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Iceman's Halo2 Review
After what has seemed to be an eternity of wait for Xbox and Halo fans alike, Halo 2 has finally arrived. The sequel to one of the most symbolized games ever.
The story begins with our hero, the Master Chief, and his return to Earth, but more precisely, a UNSC space station. Since Halo ended, a lot has happened, and to really get an idea of what happened between the end of Halo 1 and the start of Halo 2, you’d probably need to read the books. But in order to help those who really didn’t care, the story just starts there, and it doesn’t seem as if you really needed to know what happened. What you should know, is that the Covenant lost an entire fleet after the destruction of Halo, in the first game, and after the fight the MC put up, the Covenant still found the location of Earth. A number of ships enter the space around Earth and this is where the story and game pick up. So after almost 3 years and a number of delays, how does Halo 2 do? Very well.
SHINIER THAN LAST TIME
Halo 2 looks very good, not fantastic, but very good. The actual gameplay does holds up very well. Everything is detailed and the structures look great as well. There are a bunch of special effects that go along, like explosions, reflection, and many more. They all look great in the process, whether it be a car exploding or a waterfall. At times, the environments tend to look a little bland, the same colors you’ll see over in the same structures and other areas, but this is mostly in some of the city areas. The parts that are not on Earth tend to look very good.
The character models don’t look too great on the other hand. They tend to look a little clunk, in particular their faces. The movements looks good, but it’s just that the faces seem to be a little stiff, but it’s not too bad. The vehicle models, though, look great. They shine and will take damage depending on where it’s hit. The physics engine is also done extremely well; whenever a Ghost explodes it’ll rattle for a little before it’s turned into scrap metal.
The cut-scenes look very good; all of them are taken from good camera angles and feature some of the more graphically powerful aspects of the game. One of the problems though is that since there is no loading between each level, the cinematics take a hit. Whenever the cinematics are being shown, expect some of the textures to take a second or two to appear or something might be missing and then finally pop up. This is can be overlooked, but for all this time it took to develop, something this obvious could’ve been worked on.
TOOTING MY OWN HORN
Halo 2 delivers a great audio selection and definitely improves over the first game. The soundtrack is excellent and definitely worth the price for the separate CD. A mix from Incubus, Breaking Benjamin, and Martin O’Donnell delivers music that seams with the game and may even provide a little beat to go along with your Covenant killing spree. Of course not everything has changed. A very few select songs have returned and a new version of that orchestral choir is also still present.
The voice work is also a big step up from last time. There are more notable voices like David Cross and Jen Taylor who both lend their voices for some of the marines you run into. All the usual suspects sound just the same, Cortana is still a cocky AI, and the Sergeant is as gruff as ever.
The sound effects are also better. More explosions and a variety of alien sounds go along for the ride. The energy sword sounds in particular, very satisfying. Halo 2 also takes advantage of Dolby 5.1, which helps in the experience by a lot.
IT TAKES DIFFERNT’ HEADSHOTS
Ah, here we are. Let’s dive in to this meaty gameplay N.Y. strip steak. Now, Halo had some problems, and luckily for all of us, those problems have been addressed, but there are a few things that come up, but in the overall picture Halo 2 swings a grand slam.
Let’s start with the levels and what you can do with them. The basic formula of facing super-smart AI Covenant hasn’t changed. You are fighting them tooth and nail, but there’s a twist later on in the game, that many will either love or hate...and then there are some who just really didn’t care. You will have levels that are fairly linear and will take you from area to area fighting your enemies. There’s hardly and backtracking anymore. Sadly, only 3 of these levels are on Earth, the rest are in various places in outer space. You’ll be given a few objectives, and they’re fairly easy to understand, so the trigger-happy guys out there won’t be scratching their heads. The difficulty is also up. In one part where you are faced with Drones and some snipers, it will take you a few tries on Heroic to get through, even with Marine support. And that’s another new thing, the enemies. We have the Drones, which are basically fast, flying bugs which shoot at you in swarms, they’re a little tough especially if you other enemies shooting at you. The Brutes also step in and though they lack armor, they can take a lot of damage before going down, and they start berserking after taking enough damage which can give you some trouble if you can’t move fast enough.
