Halo 2 (2004)

This is a bit tricky to review. On one hand, on a replay, the campaign isn't as good as I had remembered. Truth be told, a lot of memories I had turns out to be from Halo 3. Halo 2 and 3 blended together for me in memory. There's a good reason for that. Mostly this has to do with how unfinished Halo 2 clearly was. At least in terms of its campaign. I spent a lot of time playing Halo 2 back in High School. This game defined my after school routine. Wherein, all my friends and I would typically log onto Halo 2 servers almost immediately after getting home from school to game for hours. I still fondly remember this tradition. Being in High School, we were of course shit heads. Where our main goal was to honestly just piss people off. This was done through us using various exploits or glitches. Not even to win, just to troll. The dummy glitch being our favorite.

The dummy glitch is a bit hard to describe, but I'm sure somewhere on Youtube there are videos about it (if not that's a missed opportunity). Basically, you would get in the passenger seat of a Warthog, then click the exit vehicle button, then punch to cancel the animation. If timed correctly, on the server, you are standing where you would get out of said Warthog, but critically, from your side, you are in this endless loop of getting out of the Warthog by spamming punch. Making you invisible to everyone else. There wasn't much utility to this glitch, beyond trolling people. You could get dropped off into the enemy base, where you are invisible. If you took one step forward, you would be rubberband back to where your body was located server side (where ever you entered said Warthog). You could get around this limitation though by meleeing. Whenever you melee someone, you lunge slightly forward, thus you could melee move yourself. And if a poor soul walked with their back to you, you could instantly kill them with a melee hit to the back. All the while they think they were being attacked by a ghost.

We would also grab an objective and glitch ourselves out of the map and just hang out. Trying to wait out the other team while sending recon teams to mess with them. The goal was never to win. Just to troll and we basically used these matches as virtual hangouts where we chilled and shot the shit. So the majority of my Halo 2 memories are these trolling sessions where we just hung out.

That said, the multiplayer was revolutionary and set the standard for games like call of duty (which would overtake it in popularity). The multiplayer was good, even beyond us trolling people. We did also play "proper" matches, but most of our time was spent trolling. Cut us some slack, we were in high school.

Aside from these memories, I honestly didn't remember much about the Halo 2 campaign aside from the first level and the big "twist" of playing as the arbiter. Honestly a pretty bold and good story decision. This was a controversial decision that I think overtime grew on people in a positive way. Aside from this controversial twist, the campaign itself does feel painfully unfinished. Which turns out was the case when listening to the devs talk about making the game. Where on one hand they liked having a deadline to push towards, but on the other, it forced them to cut lots of ideas and content. Which does show.

Where Halo 1 had a solid plot from a broad stroke point of view, then kind of fell apart within the little details, Halo 2 just feels like a mess across the broad. They make the age old trope of "jking" away the sense of finality that the ending of Halo 1 established. Now there's so MANY more Halo rings guys! The plot ends up kind of retreading some aspects of the first game, but feels more disconnected due to the jumps, both from levels but also from the other side of the story that makes up the "twist." These converging stories do intertwine, albeit very briefly, and it is in the briefness that surprised me the most. Not to mention the cliff hanger and abrupt ending.

The weaker plot aside, Halo 2 is still a ton of fun to play through via split screen co-op. I had as much fun as I did with Halo 1, even if I found myself preferring Halo 1 overall. Halo 2 isn't all bad though. The weapon arsenal is a big improvement over Halo 1. Guns feel significantly more balanced and varied. Gone is the overpowered pistol hand cannon. Replaced with the battle rifle which still feels good to use, albeit not being broken. There are more vehicles and they gave them more moves. Such as a speed boost for the ghost, or aerial maneuvers for the Banshee. And all vehicles are now destructible which does help balance them, at least for multiplayer. Another thing that improves is the AI of the NPCs. Honestly, the marines in a warthog were pretty terrifying. They would barrel down roads, running covenant over and peppering them with shockingly good accuracy with the chain gun. They even ran my friend and myself, even destroying our vehicles multiple times. Which was honestly funny. One level, a group of marines on a warthog almost soloed an entire set piece which was funny to watch.

Levels in Halo 2 are varied, but due to the linearity of levels, they do end up feeling more homogeneous. Where Halo 1 recycled levels multiple times, I still have distinct memories of levels, even if some (looking at the Flood levels specifically...) felt too long for their own good. Halo 2 is about moving forward, and while the levels do have a sense of scope, you rarely, if ever, are given the opportunity to explore unlike the better Halo 1 levels. So on one hand, it's typically more clear where you need to go (except for the flood levels which again do feel like the weakest segments), but we lose the sense of scope and exploration as a result. Due to us kind of being funneled down a linear path.

Overall it is still fun to play, especially with a friend, but the quality does seem to suffer in terms of level design. It looks a lot better. There are new and cool features, and you can't really overlook the impact this game had on the multiplayer game industry. Effectively revolutionizing it. 4 stars feels a bit high. I'd honestly rate this more like 3.5 stars (in terms of campaign). But with the multiplayer and its impact 4 still feels appropriate.

(This is a repost of my Steam review, with modifications as I see fit (formatting, text editing). I figured for consistency's sake I should also put it here, considering I made this account recently, and might make this my main place for my reviews. If you want to read my original revision, knock yourself out, I didn't spoiler it, so discretion there.)

Multiplayer first:

Halo 2 means a lot to me. It really does, I've put countless hours into the game's multiplayer with some of the best people I know on the internet. It is a shooter that has so much depth, so much fun in it, that it feels endlessly replayable, its such a good multiplayer experience. So good in fact that its the only multiplayer shooter I seriously play anymore! It's that good! Maps are great, you've got iconic maps like Lockout, Ascension, Coagulation, and Zanzibar. Silly ones like Terminal, it's a fun time. I love Halo's concept of an Arena shooter too, I'm not much of a Quake fan or what have you, but I love Halo for its slower pace and the fact you can have only two weapons.

Big team battle is absolutely great. It is so silly and fun, you've got a buncha silly stuff like Banshee boosting and whatnot for your CTF games, for example. Headlong One Bomb is a great map! You have Ivory Tower oddball and that is so, so fun!

Of course there's the mother of all Halo 2 mp maps, Lockout. It's honestly the perfect map, there's so much on here, its small and pretty blocked off at points, it incentivises single 1v1 engagements a lot. There's plenty of ways to get around, things that block sightlines. Weapon spots are very good and make sense for where they are. Its a really good map.

Now onto campaign, due spoilers for story moments, as I talk about select moments:

When you first saw Halo, were you blinded by its majesty?

Blinded?

Paralysed?

Dumbstruck?

Halo 2 starts pretty similarly to Halo CE; space station gets attacked by the covenant, all that, its a tutorial level in the same way as the Pillar of Autumn, you're introduced to the Arbiter as a character for the first time. It ends with this sick scene where you blow up the Covenant Ship, truly the perfect way to cut a level. There's these cinematics are spread out all throughout the game. They ate incredibly good and leverages the story even higher in my eyes, much more than Halo was able to achieve, story wise.

The Earth levels are pretty fun. The game truly kicks into drive in Metropolis. So many cool set pieces going through the city in a Scorpion, going around in Warthogs, BOARDING A SCARAB??? That was such a cool level. You then get to play the Arbiter for the first time which is a super cool change of pace, and these levels are really fun. Then, you end up on the Halo ring as Master Chief, and these levels are really fun too, flying through the place and then ending with a fairly fun boss fight too.

Halo 2 then reintroduces The Flood, new and improved, this time they're actually really cool. I love how Halo 2 (and 3) handle the flood. They're a lot more sparing with it, which leads to them having a much more impactful presence when they're around. Bungie also develops them a lot more with the Gravemind and everything.

One hitch Halo 2 does have is when the Brutes are introduced, these are the standin for the Elites for basically the rest of the game as the Covenant starts to fall apart. They're... pretty bullet spongey and kinda take away from the weapon sandbox a bit since you need specific effective weapons to really fight them well, though you can argue it does shake it up more and you have to think more about what you have on you. Its not too bad to detract from the game too much, but its still there.

Halo 2 then ends with a boss fight which, I don't care the most for either, its a bit rocky of one but it's fine, and you have the iconic cliffhanger, its great.

This game rules, from the score to the multiplayer to the campaign and the menus. I love Halo 2.

What works

• Much grander in scale than the first game with some set pieces that are still cool today
• Driving model massively improved, the Warthog is great fun now
• I enjoyed learning more about the Covenant back story via the Arbiter missions

What doesn’t

• Throws the sense of quiet wonder and foreboding from the first game right out the window
• The difficulty spike in the back third of the game is brutal, even on normal
• The boss battles really don’t work

Verdict

I realised recently that despite playing CE and 3 a ton of times, I’d only played Halo 2 once, when it first came out. Turns out I barely remember any of this game at all!

