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
----------------------------------------------------------
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
--------------------------------------------------
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
------------------------------------
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
-----------------------------------
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
--------------------------------------
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
---------------------------------------
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.
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
----------------------------------------------------------
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
--------------------------------------------------
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
------------------------------------
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
-----------------------------------
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
--------------------------------------
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
---------------------------------------
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment