Halo 2 (XBOX)

Overview

Master Chief if back once again to fight all new swarms of aliens in this newly released first person shooter from Bungie. Picking up old weapons, as well as some new ones, he dons that familiar suit to do "great battle." Just like the original Halo, this game packs a lot of enemies in a lot of levels. Plus, the original vehicles are back with new moves and upgraded armor. In a sense this game could be called "Halo: Supposedly Upgraded."

If your not familar with the original storyline, its pretty simple. An unnamed guy (or John I've been told), who goes by the name of Master Chief, wakes up from cryosleep and what are the chances, the spaceship he's on is being attacked by the same people who've been destroying earth, the Covenant. After fighting for a while you escape from the spaceship and crashland on the planet-like ring called Halo. On this massive planet you fight tons (I repeat) tons of enemies and even discover the weapon of this planet, which happens to be a zombie breed of creatures.To finish off the story, you destroy the "planet" by blowing up the ship that you crashlanded with, which breaks the ring up. Of course you did get away before the ring blew up or else there wouldn't be a Halo 2.

Now, in this new story, you comeback to finish off the rest of the Covenant on earth (or so I thought.) Actually there is only one level on earth and it was nothing compared to what I thought that it would be. The other levels are on (you guessed it!) another Halo. The only really different thing with this story is that now you can be a Covenant in half of the levels using his abilities. He has a whole different story that kinda collides with Master Chief's later on. The story does leave you with a cliff hanger and is supposed to lead right in Halo 3. Most cliff hangers usually leave you with a problem that needs resolving and make you feel like you can't wait for that problem to be resolved.The only problem with this specific cliff hanger is that at the end you could care less. Its obviously a cliff hanger but nothing needs resolving.

In Halo 2 the key word for gameplay is more, too much more. Everything in the game has a huge upgrade but nothing is really replaced. Guns have new sights, fire rates, and most weapons have been either tuned up or toned down so its a lot more fair. The only weapon that isn't fair is the crowd pleasing plasma sword. This thing, I think, is the coolest part of the game. It can slice, dice, or line up with your enemy for a powerful one-hit-kill. This one weapon can make the action more intense and even allow the last place person to come back and win the multiplayer round. Single player wise, the gameplay is sometimes too slow and extremely boring while others it's too fast not well done at all. Levels this time around are more inside-themed and don't have the same "grandness" of the original game. The graphics were horrible compared to what I expected them to be and at times they were worse than the first Halo game. The sound and music were pretty good but it didn't feel as "grand" as the first game. One neat thing that they did add was the electric guitar upgrade to the theme song, played by legendary guitarist Steve Vai. Over all the game needed more replacements instead of upgrades which just made it more confusing.

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