Video Game: Sonic Adventure 2

Title: Sonic Adventure 2
Developer: Sonic Team / Sega
Platform: Dreamcast
Released: June 2001
Played from: 2001-2004, occasionally since

It's early 2001. 9/11 hasn't happened yet. Sega's top execs are looking fearfully at the accounting reports: the company is going bankrupt, and the Dreamcast isn't the saving grace they hoped it would be. They are hoping their little blue mascot will turn the tide of the war, but they know deep down that they are doomed.

Overview
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Sonic Adventure 2 is widely regarded as the last great Dreamcast game, and some fans consider it the last great Sonic game.

Sonic Adventure 2 is the first chapter in Sonic's new direction as a series. It is darker; focusing on themes such as betrayal, abuse of power, and struggling to keep faith in humanity. In similar fashion to the first Sonic Adventure, you play through the same story multiple times. This time, however, you play on both sides of the story: Sonic's quest to keep balance and peace, and Eggman's quest to rise to power. The events of Sonic Adventure 2 are used as the base of nearly every Sonic game released since 2001.

Plot
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Here be spoilers, etc.

50 years ago, Eggman's grandfather, Gerald Robotnik, worked for the military agency GUN on a space colony known as ARK. Using the Chaos Emeralds, he experimented with creating the "ultimate life form" which could use the emeralds to their fullest potential. This life form was a hedgehog named Shadow. Learning about this, GUN invaded the ARK arrested Robotnik, and killed his daughter Maria. Maria managed to save Shadow and sent him to Earth in an escape pod before she was killed.

In the present, Eggman finds the GUN facility where Shadow is being held, and releases him. Shadow is plagued by amnesia, and only remembers watching Maria die. They team up with Rouge the Bat, a professional treasure hunter, and begin gathering Chaos Emeralds to unlock the secrets of the ARK.

Shadow steals a Chaos emerald from a bank, and Sonic gets blamed for it. He manages to escape from a GUN helicopter at first, but is captured and imprisoned, only to be rescued by Tails and Amy. Knuckles joins the party after he is forced to shatter the Master Emerald to keep it out of the hands of Eggman and Rouge.

The teams struggle against each other, and eventually end up on the ARK, where Eggman uses six of the Chaos Emeralds to fire its Death Star-esque main cannon to destroy half of the moon. He threatens to use it again on Earth if he is not recognized as dictator of the planet. The cannons will take 24 hours to recharge, so Sonic and team try to stop Eggman, but ultimately lose and Eggman gets the seventh Emerald needed to unlock the ARK's full potential.

The team then realize that right before he was captured and executed, Gerald Robotnik rigged the ARK to collide with and destroy Earth if it was ever united with all seven Emeralds. The ARK begins tumbling toward the planet, and Shadow realizes that his final promise to Maria was to protect humanity. Everyone bands together to stop the colony, but the team eventually encounters the Biolizard, which is the malevolent prototype of the ultimate life form. It assumes control of the colony to ensure that it will destroy Earth, and Sonic and Shadow use the Chaos emeralds to turn into their Super forms, defeat the Biolizard, and return the colony back into stable orbit. Shadow uses the last of his power to help Sonic, and falls to his death when they teleport the ARK. The team gathers to pay their respects to Shadow and say goodbye.

See? I told you this one was dark!

Gameplay
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SA2 does away with many of the features from its predecessor. Adventure fields are gone, and there are only three real level types. Sonic and Shadow follow Sonic's levels in the original: their levels are very streamlined, and the goal is to get through as quickly as possible. Knuckles and Rouge follow Knuckle's levels in the original: their levels are wide open and the goal is to find 3 objects, most commonly shards of the Master Emerald. Tails and Eggman follow Gamma's levels in the original: they have streamlined levels and focus on blowing things up.

Some new elements are added to keep things fresh, at least. Sonic and Shadow can grind on rails with their shoes, which presents some interesting new challenges. Levels on the ARK have reduced gravity, and Shadow is faced with the unique challenge of navigating on rotating "gravity pipes."

Again, everyone shares a Chao Garden, which can be entered through the Level Select screen or by finding the Chao Key in any level. There are three gardens: the normal one, the good one (heaven-themed), and the evil one (halloween themed). If a character raises a certain chao, it will grow up to be good or evil if it liked that person, and will grow up more efficiently if it is moved to the correct garden. Chao can be raised to compete in races, but have no real impact on the game.

Graphics
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This is (with the possible exception of Soul Calibur or Skies of Arcadia) as good as the Dreamcast ever got. Colors are bright, characters are detailed, and the levels are beautiful.

Sound
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This is the first game to do away with the arcade-y sound effects of the classic Sonic games. The music is mostly generic hard rock, often with strange lyrics. Again, everything is much darker than the original, and the characters aren't as blissfully optimistic sounding in the cutscenes, which conveys a much more mature game overall.

Replay value
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Fun glitches are gone this time around, but there are some actual features that the developers left for you to find. Every level can be played through 5 times, and you are given a rank from A through E for each play. If you complete every level's 5 playthroughs, you unlock alternate costumes for all of your characters in multiplayer. Get an A across the board, and you unlock extra characters in multiplayer: Amy (Sonic), Metal Sonic (Shadow),Tikal (Knuckles), Chaos 0 (Rouge), Big (Eggman), Chao Walker (Tails). If you get straight A's, you also unlock a 3D rendition of Green Hill Zone for Sonic's 10th anniversary.

Oh, did I mention there's multiplayer? It isn't much to speak of, but it's there. Basicaly you play through regular old levels against a friend to accomplish the same goal as the story mode, but you get special moves when you collect rings. There is also a kart race mode, but only Sonic and Shadow stand a chance of winning, since the AI is ruthless, makes flawless turns, and most characters don't have the maximum speed necessary to actually win a race. The Gamecube port of the game has a completely overhauled multiplayer, but I've never actually played it.

There is one recurring easter egg in the game: if you look closely enough, you will notice that Big the Cat can be found in a precarious situation (such as holding on for dear life above a bottomless pit) in most levels, and even some cutscenes. These were removed from the Gamecube version for unknown reasons.