So, what are taking with you? The MC is armed with all of his previous weapons except the Assault Rifle, who as been replaced with the Battle Rifle, a gun capable of some minor sniping. But some of these weapons have changed. The rocker launcher can no longer guarantee you an instant kill, and neither will close proximity frag grenades. But then there are some new features, like the Rocket Launcher can now lock on to enemies and act like a homing missle at times to compensate for its reduced damage. These aren’t losses since you are given a new feature that many will become unable to ditch, dual-wielding. You can now arm the MC with a select number of smaller weapons and control them with their own left or right triggers. You lose the grenades, but some of the combinations you make will make you forget about them. You also have some new weapons worth noting. The SMG is your all purpose, high firing rate, crappy accuracy gun, the Covenant energy sword will take put most enemies with one swing, and the Brute shot is a grenade launcher that delivers a punch in group battle. And there are still more new ones out there. As usual, you still have your melee attack, but it has really lost its punch. In order to hit someone you must be a lot closer to them, and this makes stealth much harder than the previous game. Okay so now this leads to the vehicles. All the previous vehicles are back, along with some new ones. The Warthog now has 2 types, one with a machine gun and another with a gauss cannon, which is good for taking out vehicles, but not so hot for infantry. The Scorpion has gotten better with its much more effective machinegun. The Banshee and Ghost remain the same, but now both can boost their speed for a little while, to evade enemy attacks mostly. New to the game is the Wraith tank and Spectre. The Wraith isn’t entirely new, it was in the first game, but it wasn’t usable, now that we can use it, it has a speed boost along with an energy bomb that knocks over anything and does heavy damage. The Spectre is like the Covenant version of the Warthog, it seats 3, one driver, a front seat shooter, and a gunner with a beam machine gun. Jacking a vehicle is new to the game. You can take away smaller vehicles like the ghost by knocking the driver out of his seat and with the tanks, you just beat the crap out of them until they’re thrown out and you can take over.
The acclaimed AI, has also been given a boost. Your enemies as usual will hide and gang up on you, but now it almost seems they make blockades to stop you from advancing. Remember when you wanted to be the gunner in the single-player game? Well, that’s changed; you can now gun or ride in the front seat while an AI controlled marine drives the warthog. They aren’t perfect, but they won’t run into walls and be stuck until you take over. They know how to do circles and will find enemies for you to kill.
Overall nothing has changed. Halo 2 is a little longer than the first, but it’s still fairly short, but the ride that goes along does not disappoint.
THE MENAGE
Halo 2 would not survive without multiplayer and Bungie does not disappoint this time around. In addition to the support of up to 16 players, Bungie has added Xbox Live, which will suck up days of your lives. With over 11 maps and more to come, you have a variety to play with any gametype you want.
First, there are the new modes. There’s Assault, which your task is to get a bomb into enemy territory and detonate there by standing in one spot, but of course you risk being turned into Swiss cheese, so teamwork is a must. It’s fairly similar to the Bombing Run of Unreal Tournament series. There’s also Territories in which you have 3 plots and you must control them for a certain amount of time, of course the team with the most territories will gain time the fastest, so you’ll need people attacking and defending at different areas. The old modes, like King of the Hill, CTF, and Slayer are back and remain unchanged, not that there was anything wrong with them.
New maps like Zanzibar are really good at just about any type of game mode. Most people look for CTF in this map, simply because of the strongholds you have and the variety of weapons and vehicles scattered throughout. Blood Gulch has become Coagulation and it’s changed to make sniping a little harder, but the opportunity for headshots is still present.
Xbox Live gives a number of options. You can have a clan and keep track of your members and promote them, kick them out, or whatever. You can also make big clan matches with other clans as well. Optimatch gives you the opportunity to raise your ranking, but you can’t select what type of map you want, you can select gametype and that’s about it. It’s a mixed blessing, since it makes the game fair and allows one person to constantly exploit one level, but you may get tired of playing in one level all the time by chance. You can also now create a party of people from your friends list and go into games with them, just like they were next to you. Bungie really listened to what the fans wanted and has already begun giving new modes requested like Team Slayer. Sadly, online Co-op is not here, it seems that Bungie just couldn’t follow through with it.
“YOU ROCKET WHORE!”
Halo 2 didn’t revolutionize the FPS genre. But what in actuality what it did, is raise the bar for all FPS, just as the original did. Halo 2 lived up to its expectations and those who said it was a huge disappointment must have been expecting Halle Berry to pop out and suck their dick while playing. Everything from the Covenant city to the final scene is exciting and will keep you in your seat. Rather than dragging the game out for 30 hours with the same boring crap over and over, Halo 2 did some new things to keep interest up. Hands-down, this is the best Xbox game ever and a high caliber FPS.
Iceman
E-mail: manofice @ gmail.com
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