Halo 2

by mr.white54

I had very high hopes for this game and was completly let down. This game is like Devil May Cry 2 all over again. At the start you will try and trick yourself into thinking this Halo 2 is very good. But as you play it you'll find more and more things that annoy and bore you. In this review i will talk about the so called "plot", the graphics, the sound, and probally the most important aspect of FPS, gameplay. Now i do not know what the hell is going on in this game. To be truthful, i had no idea what was going on in the first one. All I know is that your a super soldier named master chief and you are supposed to be winning a war against the "covenant"(aliens). Now in this game you swith off between master chief and some alien dude and so that really doesn't help you understand the plot any better. For me the plot was non existant and whatever plot there was it was completly boring. Lets talk about one of the better things about this game, the graphics. The graphics in this game are pretty much the same as they were in the last one. That isn't a bad thing since the graphics are still beautiful but I was hoping for an upgrade when it came to the graphics department. Probally the most stunning thing about the graphics is the background. At the start of the first mission you see a view of earth and it is an awsome sight. Even though the graphics were still the same, I still enjoyed looking at the very much. lets move onto an awsome part of the game, the sound. The sound in this game is what really suprised me. now all the basics are covered, bullets hitting metal and other surfaces sound good and every other sound effect sounds good but the thing that suprised me the most were the voice overs. Now There is a small celebrity cast that does the soldier voice overs. The ones that i noticed were Michelle Rodriguez (fast and the furious), Orlando Jones (Madtv), and my personal favorite David Cross (Arrested Development) (He is in 2 games now; GTA:SA and Halo 2). Now the sound is one of my favorite things about this game. Even though the music is still the same as the last game i still enjoyed the sound very much. Now for the most important things about a game, the gameplay. Now Gameplay is where the first Halo really delivered. There are so many new gameplay ideas and there are some upgraded ones. There is dual weilding, Allies can now drive, new weapons, Covenant missions, and upgraded multi player. Dual Weilding is always fun to do in any FPS. Im happy to say that Halo 2 almost pulls this idea off perfectly. The last time ive had this much fun dual weilding was the game Goldeneye. There are many differetn comboes to dual weild and most of them are really effective. For instance you can dual weild a sub-machine gun and a plasma rifle so you can take there shield down with the plasma rifle then unload on the enemy with the SMG. Dual weilding is a strategy that is needed to beat the game. But there are some things wrong with it. I felt when you used 2 weapons the ammo went out pretty fast and there was to much recoil. Also another bad thing is all the consquences that come with holding 2 weapons. For instance the reloading time is longer, you can't melee, you can't switch weapons without dropping them, and you can't throw grenades. Now all of that stuff makes sense but it really takes away some of the fun that goes with dual weilding. Now the thought of you AI allies driving while you shoot is pretty sweet. The idea was done horribly. Now when the AI drivers are in combat they seem to drive pretty decently but they do screw up here and there. They mostly screw up when your not in combat. I was in the gunner seat for 5 minutes and the driver didn't move an inch when all the enemies were dead. I though that any time the driver would just go but he didn't so i ended up driving the car myself. Now they do some really stupid things in combat too. The stupid things they do in combat range from running the car into the wall to just driving in cirlces. The idea was a good one but it was pulled off horribly. There are tons of new weapons in this game. The weapons range from a fual rod cannon to a plasma sword. Now one of the things they did with the weapons is even them out a little bit more. The pistol is now weaker and has no more zoom, instead of the assault rifle the SMG and the battle rifle, even the covenant have their own battle rifle type thing. Now some of the new weapons are pretty useless (brute shot and the carbine rifle for the covenant) but some of them are awsome (new needler and battle rifle.) The new weapons are a blast to play with but you will find yourself using the same old weapons from the last game. The covenant missions in this game are pulled off so badly that they actaully made me stop playing the game for a while. Which sucks about these missions is that they are put in after you start understanding the plot. So i would be understanding the plot a little more then BAM! i have to play as some alien dude and i completly forgot about everything i just learned (alot like biology class:smileywink:. Another bad thing about these missions are the weapons. All the weapons you get are covenant (which are boring weapons) but a little bit later you get human weapons but the missions are still fricken boring. The missions for the Covenant are so repetitive and bland that i had no fun at all playing them. I hope in Halo 3 (there will be one) they don't have more of them. Now the multi-player i found extremely boring. Even with lan tournments the whole time it was still unbalanced. Now even though they balanced the weapons out the multiplayer was still highly uneven. In this game they took out the health bar so now all you have is a shield which means you can't weaken your opponent you can only stun them and hope you get to them before their shield recharges. So that means that you can be shooting at a enemy and if you die first then his shield recharges you are now even in health again instead of him being weaker giving you the advantage. Yet another bad thing about the multiplayer is that you can now blow up vehicles. So lets say its one on one and your driving a wart hog and they are driving a ghost. They can now shoot you untill your vehicle explodes and then you have to wait untill the vehicle respawns. That was dumb idea and should be taken out in the next installment. A good thing about the new multi-player mode is that its more customizable. You can now customize what weapons you want people to start out with which is pretty **BLEEP** sweet. Now onto my final judgment on this game. I had very high hopes like ive said before and i haven't been this dissapointed since Devil May Cry 2. Now i suggest that you rent this before you buy it and if you plan on buying it i suggest you wait for a price drop since its not really worth the whole 50 bucks. Plot: 4/10 Graphics: 9/10 Sound: 10/10 Gameplay: 8.5/10 Overall: 8.5/10