And finally, there is the Chao garden, which as previously mentioned, is a bit more sophisticated than the original Sonic Adventure.

Closing thoughts
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Sonic Adventure 2 is one of the precious few great Dreamcast games, and still holds its own. The series went straight downhill after Sonic Heroes, but SA2 is a solid game, and a must-play if you like Sonic and can find it still.

Video Game: Skies of Arcadia

Developer: OverWorks
Platform: Dreamcast
Released: 2000
Played from: 2001-2004, occasionally since


Skies was the second RPG I ever finished, and maintains a special place in my heart to this day. On its surface, it seems like a relatively unremarkable turn-based RPG with too damn many random encounters, but the game has many visual and storytelling moments that simply leave a lasting impression.

Background and Story
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Arcadia is a world comprised of nothing but floating islands suspended in an endless sky. Six moons are present in the sky, each of which shape the landscape below it by periodically loosing a large meteor to plummet to the world below, which the inhabitants of Arcadia call "Moonstones" and use to power their airships and homes. Each moon corresponds to an element that dominates the nation situated below it. Red corresponds to fire, and the nation of Nasr is a vast desert. Yellow corresponds to lightning, and the nation of Valua is a charred, industrial wasteland. Green corresponds to nature, and the nation of Ixa'Taka is a dense rainforest. Blue corresponds to water and wind, and the kingdom of Yafutoma is a nation of adept sailors and beautiful waterscapes. Purple corresponds to ice, and is an unexplored, uninhabited icy wasteland. Silver corresponds to life, death, and power, and the kingdom of Soltis was banished to the Deep Sky and left only Shrine Island behind with its mechanical guardians as a testament of its greatness.

(Here be spoilers, so skip this if you want to experience the story first hand)



Thousands of years ago, great civilizations flourished under all six moons. They eventually gathered enough technology to create six refined Moon Crystals, which would serve as reservoirs of infinite energy for their nations. However, they became envious of one another, and used the crystals to create giant robotic war machines, called Gigas. As a war was beginning to break out across the entire globe, all six moons began to rain down moonstones of such size and frequency that the whole world was destroyed.

In the present, the world has just entered the age of exploration, with Valua emerging from a war with Nasr as the dominant world power. This world has strong parallels with our own world circa 1500-1900. In a nutshell, Valua is Spain at the height of its power (about 1550), Nasr is the Ottoman empire of northern Africa right after its peak influence (late 1400s), Ixa'Taka is the combined Aztec and Inca empires right before their total collapse and enslavement (1520-1550), and Yafutoma is Japan right before opening its borders to the Western world (1850s). In opposition to the forces of Valua are two pirate factions: Black Pirates who are ruthless plunderers of merchant vessels, and Blue Rogues, who are chivalrous and attack only Valuan warships in a fair fight.

You are Vyse, a 17-year old Blue Rogue accompanied by his childhood friend Aika. In a raid on a Valuan ship, you find an unconscious 16-year old girl and bring her back to your family's headquarters. After winning her trust, she reveals herself to be Fina, but you leave soon after with Aika to recover a fallen moonstone on the nearby Shrine Island. On your return, you discover that your base has been sacked by the Valuan navy, and Fina, your father, and nearly everyone else has been taken back to Valua to be executed. Right after setting off to save them, your ship is destroyed by the arcwhale Rhaknam and you are narrowly rescued by Drachma, the one-armed old man who has been tirelessly hunting the whale (a clear nod to Moby Dick). After some initial struggles, Drachma helps you into the Valuan capital under the guise of merchant fishers, and you stage a daring rescue with the help of Valua's scorned lower class citizens. Back at Pirate Isle, Fina reveals that she is one of the last two mortal Silivites, who escaped the destruction of the ancient world in a space station. She tells you the world's history, and that her old friend Ramirez was sent to prevent the world from re-discovering the secret of the moon crystals, but fell to the temptation of power and allied with the Valuan general Galcian to recover them in Valua's name.

Fina joins your party, and you travel the world in search of the moon crystals. Every land you visit has a sub-plot, and the character's history folds out in a remarkably well-told way. After discovering the moon crystal in almost every instance, you are tricked, betrayed, or forced to surrender it to one of the generals of Valua, who unleash the often-uncontrollable Gigas which you must defeat.
After a chance encounter with Rhaknam, Drachma pursues it with reckless abandon to avenge his dead son, but forces Vyse, Aika, and Fina off his ship after it is critically damaged, preferring to die rather than miss his chance at revenge. The group is temporarily split, where Vyse is rescued from an uninhabited island by smooth-talking ladies' man and fellow Blue Rogue, Guilder. Aika and Fina are rescued by a female pirate who has been chasing Guilder, seeking to win him over and marry him. The party reuinites after discovering that they had both been seeking the same legendary pirate treasure, which turned out to be only a single coin.

After breaking back into the Valuan capital to steal a ship, they encounter the Valuan prince Enrique, who is disgusted with his mother's leadership decisions and the corruption stemming from Galcian's leadership of the armada. He offers them his personal ship the Delphinius in exchange for being able to sail with them. After battling through the Armada to escape, Guilder makes a hasty getaway after being discovered by his admirer. The crew resumes their quest, with Vyse becoming captain of the ship and establishing a base at his uninhabited island and building a crew during the course of his travels.

The crew eventually discovers that Rhaknam is the Purple Gigas, and Drachma has come to the painful realization that the whale was nothing more than a victim of an ancient war. The whale saved his life by taking him to its ancient home, and he spent several months trying to nurse him back to health, to no avail. Eventually, Enrique decides to head back to Valua to attempt to reason with his mother, but when the crew returns to their base, they discover it has been burned to the ground by Ramirez, who beats the party in battle and siezes all of the crystals from them. After recovering Fina's ship, the crew heads to the Silivite space station, where they learn that the Silivites built the most powerful Gigas of all, which they used to destroy the world in ancient times, and had planned to do it again to prevent Valua's rise to power. Ramirez arrives and kills one of the elder Silivites, taking a piece of the Silver Crystal from his body. He and Galcian use all six crystals to raise Soltis from the deep sky, and betray Valua, calling the Rains of Destruction until the whole nation is destroyed. Vyse forms an alliance with all the pirates he met previously (friendly and hostile) to take on Galcian's armada, and the Silivite elders sacrifice themselves to weaken Soltis and the silver Gigas. Galcian is killed by a suicide attack from one of his generals sympathetic to Vyse's cause, and the party forces their way into Soltis to face Ramirez, driven mad by Galcian's death. He sacrifices himself to fully resurrect the Silver Gigas, but is eventually defeated. The game ends as the characters begin to rebuild the world.