On the whole I really enjoyed it, and despite going for bombastic action over the quieter moments in the first game it’s a lot of fun. The lateral cuts across the absolute chaos of Covenant vs human vs flood vs other Covenant work really well as a driving force through the middle levels of the game and really sell the feeling of a massive conflict. Many sequences feel artificially lengthened even though the game isn’t exactly short, but I concede that this is from an era when a six hour campaign in a AAA game would be considered a rip-off.

Cutscenes are far more ambitious than the first game, though at this point 20 years later they often feel kinda slapdash and not particularly well choreographed. They also run at 30fps in MCC, which I assume is an engine limitation but is jarring compared to the 120fps gameplay. As with the first game, I played through with the original graphics as I find the anniversary graphics to be overly bright and oddly cartoonish. I did briefly toggle to anniversary for some later levels though, which often got so dark I struggled to see properly.

And that brings me to this game’s big weak point. Many folks consider the back third to be rushed and unpolished, and I can’t help but agree. The difficulty spikes enormously; in certain choke points I died repeatedly to stray grenades I couldn’t see (often thrown by ally NPCs), flood shotgunning me in the face, and bullet spongy Brutes. It never quite strays into tedium, but it feels in desperate need of an editor. The final boss battle against Tartarus in particular is just no fun.

Not just because of the massive cliffhanger at the end of 2, I’m very much looking forward to replaying 3. I’ve played that campaign multiple times including a couple of co-op Legendary runs, but it’s been at least 10 years and my memory there is very hazy too. I guess I’d better finish the fight before Starfield comes out.

Halo 2 is a funny little game because a lot of people say it's the best in the series while others (like myself) find the first game to be way better. Now don't get me wrong, Halo 2 is a fantastic game. It has a really good story and the gameplay is good (not as good as the first one but still good).

This game's development was insane... They completed this game in 10 Months and it was described as a really difficult time for Bungie. People were sleeping in their offices because going home would only waste time.

Now Halo 2 has a story that is far more expansive than its predecessor. Taking place days after the events you follow Master Chief and Cortana trying to stop the Covenant from activating a second Halo. The game also dwells on more of The Covenant and its goals. We meet the Prophet of Truth, Mercy, and Regret. We learn that the Covenant believes that activating the Halo will send them on "The Great Journey", which essentially is heaven. When in reality the Rings are a weapon made to wipe out all sentient life in its radius as a way to contain The Flood from spreading. We get to better see their views and goals by playing as an Elite who is punished for his failures and becomes known as The Arbiter who has quickly become a fan-favorite in the franchise for his great story-arc. The game does have a huge cliffhanger ending which was a result of time constraints, but I don't actually mind.

The music is once again, fantastic and I especially love the Anniversary Edition this time mostly due to the remade cutscenes and its overall presentation. Of course, the original version still looks great.

I can't talk about this game without mentioning the multiplayer. It literally changed everything the world knew about Online Multiplayer at the time. Xbox Live and Halo 2 was a HUGE deal. And its effect can still be felt today.

Now the gameplay... Is fine. Dual-Wielding and the Energy Sword being usable are now a thing which I like. It plays well. But we lost that sandbox feeling this time around. The Enemy AI is still great but the game is so linear that firefights aren't as creative which really hurt the gameplay. And need I mention that Legendary Mode in this game is infamously unfair.

Halo 2 is a game with a fantastic story, even better multiplayer, and gameplay that is tolerable but not anything to write home about. I'd still play it again and it was an overall fun experience.

4/5

Would Recommend

Part 2 in my Halo replay before Infinite comes out. Halo 2 improves on nearly every aspect of the first. The story is more complex, the mechanics and physics feel more modern, and weapons and vehicles are all smoother and have added features. My favorite addition was playing as the Arbiter, as it allowed you to understand and sympathize with the covenant more, rather than viewing them as mindless enemies. I will admit, because of nostalgia I still think I prefer the first game, but any newcomers to the series will definitely find this one superior.

3.75/5.00

Full Review: https://watchreadgame.com/halo-2

Played the Remastered Edition on Heroic Difficulty

Halo: Combat Evolved proved that it is possible to create a competent shooter on consoles. Halo 2 is known as THE seminal console shooter, a system seller and the only reason the original XBox had a longer shelf life than it should have.

