Revisiting the Halo Universe: Halo 2 Review

Halo 2

Genre: FPS
Price: Variable
Format: Xbox, and PC
Version Reviewed: Xbox
Release Date: Out Now

A game that followed the immensely popular Halo would never live upto the fans epections no matter how spectacularly it followed the original. Unfortunatley Halo 2's only problm is the fact that fans will always remember Halo far to fondly, and expect miricales with Bunige.

Bungie already revolutionised the FPS genre with the first Halo, they couldn't do it twice in the same series could they? Well, no, but they did bring alot of new features to what was, by that time, a tried and tested formula. Halo 2 takes everything that made up Halo, kicks most of the crap out and leaves the gamer with one of the most impressive games ever.

Halo 2's campaign has often been criticised of being tacky and rushed, this is due to the fact that no-one really liked the Arbiter, because Master Chief is awesome. This is an unfair attitude to take as the Arbiter adds quite alot to the games story, and campaign gameplay.

The actual campaign is superbly constructed, and I'm glad to say that Halo's main campaign problem has been solved and no enviroments are repeated in gameplay, at all. Halo 2's campaign has, however, changed in structure, massively.

The first Halo gave the player the feeling that they were part of something much bigger, in Halo 2 the player is part of something much bigger. Players are no longer confined to the corridors that littered the first campaign, and huge enviroments, littered with Covenant, sprawl before the player. Unfotunately the player dosen't ever stray to far from the beaten path.

This gives way to a far more hectic type of gameplay, with multitudes of enemys fighting your allys ,and later your enemys. Plasma flys everywhere, grenades bounce around and explode at your feet, Elites declare there undying hatred towards you, Brutes roar, and Grunts scream in fear and agony. This is far from a bad thing, makes the player feel like this is a real battle which they can influence, and other than a few gliches here and there it feels great.

That dosen't mean that the campaign is without flaws. The huge battlefields can simply be quickly moved across, without any form of combat, when this happens the game is unsure exactly as to where the player is within the game and forgets to spawn some further enemys, this is fairly importatn because it is possible to skip whole levels at once in some areas of the game.

The Multiplayer of the first game was brilliant, but Halo 2 has put it online, made it almost fair and improved it infinetly. Indeed if it wasn't for the fact that in the majority of gametypes everyone spawns with a dual-wieldable weapon therefore negating the need for any form of melee or grenade, the multiplayer would be perfect.

Conclusion

Although Halo 2 has some major problems, over 90% of Xbox Live users can't all be wrong. 9/10