 
Gameplay
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Skies is a truly turn-based RPG at its heart. You select moves for all of your characters at the beginning of a round, and then watch how the battle plays out, round by round. The main strategic element for random battles is the moon stones that you equip to your weapons. Each moon stone governs the character's effectiveness against a certain enemy. Every color is either strong, weak, or neutral against another color--for example, purple and red are very strong against each other (lower defense and higher damage) whereas yellow is strong against green, but green is weak against yellow. The party also shares a "spirit gague" which is depleted when a character uses a special move or casts magic, and replenished when a character uses a "focus" command or at the end of a round. Other than that, there is really no more strategy in most battles than "Kill everything."

Ship battles are a bit different. The battle is set out on a 4x4 grid, and you select the order in which the characters attack. The squares in the grid are either red, yellow, or green, indicating the likelihood that an enemy will use a strong attack. In every round, the characters can man either a main gun (hits once for big damage), a secondary cannon (hits for 1-4 rounds for small damage), a magic cannon (casts a spell and never misses, but may not do much damage), or a torpedo (hits for big damage, with low accuracy and must strike in a later round). The main strategy is that by synchronizing your hits, it is possible to "stagger" an enemy ship and make them miss. Doing so can affect the outcome of the next round, giving you the opportunity to land a critical hit at certain points, or even use your s. cannon (either a harpoon or the moonstone cannon). There are a few dozen ship battles in the game, ranging from respawning Valuan patrols or Black Pirate raiders to unique battles against Gigas or some of Arcadia's nastier sky monsters.

When you are not battling monsters, you can explore the skies in your airship (you get to pilot 8 ships over the course of the game, but spend more than 95% of your time in either the Little Jack or Delphinius) or on foot in various towns and dungeons. You will periodically be faced with some simple puzzles, but for the most part you just run from beginning to end, fighting monsters in random encounters as you go.


Graphics and Sound
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Skies is visually one of the slickest games that ever came out during the Dreamcast's short life. The world is crisp and vivid, and moving from one land to the other ensures that the visuals will always stay fresh. The flatness of some parts of the world (Skies pre-dates bump mapping and the character faces are 2D images wrapped onto a 3D head) show the age of this game, but by no means is it outdated yet. Furthermore, the attention to detail is amazing. When flying over the towns and dungeons, you can see individual buildings and structures, all to appropriate scale. Furthermore, you can enter first person mode at any time by pressing the Y button to see things in the world you might not otherwise see. Battles are also fully 3D and rendered in real-time, although moves are not as visually impressive as games like Final Fantasy or Grandia II as a result.

In terms of sound, Skies is mostly rock solid. The music is crisp, memorable, and fits every location flawlessly. As a sort of hidden blessing, the voice acting is almost entiely absent. All of the characters speak only through text, with an occasional "Argh!" or "Yay!" thrown in to add to the character of the conversation. This was done because the game without voice files already had to be put on two gigabyte-sized discs, and adding voice would require a third or even fourth. Although I was disappointed at the time, a valuable lesson I learned from other Japanese RPG's is that Japanese RPG's do not translate well into English voice acting, period. This is reinforced by the battle sequences, where full voice acting was left intact, leaving us with such gems as "Your trial will be swift and just! NOW FACE YOUR PUNISHMENT!" and "Where there is light, there is darkness. SWORD OF THE DARK MOON!" Thankfully, you can skip your own super moves, and battles with speaking opponents are rare enough that it never becomes bothersome.


Replay Value
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I played through Skies of Arcadia twice, once just to experience the story, and a second time to get 100% completion. The first game took about 60 hours (40-50 if I didn't grind at certain points to over-level) and the second took about 120 hours. There are a few things outside the main quest to do, which is unfortunate. Beyond the main quest, there are numerous discoveries around the world which, when activated or "found" bring up a neat little informational card about the discovery, and can be sold to a special vendor in each town for a specific amount of gold (some discoveries will be found by other sailors or a rival explorer, which decreases their value if you don't find them first.) Additionally, there are some side-quests (most include hunting down a rare item for a merchant or helping someone reunite with a "lost" family member in another town) which seldom take more than 20 minutes to complete, and carry minimal reward. Also, for the obsessive among you, some monsters carry a 1-2% chance of dropping an exceedingly rare item, armor, or weapon that cannot be found elsewhere in the game. And finally, you will need a crew for many parts in the game. Some crew members have to join in order to progress through the story, and some are optional and must be hunted down and be convinced to join your crew. These people populate your base (some are merchants, while others do nothing) and boost your ship's stats during battle.

Although it is probably irrelevant at this point, the first disc allows you to go online and download three add-ons: one that adds two weapons--Vyse's tuna cutlass and Aika's swirlmerang (giant lollipop); one that adds an optional ship boss of a giant Looper (a persistent enemy in the game notorious for its ability to resist most magic, dodge most physical attacks, and run from battle); and one that adds Hamachou Island, which adds the final Cham needed to upgrade Fina's weapon (Cupil) to its final form, as well as an old man who will tell you your game stats and make snide comments.
 
Skies was ported to the Gamecube in 2003 as Skies of Arcadia Legends. I never had a Gamecube, so I was not able to play it, but it adds new discoveries, more battles against notorious pirates (bounties that can be traded in for substantial money), some enhanced back story, and a quest to gather invisible "moonfish" for a young girl and her Hamachou in exchange for rare equipment that previously could only be acquired as random battle loot. It also features enhanced graphics and lower quality sound (the DC uses uncompressed sound files, and the GC compressed the sound files to make the game fit onto the mini DVD) and allows the game's enemies to level with you, which will maintain the challenge even at level 99.