I was not one of these players. I was a PC player that loved playing Counter Strike and going from Counter Strike to Halo 2, is no fair comparison. I want to be clear the shooting is solid. The Battle Rifle, Covenant Carbine and the UNSC Sniper Rifle have good recoil and impact to them. The introduction of the Energy Sword makes melee fun and it feels sweet when you land a slash on a foe. Unfortunately most of the other weapons feel like Fisher Price toys. Lots of weak projectile sounds (pew pew pew), no recoil with bullets that have no good impact to them.

The campaign is an absolute letdown. I'm not talking about the sudden cliffhanger at the end. I mean the sloppily put together story where our heroes magically whisk from one scenario to another. The assumption that you have just played Halo: Combat Evolved and know who all these characters are and what is going on. The same thrown together copy and pasted levels and corridors found in the original game. Maybe I'm being too harsh on a 16 year old game, but then when I look at the 2004 release calendar, Half Life 2 was released a week after Halo 2.

Half Life 2 was a genre-defining game that told an amazing story not through cutscenes but by gameplay and made physics a big deal for the years to follow. Halo 2 on the other hand is a mix of battle arenas and beautifully rendered cutscenes. The only physics in Halo 2 are ragdolls and the occasional Covenant barriers that can be tossed around by Brutes. I honestly think Halo 2 was built from the ground up to be a multiplayer game and the campaign was a complete afterthought.

Having never owned an XBox and never having Windows Vista, I was pleased to finally play Halo 2 as part of the Master Chief Collection. Unfortunately, it was a let down. The shooting is fun, but then you realize it's better to just avoid combat since most of the enemies are bullet sponges and there are an annoying amount of monster closets to pad out the campaign. Also on Heroic difficulty, the time to death is too short, I often got one-shotted out of nowhere. Halo 2 is a dumb fun good time, but the campaign has not aged well compared to its' peers.

It's hard to say if there was ever a single piece of media I was more hyped for than Halo 2. In the years leading up to its release, every piece of information, every second of footage was ravenously consumed, picked apart, obsessed over by an army of fans. The first Halo had made a massive splash, to say the least, legitimizing a console, reinvigorating console FPSs, and introducing the world to an exciting new sci-fi universe. But now the stakes were set to an impossibly high level, and when the game finally launched, it was simultaneously thrilling and slightly disappointing.

Probably the best thing about Halo 2 is the multiplayer. Now supported by the brand new Xbox Live service as well as featuring the classic split-screen and LAN options, this is to this day, the game I have played the most multiplayer rounds of. It was just incredibly polished, highly addictive, riotous fun. I'll never forget the nights spent with friends, gleefully screaming and laughing with one-another.

As far as the single player campaign was concerned, Halo 2 was still incredibly strong but yet, in some ways, a slight step backwards. The story lacked the clear, concise structure of the first game but did an admirable job of expanding the lore. Infamously, half of the game is spent in the perspective of a Covenant warrior, which is super cool but kind of makes the story overly long and a bit difficult to follow.

And then there's the ugly: That abrupt ending that essentially confirms that Halo 2 was merely a tease to the REAL big battle for earth, which was sort of the thing we were all so excited about. I still remember hearing the iconic final line about "finishing the fight" and feeling a strange mixture of exhaustion and confusion. But at the end of the day, I had still been thoroughly entertained. And I would gladly wait another 3 years to finish that fight.

3.5 out of 5 stars - Reviewing campaign only (normal difficulty), Master Chief Collection PC

This game was significantly better than Halo 1.

The graphics were better. In-game animations are still somewhat dated by the attempt to adhere 100% to the original game. The cutscenes look great, but the transitions between cutscenes and gameplay are a bit jarring. Also, loading times on PC were exceptionally long for a game based on an Xbox classic.

The sound was better. Everything from sound effects to music to voice acting are a couple steps above the original Halo.

The level design was much better than Halo 1. The second half of the original game being a rehash of the first half in reverse left a really bad taste in my mouth. Halo 2 had none of that nonsense. There were a few sections near the end that were particularly difficult for me, though.

The controls are better. Vehicles controlled particularly sloppily in the original. In Halo 2, they were pretty darn fun to control.

The ending. Well, it basically left me saying, "that's it?". On top of that, I'm honestly not sure what I did to beat the final boss.

Overall, the entire package is still that of a very generic shooter. By today's standards, it's "fine". Though I can see how people would have nostalgia for it back during the original release.