Halo 2 Review

After Halo: Combat Evolved, it was a no brainer to not make a sequel. Halo: Combat Evolved was a huge success and did a lot of good things to the gaming industry. So how does Halo 2 fair off? Is it just as good as the first game or is it not up to par?

The storyline is pretty similar in the whole basic idea of Halo: Combat Evolved. You play as the Master Chief, fighting the Covenant, Flood, and your traveling to beautiful places that Halo has to offer. However, there are some twists. You get to play as the Arbiter in the campaign and there's half of the levels where you get to play as him. He's an Elite-which is one of the higher rank soldiers for the Covenant-he's basically like Master Chief. He has regenerating shields, he can melee, carry two weapons, and move at the same speed. He was supposed to stop you on the last level of Halo: Combat Evolved, but he failed and he gets tortured for that. The prophets which are these leaders of the Covenant. They're pretty much like the politicians-they run everything and decide what to do. They gave him another chance for the Arbiter to help them out, but sooner or later, he would be betrayed and end up fighting on the human side and it just gets even more interesting as you play along. You'll even meet this giant Flood called Gravemind and he's pretty much the mastermind of the Flood. So for the plot, it's really engaging and it's quite cool how you get to have two perspective of each characters. Also expect to see a lot of plot twists.


Beautiful!

The needler looks purdy.


The graphics and sounds are very well done. The graphics looks nice, crispy, and sharp compared to the original game. Everything is on par weather it's the texture, the lighting, or the models. There's really not much to say about the graphics, but it looked very impressive for a 2004 game. The sound are nice, but it's not really as good where it sounded kind off more louder to make the weapons very nice and powerful. Voice acting are solid and the music is just wonderful. There are new tracks and a couple of remixes from Marty, but they are the main highlight when it comes to the sound direction.


Xbox Live + Halo = Winning formula!

Dual-wield carnage!

Halo 2 campaign is very identical to the first game. It's a run and gunner. It features two weapons only option, you can throw grenades, you got regenerating shields, vehicles and a lot of more elements from the first game. There are still quite a bit of changes like there's no more health bar so basically you're kinda forced to take cover immediately when your shields are down. You got new vehicles weapons, and some of the new weapons are kinda remade from the old games and that's a problem right there. Remember about the Arbiter? Well, he's very similar to Master Chief except he can actually cloak himself like Predator and it's really cool and you can use that ability for your strategy as you play. The Battle Rifle and the SMG are fine weapons indeed, but they just don't present as well compared to the Pistol and Assault Rifle. The Pistol sounded much better when you shoot it and it just gives you a better performance because there's not many FPS games where you can actually rely on a pistol. The SMG is very identical to the Assault Rifle, but it really lacks that power because the Assault Rifle had this very strong gunshot sound effect when you shoot it and it's very rewarding when you kill someone with it. The SMG unfortunately doesn't offer the same experience. You can now dual-wield which isn't new to the first-person genre, but Halo 2 is one of the first games that allowed you to dual-wield like an SMG with a pistol instead of two pistols or SMGs. Many critics say the campaign is short and it lasts around 8-10 hours long which is a solid length. The campaign didn't really seemed to the be the primary focus of Halo 2. A lot of the levels were fun, but they just weren't as polished and the gunplay wasn't as polished as well. The levels just weren't as epic compared to the first game and everything seemed kind off toned down from the first game. The first level is identical to the Pillar of Autumn, second level is identical to Halo, but both levels are just so average compared to the first two levels of Halo: Combat Evolved. Also it didn't really offer too many memorable experience since most of the game kind of just give you a group of enemies and fight them and move on to another spot while in the original it had more depth than that. Another drawback of the campaign is the Legendary difficulty. The Legendary difficulty pretty much indicated that Bungie rushed on polishing the campaign since half of the time when you play Halo 2, you will be relying on a mid-range weapon with a plasma pistol since every other weapons aren't worth using since they're weak and you will get killed by a single Elite very fast and not only that your shields are smaller than the first game. It's very disappointing for Halo 2 to suffer this problem since the original game had a good balance of using every other weapons on Legendary so if you want to play Halo 2 like Halo: Combat Evolved on Legendary, stick to Heroic. Overall, the campaign is worth playing for the story progression and at times it has its moments. No, the Halo 2 campaign isn't bad, it's just above average, but it needed a lot more work on balance and quality.

The multiplayer on the other hand is a blast to play. A lot of the maps are very well done and they're fun to play. It's pretty similar to the first game so if you enjoyed the first game, you can now enjoy it online with Halo 2 weapons. It does a good job of mixing running and gunning gameplay with tactical decisions. There's also vehicles like the first game. Once you play one game, you're going to have to play more since it's just really hard to not drop that controller since Halo 2 could be very chaotic in many ways. You can also create your own symbol with the options that the game allow you to have. The multiplayer of Halo 2 is pretty much the reason why you're going to love this game no matter what.

Halo 2 is a solid game at best, but it seems Bungie had a rough time making the campaign to be on par with the first game. So at the end of the day, the multiplayer is the real reason for this game while the campaign feels like it's just a bonus with your package. Halo 2 isn't Halo: Combat Evolved in its way of presentation, but it's still a worth picking up game if you love sci-fi first-person shooters. 8/10


Halo 2 popularized MLG!

Master Chief isn't going anywhere without a fight.

The Arbiter is one cool Elite.

Nice review. I would give it a 8.5

I would give this a 9.5. It has a really good campaign and the online revolutionised console online gaming. It is still arguably one of the best online games currently.

good review

Ill be honest.You should have reviewed the game a heck alot better.

8/10

You got to be kidding me.

Lot of this review is WAY off.

Sorry for being harsh.But it's true

HellJumper wrote:

Ill be honest.You should have reviewed the game a heck alot better.

8/10

You got to be kidding me.

Lot of this review is WAY off.

Sorry for being harsh.But it's true

I enjoyed the game, but I just think it didn't perform as well. Also the boss fights were just laughable and Bungie needed a lot of work on that compared to other FPS games. I miss the good ol pistol and AR when I use the SMG and BR, but they somewhat fixed that problem in Halo 3. Campaign had some nice moments too like it was cool when you got to use your first cloak ability from Arbiter.

Halo 1 > Halo 2 sadly.

I love Halo 2, it's my favorite of the first two. My only grip is that I wish it could have been a little longer. It's a 9.5/10 for me.

8/10? 10/10 more like

ZeInFormer wrote:

HellJumper wrote:

Ill be honest.You should have reviewed the game a heck alot better.

8/10

You got to be kidding me.

Lot of this review is WAY off.

Sorry for being harsh.But it's true

I enjoyed the game, but I just think it didn't perform as well. Also the boss fights were just laughable and Bungie needed a lot of work on that compared to other FPS games. I miss the good ol pistol and AR when I use the SMG and BR, but they somewhat fixed that problem in Halo 3. Campaign had some nice moments too like it was cool when you got to use your first cloak ability from Arbiter.

Dont lower the score because you liked the first better.That isnt proper reviewing

Boss fights?Who the hell expects boss fight's for shooters?The game only has two boss's.And there not officially boss's.Tarturus can be very deadly if he gets close too you.I would call it "laughable"

The graphics,gameplay,sound,story and presentation are all awesome and should score over 9.

Well, it is a sequel so it's kind of wrong to not compare it with the first game. I had to compare it to the first game, because when I play Halo 2, it doesn't give me the same quality as Halo 1. I also played the first game before I played the second so I had expectations, but H2 didn't reach to those expectations (well not all of it). I simply enjoyed the first game better than the second one. What's wrong with that?

Speaking of boss figts, I know most shooters aren't that great with that. HL last boss fight was meh despite of being a classic game...but they could've done much better or they could just replace it with crapload of enemies against you. So far the best boss fights I've seen for shooters are Serious Sam and Painkiller.

ZeInFormer wrote:

Well, it is a sequel so it's kind of wrong to not compare it with the first game. I had to compare it to the first game, because when I play Halo 2, it doesn't give me the same quality as Halo 1. I also played the first game before I played the second so I had expectations, but H2 didn't reach to those expectations (well not all of it). I simply enjoyed the first game better than the second one. What's wrong with that?

Speaking of boss figts, I know most shooters aren't that great with that. HL last boss fight was meh despite of being a classic game...but they could've done much better or they could just replace it with crapload of enemies against you. So far the best boss fights I've seen for shooters are Serious Sam and Painkiller.

It is okay to like Halo 1 better,but it's not proper to lower Halo 2's score because of that.Remember,your reviewing Halo 2,not Halo CE.

H2 actually beat's Halo 1 in most case's.The only thing that Halo Ce was really better was the pistol and the large open area you go through in the campaign.But other than that,Halo 2 beats it.

I personally wouldnt lower the score because of the boss's.Shooter's arent expected to have boss's.It's better having a boss than none.So Halo 2's bosses were actually a pro,not a con.

Not trying to really critisize you,Im just trying to give you good advice

Relooking at the Halo games, made me realize that the graphics in Halo 2 really excelled compared to Halo 1, but then they didn't really get better Halo to Halo.

HellJumper wrote:

ZeInFormer wrote:

Well, it is a sequel so it's kind of wrong to not compare it with the first game. I had to compare it to the first game, because when I play Halo 2, it doesn't give me the same quality as Halo 1. I also played the first game before I played the second so I had expectations, but H2 didn't reach to those expectations (well not all of it). I simply enjoyed the first game better than the second one. What's wrong with that?

Speaking of boss figts, I know most shooters aren't that great with that. HL last boss fight was meh despite of being a classic game...but they could've done much better or they could just replace it with crapload of enemies against you. So far the best boss fights I've seen for shooters are Serious Sam and Painkiller.

It is okay to like Halo 1 better,but it's not proper to lower Halo 2's score because of that.Remember,your reviewing Halo 2,not Halo CE.

H2 actually beat's Halo 1 in most case's.The only thing that Halo Ce was really better was the pistol and the large open area you go through in the campaign.But other than that,Halo 2 beats it.

I personally wouldnt lower the score because of the boss's.Shooter's arent expected to have boss's.It's better having a boss than none.So Halo 2's bosses were actually a pro,not a con.

Not trying to really critisize you,Im just trying to give you good advice

It's great to have suggestions from people. But usually if I review a sequel that's very good like in the 9 zone, I wouldn't compare it too much with the original game. If I'm disappointed in some parts of the sequel, I will compare so I don't have to give out a very straight-forward information. I want to be a little bit detailed and state why I feel this way. I don't want to go like "Halo 2 is fun because it's good." I'm more like "Halo 2 is fun because it offers plenty of firefights and it's addicting. Despite of being a good game, it's not great." I'm more of something like that and I'll just go in small details and stuff and why it isn't a great game. It's kind of like how every reviewer is disappointed with RE 5 taking a different direction out of the RE series. H2 to me somewhat like that, but it still remain pretty faithful to the whole idea of the Halo games are supposed to be. If you like H2 better than H3 and H1, that's cool.