Closing Remarks
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First off, Skies of Arcadia (and Legends) is one of those games that falls into the category of "Japanese RPG that was critically acclaimed but never sold well and is consequently rare with a dedicated cult following." It was only stocked by retail stores for about a year until the Dreamcast went down the bankruptcy drain, and a used copy will run you $30-75 on eBay, with new copies going for $75-100+. You might get incredibly lucky and find a copy of Legends in a Gamestop or similar store (I heard of one Gamestop 50 miles from my house that had a copy a couple years ago), but again, expect to pay at least $30 for it. Not that I'm advocating piracy, but there are free emulators for both the DC and GC floating around on the internet...

That said, I would place Skies of Arcadia in my top 10 games of all time. True, the story is largely cookie cutter, the characters are mostly static and one-dimensional, and the frequency of random encounters artificially inflates the game's length. But there is a certain charm to this game that few others are able to match. The world feels vibrant and full of life and history. Vyse doesn't need to grow up because he doesn't start out as a sullen, over-dramatic, self-absorbed late adolescent, but rather an energetic, optimistic natural-born leader.

If you can find it, Skies of Arcadia is a must-play for any RPG fan, and I would strongly recommend it even to those new to the RPG.

Video Game: Grandia II

Developer: Game Arts
Platform: Dreamcast
Released: 2000
Played from: 2000-2005

Figured that the first RPG I ever beat should be the first I review.

Overview
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Grandia II is pretty typical for a Japanese RPG of the time. You are an emotionally troubled 17 year old Geohound (mercenary/bodyguard) who takes a cakewalk escort mission for some easy money, but gets caught up in something much larger than a simple job. You assemble a rag-tag team of misfits along the way, fight loads of baddies, and save the world from an ancient evil and against all odds.

Gameplay
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The gameplay is pretty straightforward, but complex enough that you will need some strategy to prevail. On its surface, Grandia II is a turn-based RPG. The real distinction comes in a few key points. First of all, the enemies are always visible on the screen in the dungeon, which lets you see what you are up against before you go head-to-head, and also lets you attempt to sneak up on the monster from behind and gain an advantage in battle. Second, rather than being strictly turn-based, the characters all have an "Action Gague" which fills based on their quickness, and requires a similar warm up time between selecting your action and the actual execution of the action. This comes in to play because in addition to a standard combo attack, all characters have a "Cancel" attack that hits once for extra damage and can either reduce the enemy's action gague, or can entirely cancel an attack if executed during the warm-up phase. Enemies can also do this to you. Finally, while characters have super moves and magic, experience is granted in the form of "Magic coins" and "S-coins" dropped by monsters. These are used to "buy" special moves and magic spells. Additionally, magic is not tied to a character, but rather to a "Mana Egg" which learns the spells, and can be passed from person to person. Each egg is typically a balanced mix of attack and defense/healing spells, but later in the game you can find eggs that are all one or the other.

Aside from the battles, you navigate the world by moving your characters (who follow single-file like a conga line) across a path from the start of the dungeon to the end. There are a few simple puzzles and a handful of secret chests, but for the most part you just walk between battles and cutscenes.

Story
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Alright, here be spoilers, so don't read this section if you want to be surprised at the various plot twists.

Thousands of years ago, a celestial being called Granas came to the world and made a pact with the people: if they would worship him as a god, he would make their world a utopia. The people agreed, and they gave him their faith and piety in exchange for technology and divine protection. However, a group of people felt that all of Grandia was now enslaved, so they created another god to challenge Granas: Valamar. The two factions went to war, and Granas was victorious but exhausted from his battle which left the world scarred in the form of a great canyon where his sword fell. He sealed the pieces of Valamar in special seals at various corners of the world, and slept to regain his strength.

Thousands of years later, Ryudo is a late adolescent geohound who takes a job to escort a priestess to a temple to renew the seal on Valamar's wings. Something goes terribly wrong, and the wings are released and possessed by the priestess Elena. You carry her back, and are attacked by Millennia, the personal manifestation of Valamar's wings with an attitude problem. She kicks your ass, and you agree to take Elena to the Pope to get the wings removed from her. As you travel, you encounter and team up with Roan, a 12-ish year old runaway who you find out later is a prince, Mareg, a beast-man intent on killing the man who destroyed his village, and Tio, an automata who wants desperately to be human. Every town you come across is plagued by one of the pieces of Valamar, and Millennia comes out to help you defeat the threat, and absorbs the piece after its defeat. After reaching the holy city and talking to the pope, you are sent after Granas's sword, the Granasaber. Meanwhile, Roan leaves the party after his father dies so he can rule his people, Millennia and Elena both fall deeply in love with Ryudo, and you learn the truth about Ryudo's past after visiting his home town. Then, you learn the truth: Granas was slain by Valamar, and Valamar sealed himself in structures designed to ensnare the souls of mortals, and Pope Zelas is using you to get Millennia to gather all of Valamar's pieces so he can defeat her to become the new Valamar. The crew travels to Valamar's moon via the Granasaber to try to stop the resurrection, but are too late, and Mareg dies while saving the party. Valamar is resurrected and Millennia is separated from Elena to complete his body. The crew rallies a last-ditch assault into Valamar's body, and Elena and Millennia are reuinited, but as different people this time. The two of them and Ryudo defeat the new Pope-Valamar and save the day.

After the sappy ending, you take control of Roan a year later, and travel the world to re-visit some of the towns you saved earlier on and see what everyone is doing now.

Okay, end of the spoilers.

Overall, the story works very well, although each village constitutes a separate side-story, and can sometimes distract you from your goal. The ending is needlessly sappy, but that is the trademark of most Japanese RPG's.

Graphics
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Sadly, the graphics for this game were outdated even at the time. The game is never muddled, but the characters look like dolls and can only be told apart by their hairdo and clothing. The world is also not particularly varied, and follows the path of Forest path - town - dungeon from beginning to end. The towns are vibrant enough, but none really stand out.

The redeeming factor here are the special moves and magic. They are all pre-rendered animations that play over the battle screen, but damn are they pretty. Oddly, one of Millennia's moves apparently couldn't be rendered correctly, so the team substituted a hand-drawn anime sequence--the only instance of this in the whole game.

Sound
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The music for Grandia II is entirely instrumental and generally mideval or church-y all the way through. It fits, but none of the songs are memorable. The voice actors are all professionals with lots of experience (Millennia is the same voice actress who played the Little Mermaid) and do a good job of voicing their characters, but the dialog is riddled with translation issues and too melodramatic for Western audiences. The actors did a good job, but the translation was lackluster.

Replay Value
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The game takes about 40 hours if you grind all the way through, 60 hours if you stop to smell the roses or need to power level, and 80+ hours if you want to attempt a 100% complete walkthrough. That said, there are some mini games that are almost impossible to beat without extreme practice, and a secret dungeon, but other than that, there is nothing to draw you back to this game unless you want to experience the whole thing over again.

Overall
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This is an RPG with a solid (if not overdone) story, lovable characters, a simple control scheme to master, and outdated graphics. It is worth a play-through for the RPG fan or if you find it on clearance (it was also ported to the PS2 and PC around 2002 if I remember), but don't worry about hunting it down over other, better games.

Video Game: Halo 2

Title: Halo 2
Developer: Bungie/Microsoft
Platform: Xbox/PC
Release date: 2004 (Xbox), 2007 (PC)
Played From: 2004-2008


This was, by an order of magnitude, the single game I anticipated above all others. Nothing was official until mid-2003, when Bungie made a teaser trailer... which I watched at least 30 times. To pass the time, I bought and read all three Halo novels that were released at the time (First Strike was critical to understanding how the Master Chief got himself un-stranded from the middle of absolute nowhere). I played through the first Halo obsessively. I even started playing Halo CE simply because I could not contain my excitement. When I was cleaning out my room about a year ago, I found an old calendar that had a 150-something day countdown until Halo 2's release. That is how stoked I was for this game.

Overview
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The story picks up about 3 months after the original Halo, with the Master Chief and the badass Sgt. Johnson being the only two people who survived the incident. Back at Earth, they are celebrating their victory at Halo when the Covenant appear out of nowhere and start blowing shit up. Then you alternate between the storylines of the Chief and a disgraced Elite who has been appointed Arbiter (which entails taking on suicidal missions until you die and regain your dignity). As you take the fight away from Earth and to a new Halo, you find out that the leader of the covenant has been engineering a civil war to further his own twisted agenda. Further complicating matters, the Flood have been active on this Halo for hundreds of years, and amassed a central intelligence who is bent on manipulating all sides of the conflict to complete his own goal: consuming all life in the galaxy. This sequel is significantly more story-driven than the original, which is a very good thing.

Gameplay
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Halo is Halo, and fortunately Bungie didn't forget that. The core functionality is the same, although you have many new weapons, vehicles, and enemies this time around. This a double-edged sword, since the intricate balancing was disturbed in many places. Many weapons have exact duplicates between Human and Covenant varieties, and I truthfully feel that the SMG and pistol were nerfed to the point of being almost useless, while the Carbine is so efficient at killing enemies in a single shot that it effectively replaces the pistol from the original halo as the ultimate weapon in most situations. Also, most weapons carry half as many bullets as their original counterparts, which is good since it forces you to experiment with new weapons, but sucks when you ditch a battle rifle with 30 bullets left only to find another one that is 30 bullets away from being full later on.

But, with its immersive storyline set across 13 levels, it is impossible to say that Halo isn't fun from the moment you fire up the game to the cliffhanger ending that will have you screaming ancient curses at Bungie. But, it is not 2004 anymore and you can boot up Halo 3 as soon as the credits roll. Even though I beat the whole thing in two sittings less than 48 hours after it was released, the story of Halo 2 feels like the longest and most complex, and that is a good thing. The environments you fight in are highly varied and almost never boring. The voice acting is notably better, and there is a significant improvement in the quality of the game's script. And, when the story is over, you can either play through it all again to find the extensive list of secrets and easter eggs, try to beat it on the beefed-up Legendary mode, or take the fight to multiplayer, although it is no longer possible to play it on anything except LAN.


Graphics
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This is as good as the original Xbox ever got. Human faces are more realistic, enemies are more gruesome and fierce. Bump mapping is at an all-time high. Vehicles begin to break down as they sustain damage and will even fall apart and handle differently in some cases. This is not as good as the current games in the market, but when you consider just how much graphics changed in the 8-year gap between 1996 and 2004 versus the 8 year gap between 2004 and 2012, Halo 2 is surprisingly modern-looking. Truthfully, there are only two shortcomings here: many textures (especially large bitmaps for environments) are very bland, and as the Xbox reaches the limits of its processing power, textures will spontaneously "pop" from low-resolution to high-resolution... even during cutscenes. Still, even today Halo 2 is a piece of eye-candy.

Sound
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Everything that was good about Halo was made better for Halo 2. Marty O'Donnell's moody instrumental scores set the tone perfectly in almost all cases, although I honestly don't like the title screen song as much as I loved the original Halo title song. All of the sound effects are much higher quality this time around, although Halo 3 really did a better job of nailing excellent sound effects.

Replay Value
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If you are halfway competent at FPS games on consoles and playing on Easy or Normal, Halo 2 should take you about 10-15 hours to complete all the way through. Once you are done with that, you can go back through Heroic or Legendary modes for a real challenge. Easter eggs have always been Bungie's forte, and Halo 2 is (in my opinion) home to some of the most intricate, difficult to find, and rewarding easter eggs out there. Metropolis has a super weapon (a plasma rifle with the projectiles switched out so it shoots the Scarab's main beam. Every level has a "Skull" hidden somewhere on it that is only accessible on Legendary mode, and will alter the game in some manner, such as doubling the push of explosives, making enemies toss grenades twice as often with increased accuracy, and making every weapon you pick up almost completely out of ammo.

