. It's so blatant, I can't believe they shipped the game like that.

In the end it's not a bad game necessarily, it just didn't pull me in as much as the first Halo (or even as much as the beginning of Halo 2). I'm not super into Halo either though, so maybe I missed something.

[roushimsx]

I dunno, I really didn't care for Halo 2. I thought it was great at the beginning but quickly became tedious and boring.

This mirrors my opinion as well. The first level or two (basically up to the cinema where the Master Chief kicks the bomb out of the ship or some such) was fantastic, but it quickly degenerated into a substandard and tedious example of "hold here and kill x waves of enemies" game design. There were a few real high points here and there (such as when you got to leap onto the scarab and kill its crew), but for the most part it suffered from even more ctrl+c/ctrl+v level design than the first game. Anyone that didn't like The Library in Halo would fucking HATE Halo 2.

As far as storyline goes, I liked that they had you view it from two perspectives. The Arbiter's levels suffered from a lot of the same problems as the Master Chief's levels but also had a few high points..battling it out on a falling space station was interesting, though not as well executed as the final level of Unreal 2. Actually, pretty much the whole game was more underwhelming than Unreal 2 (which wasn't bad, but it wasn't great either). Oh, and the way they ended it on a cliffhanger? Fuck. that. noise. I don't like it when TV shows do that at the end of a season (fucking Lost :( ), I don't like it when movies do it (fucking Matrix Reloaded :( ), and I absolutely hate it when games do it.

That said, I enjoy reading the expanded universe material and I dig the whole Halo universe and such. Sure, it's not the most inventive sci-fi property out there, but Eric Nylund and Joseph Staten put out some pretty darn fun to read books. Just watch out for Dietz's substandard retelling of the events of the first game... :(

Now if only Neill Blomkamp could catch a fucking break so that we could get a damn movie. His previous work has been fantastic and from what he's revealed in interviews regarding how he'd planned on executing the movie sounded really awesome, too.

[The 1 2 P]

I loved playing thru Halo 2. I still don't know why so many people disliked playing as the Arbiter. I mean, it's not like he's a naked white guy named Raiden, lol. But seriously, it may not have been as revolutionary as the first Halo, but Halo 2 is still a very great memorable game for the system. As for xbox live play, the sad reality of all those annoying little kids is that atleast a third of them are adults between the ages of 18-30. And yet they still act like that.

[Nophix]

I had fun running through as the Arbiter. It gives another perspective of teh story, and helps tie thing together.

[ProgrammingAce]

The arbiter levels suck because they don't do anything for the plot. There's a huge tension built up at the end of the level, and then you spawn in as the Arbiter in a completely different part of the galaxy. It's a letdown.

Halo 2 has some good maps, Delta Halo is particularly impressive, but it's only a shadow of what Bungie wanted to do, let alone promised. I can tell you from speaking with the developers that they were more disappointed in Halo 2 then we are. They hated having to ship with game breaking bugs.


"Halo 2" is powered by a completely new graphics engine designed specifically for the Xbox hardware. "Our code squeezes every drop of power out of the Xbox," said Chris Butcher, one of "Halo 2's" engineering leads. "We're doing dynamic lighting and shadows, per-pixel everything, rendering gigantic, lush environments. The graphical features we're using are so advanced we don't even have buzzwords for them yet."


"Halo 2" surpasses its predecessor in graphical beauty and combat intensity. "'Halo 2' is a lot like 'Halo', only it's 'Halo' on fire, going 130 miles per hour through a hospital zone, being chased by helicopters and ninjas," explained Jason Jones, the head of Bungie Studios, "and the ninjas are all on fire, too." The Master Chief and his marine allies return to battle the full complement of Covenant forces, as well as as-of-yet-unrevealed foes.

That's not exactly what they shipped, now was it...

[The 1 2 P]

The arbiter levels suck because they don't do anything for the plot. There's a huge tension built up at the end of the level, and then you spawn in as the Arbiter in a completely different part of the galaxy. It's a letdown.



I loved playing thru the Arbiter's levels. Had he not been playable, it would have made all of his many cutscenes pointless to include in the game. I love the Chief's story but also loved Arbiter's side as well. As someone who's read all the Halo novels, I enjoy getting as much extra/side story from the Halo universe as possible. And playing as the Arbiter helped add more substance to the narrative of the second game.

[SkiDragon]

Yeah, people complain about the story in Halo but it is more interesting than most FPS games released nowadays, it seems.

[Gentlegamer]

Arby's levels were fun for me because I enjoyed running up to Brutes while invisible and stickying them with grenades.

[Viraneth]

I pesonally think, while graphics and and length were iffy, I say Halo 2 (and 3) are some of the best games to be played in the FPS scene. And people complain about the graphics. Screw cutscene graphics, the game plays well, and looks good when you play it. Both games do. Both are fun, especially when you play with cool people online.

[TheDomesticInstitution]

Arby's levels were fun for me because I enjoyed running up to Brutes while invisible and stickying them with grenades.


Arby's has good chicken, bacon, & swiss sandwiches. I'm all hungry now.

[FrakAttack]

Great game, loved playing as the Arbiter, but lacks a proper ending. Still, a much better game than Halo 3 (now that felt monotonous.) Forget headphones all together on most Live games for a much more enjoyable experience.

[The 1 2 P]

Great game, loved playing as the Arbiter, but lacks a proper ending.

I forgot about that. As much as I loved Halo 2, there was one slight problem with it: there was no ending to it. But beyond that glaring omission it was a quality product none the less:cheers: