Others say...

"Halo 2 left me puzzled...."
I was one of the many that pre-ordered halo 2 because I enjoyed the first one so much. About me and seven of my friends bought it at the midnight release and went to my buddies house where we played it all night and my friend and I beat the co-op storyline around 8 or 9 the next morning. There were some things I liked and hated about the game.

Storyline: If you played the first one the storyline is lacking and really straightforward. You play the "hero", fight against aliens and save humanity/earth whatever. For the second one when they released video clips it made it sound as if the aliens found earth and are attacking it and you (master chief) were turning earth into a crazy urban war between humans and aliens. Its been a long time since I played the storyline, actually the night of its release was the last time, but you only end up fighting on earth for the first one or two levels (I use the term lightly as halo has no "real" levels). Then you end up going into one of the alien ships or something like that. You also get to play as one of the aliens, which I found to be rather fun but also a "played" story gimmick as this has happened in other games as well. The ending was very dissapointing as it just left you hanging and wanting more and hoping there was actually more to the story left. Bungie could have done a better job and made the story more developed and the game a bit longer.

Graphics: I've read a lot of reviews saying that the graphics are awesome but I didn't see a great deal of difference between halo and halo 2. However, I also didn't play either game with HD cables on an HDTV. They used the same engine and just added what seemed to me a polishing effect to the "levels" and characters.

Sound: I love the music to halo and I was happy to hear the music back in Halo 2. Also the human and alien voices are fun to hear. The multiplayer firefights and single player firefights are wonderfully done as it helps to make you feel like you're actually there in the game.

Weapons: I was dissapointed in the weapon selection as there seemed to be no imagination to what they did with them. Humans have a sniper rifle so lets give aliens a sniper rifle. Humans have rocket launchers (the rocket launcher now targets and follows enemy vehicles-nice!) so aliens need a rocket launcher. The plasma rifle was given an unneeded change as it no longer froze your enemies in place to circle around them and hit them in the back, which made the rifle now another useless weapon in your arsenal. I enjoyed the sword in single player but in multiplayer was a very frustrating weapon to fight against. In single player the sword ran out of charge after so many hits but in multiplayer it lasted the whole game which was a very annoying thing. If you've ever played halo 2 multiplayer you know what I'm talking about. The pistol was toned way down but with few updates they gave it some power back but was nowhere near the "horror" like the first. Grenades were the most and saddest thing they changed in the game. I loved grenades in the first one and ended up using them more than anything in the game. So when I played halo 2 the first time I couldn't wait to throw my first grenade and when I did I literally freaked out. Master Chief "dropped" the grenade right in front of me and when the explosion happened I was still alive??? They turned Master Chief's powerful throwing into a "toss" or "drop" and the explosion of the grenade......well lets just say I might as well have been throwing waterballoons at the aliens with the damage that one of those did. The last thing they did was duel-wield which was a nice feature but the balance of duel-wield and other weapons was crap. The duel thing could've been left out and was a much over-hyped feature.

Vehicles: Like I said with imagination- Bungie seemed to be lacking in that department. Humans have a tank and a warthog so lets give the covenant a tank and warthog. I know, I know the covenant tank was in the first one but could you drive it?? Nope. I liked the fact that vehicles now could be blown up and that you could kick people out of the vehicle and take it or if you were crazy like me you could jump in a warthog with an opposing team driving it, thats always fun. I do wish they would have given you the option to turn vehicle damage on or off. In multiplayer you would destroy the warthog and a few minutes later they would have a brand new one waiting for them, so that was annoying too. The last thing they changed that I didn't like was I couldn't run over people anymore, well you can but its a 1 in 6 shot that you'll actually do it.

Physics Engine: I hate the physics in halo 2, one thing that made the original halo so fun was playing "warthog basketball" in blood gulch or blowing up a ghost over the middle of sidewinder and watching it fly.

Multiplayer: Multiplayer is chaotic and can be fun but 70% of the time if you're not playing with a friend it is frustrating to hear people cussing you out, making really annoying background sounds etc. The addition of "team chat" only would've been really nice. Most of the upgrades they did to the multiplayer levels were nice and done really well, the name changes weren't really necessary though. I liked the setup for the xbl matching, I just wish that the players had more control over what levels, weapons, radar and such would go on during the game instead of the pre-made matches (that counted to your ranking) that you ended up playing over and over and over and over again. Also the hacking and modded xbox's that you would play sucked too, that was neither bungie's nor microsoft's fault, but did hinder the fun of the multiplayer experience.

Vision change: For the longes time I couldn't figure out why halo 2 seemed visually different than halo 1. One day, it hit me, I was playing multiplayer and was running around getting p'wned as I usually did in halo 2 and I realized the levels were closer to me than in the first one. I realized the developers went for a tunnel vision view instead of the periphial expanded look as in the previous one. In halo when I walked around, I had a periphial view and the levels looked so much larger and massive. In halo 2, however, they give you a more narrow view and make everything seem closer for a more "unreal" look, by unreal I mean like the unreal series.

Single player exploration: This is one of the things that made the original halo so awesome. My friends and I would spend countless hours in the single player mode going to areas we really weren't supposed to go and do things that were absolutely fun and crazy. You could actually get online and see things people would do and it made it all the more entertaining. In halo 2 they "controlled" the areas that you were not supposed to get to by putting skulls or I think in one level there was a huge ball or something. That made me lose the appeal to actually go and explore the level like I did in the first one. Now the developers want me to go find these "hidden" places that I wasn't supposed to......puh-lease!!

So to sum it all up, the cons seemed to outweigh the pros for me as an avid Halo 1 fan. The lack of vehicle and weapon imagination, physics engine change, tunnel vision with the short and dissapointing ending storyline made the rush of halo 2's release makes Halo 2 an average to below average first person shooter experience. Halo 2's multiplayer is fun with friends and the added detail in the levels makes it more tactical and visual treat. If you're looking for a game that has a good story and imagination this is NOT the game for you but if you just wanna play a fun shooter with some friends its not to bad of a game.

It only gets 2 stars from this dissapointed halo fan.....

"Halo 2 Seduced Me"
I'm not a gamer. The most game I'll dabble in are games based off of movies or shows that I loved. So I really don't know much about what makes a great game a great game. I've enjoyed Crash Bandicoot and Resident Evil 4 when I played, but only moderately. The story of how I got interested in HALO is very different than those. See, my friends love playing games, and when we'd chill and drink, the nights that we didn't go out would end in them playing against each other in HALO 3. Eventually, tired of being the odd man out, I picked up a controller and started playing... and naturally, got killed in each round. So I went home to practice, and since my dad loves games, all I had to do was ask him to borrow HALO 2. I started playing with the intention of ignoring the story and game play and just logging in some basic practice.

Well, turns out, the game rocks. The graphic were great, the story was enthralling and lacked the cheesy dialogue that even games hailed as the best of the best (the aforementioned Resident Evil 4) were rife with, and the gameplay was simply great. Each board is so interesting and throws you into such different, complex worlds that you sort of feel a mixture of triumph and regret every time you beat one level and move onto the next.

I had every intention of using HALO 2 to practice so I could whoop my buddies when we play HALO 3 together, but the game is just so good that I couldn't help but stick it out to the end and beat it. It's challenging but not overly hard and--most importantly--a very fun game.

9/10

"Good Game, But Could Be Better"
Halo 2 is a good game, but not perfect. The campaign is fun, a little short, but fun. The levels are great on any difficulty, and I love the Elite missions. They are fun and challenging, a great twist to the game. The only two things I wished that did not happen in the game was the short storyline, and the ending. They leave you hanging, waiting for the third Halo. Campaign is fun, but it is not a fun game unless it has a good multiplayer. The multiplayer maps are great, but there are not enough of them. Bungie could have waited a while to bring out the game to make more multiplayer maps. Overall a good game.

Campaign- 4 stars
Multiplayer- 4 stars
Fun- 5 stars

Also here are some cheats:

To get the blind skull start the map Outskirts. Walk through the first door and crouch jump onto one of the lights. Then look to the leftand you will see a wall. Run at the wall and crouch jump onto that wall. Walk foward about 10 steps and look left. You should see a hallway. Go to the end of that hallway and press x to pick up the skull.



"Not as good as the first, but still an excellent follow-up"
After the incredible installment of Halo it seemed like every gamer around simply couldn't wait to play the follow up! Well here it is, finally in my hands! I'm happy to report that overall this is a very solid follow-up to the first installment. There are a couple minor things that I didn't like, but there are a lot of things they added into the game that are just awesome.

After the first game I was kind of wondering how they would follow it up since the Halo facility blew up and the Master Chief with Cortana were the only two sentient beings left alive. Well Halo 2 brings us deeper into the lore of the rings and their Forerunner builders. Apparently there is definitely more than one ring, or else this game wouldn't have made as much sense without a Halo facility. I really don't want to give away any of the story line because it's a really intriguing story so far. To be honest the story is really what held this game together for me, but let's just say that they end up coming upon another Halo ring and there is already a major Covenant armada on site. The best chance for survival is to get onto Halo and fight from there because we all know the Covenant will not destroy the ring. The best part of the story is that the covenant between the species that make up the Covenant doesn't seem to be nearly as strong as we all assumed. In order to take us down that path we get to play as a Covenant elite named the Arbiter. This is one of the better changes they made to this game! It was a lot of fun to play on this side of war and see things from their perspective.

That's all I'll get into for the story. Honestly the game play and mission details are fairly rehashed from the first Halo. This is sort of unfortunate, but somewhat expected because what's Halo without Halo? But running missions through the Library to find the Index again seemed tedious and uncreative, although they managed to spice them up a little by throwing in the new Brute character named Tartarus (and the brutes in general). The thing that really saved these repetitive elements was the backdrop story of the Covenant. Also they threw in new lush atmospheres found on Halo. Halo is a big place and it stands to reason that not every place is going to look the same, so it was nice to see them try and capitalize on newer elements. This gives us some familiar maps and ground as well as giving us whole new terrains to explore. One of my favorite is that at one point we end up on Earth and go through a whole urban warfare sequence. That was probably one of my favorite parts of the game.

Aside from the repeated levels the only other major problem I had with this game was the HUD. If you read my review for the first game you would remember that I mentioned that the view was great because it gave you sort of a mock peripheral vision. In this game it feels like you're looking through a very confined screen, which makes it a little more difficult to play in co-op mode. This is unfortunate because it feels like they removed something that I thought was an improvement to a First Person Shooter game, maybe they felt it was an error? Of course I think this was more than made up for by being able to dual wield weapons and being able to use the Covenant energy swords. Though they got rid of the MA5B standard issue assault rifle from the original game and that made me sort of sad. Oh well, I can now wield two Needlers!

Overall I thought this was a very fun game. I even enjoyed going through the Library again, so while some may find that "uncreative", which it is, I still enjoyed it. The Flood takes a bit of a back seat in this game and show up more as an annoyance until a big revelation at the end. Story wise this game is much bigger and more ambitious. I think if you were into Halo for the unique world and story you will also like Halo 2 just as much. So be prepared for a wild ride to save the universe and see how precarious the Covenant's species allegiance just might be.

Overall Rating: 4.5 out of 5

"good purchase"
This one of the best deals i have found on a game by far. Halo 2 is a game where the multiplayer is not that interesting but the in depth story line is all there this game should be played for the story line if nothing else.