And when that is all said and done, there is multiplayer. Halo 2 is a dead game at this point, but in its day it was the most played online console game, period. Personally, I do not like the new weapon balancing in a multiplayer setting, since it takes a full clip from an SMG to put somebody down if they are not at point-blank range. The shotgun can kill in a single shot, and the plasma sword has effectively the same killing range as the shotgun, but never runs out of ammo and almost always kills in a single hit. That said, Halo 2 is (read: was, 8 years ago) fun as hell to play online, especially with the plethora of downloadable maps.

Overall
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The story is memorable, the gameplay is rock-solid, and there is enough to keep you coming back for hours. Halo 2 is a must-play for the three of you out there who have not played it yet. Halo 2 has aged very well.

Halo Custom Edition: Single Player Maps

A few notes here: Single player maps are not supported via menus as multiplayer maps are. They appear in the multiplayer map selection screen, but must be loaded manually through the console to prevent the game from crashing.
Also, Halomaps divides the maps into custom, modified, and CMT singleplayer maps. Custom maps are designed for single player, and there are currently about 35 released. Modified single player maps are either set in multiplayer maps (such as Blood Gulch) or are modifications of the campaign levels. There are currently about 200 maps out there, most of which I have not played, and most of the maps I have played were not worth the time it took to beat them. Go by the score given on Halomaps, and stay away from anything lower than 8 or so.
Single player campaign maps
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These maps are usually part of a series, and tell a story.

Area 52 - 55
These are innovative in that they are not only the first single player maps to tell a semi-coherent story (interestingly through the use of area-sensitive dialog that loops), but they are actually multiplayer maps. That means that you can co-op through the level with up to 16 allies.<br>
The series starts with Area 52, which is really just a multiplayer map with AI bots in one room. Area 53 begins as you wake up in a cell, escape through the ventilation system, fight through a mysterious complex, and finally make your escape in a warthog run very similar to the final campaign level. Area 54 has you fight your way through a Doom-esque dungeon and even gives you two alternate endings and a final boss. Area 55 pits you fight against terminator robots as you seek revenge against the final boss.

The three maps together will take you about an hour or two to finish. 53 is the most fun, while 54 is the longest and most innovative. 55 is not very fun and doesn't feel complete.

CMT SPv1
This is a simple campaign mod with various "improvements," namely various Halo 2 and custom weapons, some new vehicles, and altered visuals. It is a fun and refreshing change from the classic campaign, although some of the changes are arguably worse than the original content, and many of the weapons are too powerful--especially the minigun and sentinal major beam, which can both destroy a Wraith in seconds.

Play time is the same as the campaign; about 10 hours.

CMT SPv2
Only the PoA level was officially released, and the rest were released in their incomplete form when the team threw in the towel on the project. All maps are present, although only about half are actually playable all the way through.

What sets this apart from the other maps is the fact that it not only changes everything in the original maps, but adds significant new portions to them. In many cases these new portions can effectively double the map in size. For this release, the textures and models are significantly improved, the guns feel much more like they should, and most importantly, it is FUN.

Total play time is hard to determine, but up to 20 hours.

CMT SPv3
So far only the third level is released. It does not feature the extended levels of SPv2, but includes many advanced features with the Open Sauce version, namely including VISR mode and improved graphics, which make it feel very much like playing a later Halo game.

Total play time for the one map is the same as normal campaign; about an hour.

Halo Covert Ops
This is probably the most impressive in terms of scope. Essentially, you are a battle-weary ODST who has been moved to a remote space station due to PTSD or something. While one of the marines is asking about your past, the station is attacked by the Covenant, and you are placed back into active duty and shipped to Earth to help with the fight there. From there you are free to choose how the game will progress, and will eventually uncover one of several conspiracy plots.

The total game is 6 levels, although you will only play 3 or 4 in a typical campaign. All of the levels are set in various multiplayer maps, and make very creative use of storytelling through flashbacks and dialogue between the player and NPC. Also, all of the speech in the game is entirely text, which is a refreshing break from poorly-executed voice acting and recycled lines from the campaign that barely fit the current situation. There is some new content, but the majority of the game focuses on Classic weapons, enemies, and vehicles. At the end of the game, you are given a rank based on which ending you got.

The story will take about an hour or two to complete, but there are about 4 main story plots to play through.
 
Lumoria
This is the first and only 100% custom, story-driven campaign for Halo CE. It is a two-part campaign, and only part 1 is currently out. Part 2 should be out soon.

The story here is that humans found a Forerunner world, but after deploying a team of scientists to determine its origin and purpose, the world is invaded by the covenant and the scientists are pinned down. So, a Spartan and some ODST's are sent to eliminate the Covenant forces and rescue the scientists. Upon finding the scientists, you learn that the world serves as a database/index of all life in the galaxy, and could lead the Covenant to Earth's location. That is the end of part 1.

Part 2 picks up as you launch a campaign against the covenant's push toward the central database of  the world. Along the way, you fight your way through many scenic landscapes and ultimately face off against a rampant AI that is in charge of the world of Lumoria and a nearly-invincible Elite. Part 2 is significantly more refined than part 1, and is frankly some of the best fun you can have inside of a custom campaign map. This is a must-have for everyone who has CE.

Overall, this is one of the most expansive and fun campaigns out to date. The team has decided to stick to the classic Halo arsenal, and mostly canonical enemies from other games and books, which is a wise decision in my opinion. The first level takes a bit longer to finish than most classic campaign maps; about an hour and a half to two hours. More attention has been paid to every small detail than any other map to date. The skybox is fully custom and gorgeous, and an observant player will notice distant beam towers shooting their beams silently into the sky. There is a very large variety in the environments you fight in, although it mostly feels like a marriage of the Halo campaign map, the Great Journey map from Halo 2, and some things were taken straight from the E3 2000 demo. Really, the only downfall that this campaign has is poor and choppy dialogue execution and fake accents. Still, this map is non-stop action all the way through, and left me saying "Wow" when it was over.



Firefight Single Player Levels
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These levels are single player but focus exclusively on action, rather than any sort of storytelling. The player must fend off waves of enemies that become increasingly difficult. This is styled after the ODST/Reach gametype of the same name.

Firefight Airlock
An ODST-styled map in a very well-designed map that suits firefight well. The map itself is fun, but the icing on the cake is the added music menu, which gives you four songs to set your Covenant-blasting to. My favorites are "New Divide" by Linkin Park and "When You Were Young" by The Killers. 20 waves to fight, which equates to roughly 30-45 minites of play.

Firefight Descent
Here is one of the best single player experiences to grace CE so far. Unlike other maps, this map was designed from the ground-up as a firefight map, rather than an adapted multiplayer map. The gameplay is very close to that of Halo Reach, the arsenal is mostly custom, and the enemies are Halo 2 canon minus the brutes. Music is provided in the game and is mostly techno remixes of various songs from Halo through Reach to give it a more edgy, cinematic feel. Every round has around 10 waves of bad guys, and powerups are granted at varoius intervals. The last wave of every round is a special round where deaths do not count against you, and you must fight against special enemies--such as scores of sword-wielding Elite Zealots or Jackal snipers with rocket launchers. Gameplay is immensely fun, and the author of the map said it offers unlimited gameplay, although I have not had more than two hours to play it so far.


Miscellaneous
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DMT-Air
This is a fun map that doesn't play quite like anything else. You are an Elite...on a hoverboard...racing around through High Charity from Halo 2. It only takes a few minutes to beat, but it is fun to try to get a gold medal for the map.

Halo Custom Edition: Multiplayer Maps

A note here: there are currently well over 2,000 multiplayer maps, nearly 1,300 modified multiplayer maps, and nearly 500 maps with bots to play against. I was extremely active during the first two years or so of CE, but I have gone six months or more at a stretch without even checking on the maps when other things were simply more important in my life. These are the maps that I have played and can testify for as being quality maps. There are probably scores of equally good maps that I have NOT played, and many of my favorite maps were released before the days of Halomaps, and consequentially may not have ratings or very many reviews.

Maps for competitive play

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Blood Islands - Arguably the first "good" map released, and the only one played for a long time. Straightforward design featuring two large bases on a small archipelago. Heavily focused on sniping and Banshee dogfighting.
 
 Night Camp CE - Another early map, and the first one that I would consider good enough to be an official map. Consists of a U- shaped canyon with a neutral base at the top and an underground tunnel at the back allowing a variety of possible attack paths. Works best for CTF games with a focus on coordinated, quick assaults.

Claustrophobia - An excellent and very small map set in a space station and making good use of contrasting light and dark areas. Very fun even for 1v1 matches on any game type. Focus is on surprise close-quarters combat.

Gallowspole - Very similar to Timberland, but geared more for fast paced gameplay. Features a neutral base, underground tunnel for surprise attacks, and a deep canyon connecting to the tunnel to escape vehicle and sniper fire. Suitable for any gametype with a focus on quick vehicular assaults.

Fissurefall - A complicated and beautiful Forerunner structure set in a rock cavern. Works best for CTF, since there are innumerable assault paths, and the bases are notoriously difficult to defend from sneak attacks. Narrow bridges over a bottomless pit add an extra challenge.

Wartorn cove - Two very large bases attached to a neutral open area via narrow passageways. Works best for CTF, although the focus of the map is on the prolonged battle over the control of the neutral area--offense is impossible without it. Skilled players on both sides can lead to very long and high-casualty matches. Several variants exist, although 3 and 4 are the most balanced. This map had 24/7 dedicated servers for the first 4-5 years of CE, but is never played now.

Cliffhanger - A beautiful mid-size map made for CTF. Features two large bases set on opposite sides of a cliff. Best suited for stealthy, quick CTF games.

Quagmire - A map set in a swamp with very low visibility. Good for CTF and slayer with a focus on coordinated stealth attacks.

New Mombasa Classic - Set in an area inspired by the Halo 2 E3 trailer. Well designed and captures the feel of urban combat very well. Focused on vehicular combat, heavy weapon battles and sniping.

Yoyorast Island
Yoyorast Island 2 - Both set in a mind-numbingly complex island featuring a highly convoluted vehicle race track and innumerable nooks for sniper battles. Ideal for CTF games and race, although one capture will typically take 10-30 minutes due to the complexity of the map.

Immure - A large but straightforward map featuring a new fighter plane. Ideal for CTF and still played on occasion.

Church - A Gothic cathedral with a beautiful interior and a passage to the underworld below. It was under construction for years and released too late (late 2007) in CE's life to see much play. Best suited for slayer with at least 8 players.

Sciophobia - A deceptively small space station that is mind-numbingly complex and features innumerable small spaces and alternative routes for surprise attacks. Best for Slayer and CTF with focus on stealth. Saw a very small number of games, and is almost never played anymore.

Precipice - A beautiful map released very late (2011) in CE's life, and too large for any game that ever took place on it. Features a huge structure built into a bottomless canyon, with several bridges between the bases. Due to its enormous size and complexity, best for slayer or CTF with 12-16 players, although 32-64 could comfortably fit in theory.

Interesting/noteworthy maps

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These maps are regular multiplayer maps that stand out by doing something innovative, although few are well-suited for competitive play.

Haloball - This is an early map that went outside the norm to do something different: bring soccer to Halo. The map is a soccer stadium, and opposing teams must hop in warthogs to push a giant soccer ball into the opposing team's goal. It was very popular in its day, but is seldom played now.

Hugeass - This is the most popular map for Halo CE, and is still played on occasion today. Each team has a base that is a straight rip of the longsword bay at the very end of the campaign. This leads out to a 25 square kilometer playing field with no cover and some rolling hills. This was an order of magnitude larger than any other map released (except for an unplayable map designed as a test map), and featured a number of new vehicles, all of which are excessively fast to compensate for the insane size of the map. This map achieved fame and notoriety because the player could fly the Longsword - a medium sized spaceship armed with heat-seeking, rapid fire rockets and a nuke that could wipe out large sections of the map at once.

Coldsnap - A sequel to Hugeass set in an icy environment with a bit more in it. The vehicles are too powerful and the map is too large for serious gameplay, although CTF was popular until fairly recently.

Extinction - A take on the Hugeass concept, but the bases are divided between human (base is a crashed PoA) and covenant (base is a disabled capital ship). Each team has their own vehicles, most of which are excessively overpowered. Played frequently until very recently.
GHZ-SP - A fun map where you play as Sonic the Hedgehog in first person on a track inspired by Green Hill Zone. Has a catchy remix of the song playing in the background.
The Land of Hyrule v0.2 - Built as an extension of the canned Zelda project, this is a mod that duplicates Hyrule field and its neighboring areas from the Legend of Zelda game, Ocarina of Time. Each area is set to play the correct music from the game. Fans of the game can take a trip down memory lane, and those who are unfamiliar can take a while to explore one of the largest maps (with stuff in it) ever made for CE.

Video Game: Halo Custom Edition

Title: Halo Custom Edition
Developer: Bungie/Gearbox/Community
Platform: PC
Released: 2004
Played from: 2004-Present

Due to the nature of this game, this will not be a review so much as an annotated history of the game.

Background - 2003 - May 2004
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Halo PC was rushed to the store shelf because Gearbox had the wakeup call that they were nearly 2 years behind the Xbox release of Halo. So, Halo PC was released in September 2003 with the promise of a patch that would allow users to publish their own content. Many groups formed and began work on numerous projects, ranging from multiplayer maps to fully custom campaigns based on the Halo novels that had been released. However, after an extended period of silence, Gearbox announced that they were not releasing a patch or update, but a fully separate game that would only support multiplayer modes. Most of the groups disbanded immediately, and many more followed suit when word got out that CE players could not play on servers with--or even be seen by--PC players.

In May of 2004, Halo CE was released along with the separate HEK which allows players to build the actual maps--as long as the user had their own 3D modeling software, specifically the $5,000 3DStudios MAX.

Genesis and Golden Age - May - November 2004
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Understandably, very few people were initially equipped with the necessary tools to make maps until someone made a separate tool for the HEK that allowed models to be imported from the free Gmax. For about the first month, CE struggled to grow its user base, and the majority of the maps released were admittedly awful.

However, things began to turn around by June, as maps began to be released by skilled individuals, many of whom were building portfolios to use when applying for positions as professional map designers. This came to its zenith when the Halo 2 CE team announced that it was developing a map inspired by the Halo 2 E3 trailer, and would be releasing versions of the map with both Halo 1 and Halo 2 weapons and vehicles--big news, as Halo 2 was slated for a November release. When the classic version was released in July, CE regularly saw 300-400 players online at any given time, and multiple servers existed that provided 24/7 rotations of the best custom maps.

However, Gearbox had decided to focus on developing original games instead of simply porting existing games to the PC. Since CE was performing below expectations, they made an announcement: Get the average player count to at least 1,000 by September, or all support for the game would be dropped. Even though players tried to organize a single day in which all players would be online at the same time, the count never went much over 600. So, CE became officially unsupported.

Maps were still continually released throughout October, but the release of Halo 2 spelled certain doom for CE.

Steady decline - November 2004 - 2006
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Myself included, most CE players were only playing CE to pass the time until Halo 2 came out. When it did come out, it shattered first-day sales records for any game in entertainment history up to that point, and school truancy was at an all-time high.

After thoroughly playing Halo 2, I came back to CE to find out that it was a ghost town with very few servers or players. I returned on rare occasions for the next several months, especially when the H2CE team released their Halo 2 version of New Mombasa, as well as several other maps that had been a long time in the making.

During this time, map makers largely stopped caring about how well-designed their map was, and focused on cramming as much custom junk into their map as possible. Halo 2 themed maps were especially popular, with the three main powers being the Halo 2 CE team, Custom Mapping Team (CMT), and a third nameless team.

This time period also saw the rise in vehicle-only maps. Many were made that essentially consisted of an open map (some were as large as 5 km across) and populated with impossibly fast and overpowered vehicles.

Cult Game - 2006 - 2010
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This period in time is hard to pinpoint accurately, but I generally consider it to coincide with the rise of the CMT team. Around this time, player counts were dwindling until they held steady at approximately 150 to 200. H2CE released all of the maps they had been working on and then disbanded. Many of the most prominent developers threw in the towel and left to pursue bigger and better things. Those that remained focused on the development of new and more innovative content, which resulted in campaign maps being developed and eventually support for campaign mode being fully restored.

CMT asserted itself as a dominant force when it released its SPv1 campaign in 2006, which was a mod of nearly every weapon and vehicle in the campaign as well as various graphical enhancements and changes. Following this, they focused on creating Halo 3 content and incorporating it into numerous other maps released over the next few years.

Around this time, the vast majority of servers stopped hosting older custom maps, and shifted to classic maps, CMT maps, and the four most popular vehicle maps.

Paradigm Shift - 2010 - Present
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Eventually it became apparent that CE was dying as a multiplayer game. So, the focus switched from multiplayer to single player development. Innovative breakthroughs allowed modders to create their own cutscenes and import Halo 2 and 3 enemies into campaign maps realistically.

CMT undertook the biggest project that CE had yet seen for its SPv2 campaign - which not only added weapons, vehicles and enemies, but expanded each level to roughly twice its original size through the addition of several entirely custom segments. That is, until the team disbanded and released most of the levels in their incomplete state. SPv2 is completely abandoned, but the team has reassembled to release its first SPv3 map - which builds on the "Open Sauce" code library to incorporate better graphics, more advanced models, and various other goodies.

As of this writing, the multiplayer has withdrawn to about 200 players jammed in to about 15 servers, all of which are playing Blood Gulch. The biggest project on the horizon is Lumoria, a 2-part custom campaign that is pending the release of part 2 "any day now" for the last two months.

So, for newcomers to CE, it is important to know that despite the expansive legacy it left behind, there are precious few opportunities to re-live the glory days when players were faced with the difficult decision of *which* all-custom server to play on. You can still download all of the maps, but you are better off sticking to the single player maps.