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Best experience.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: December 27, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Ok, I have to start off by saying that I wasn't at all interested in this game when it first came out, serveral reasons: first off; I could not afford an xbox at the time so I didn't even want to check it out for my fear of falling in love with it and HAVING to get an xbox somehow, second off ;) never really been a sci-fi-whatever lover; always loved and still love WW2 inspired games, third off ;) all the hype about halo 2 made me sick at first, everybody talking about it!!! god!! make it stop!!! I saw some screenshots and videos eventually and never really saw the big deal about it. Now; on to the good part, when I got my xbox (by the time I finally got my tax return) I bought dozens of games but never halo 2, one day I went to the mall and went into a games store and asked one of the guys: "what's a good game?" cuz I was already bored with what I had, boy, this guy said "ok, of course you've played halo 2 right?" and I'm like "no, and I'm not really looking for a sci-fi kinda game" he started going about how great and fun this game was and how I'm really missing on something special. well, the guy convinced me and got the damn game, I get home, popped the game in and started playing..............GOD DAMN HOW WRONG I WAS!!!! first: graphics, not the best certainly but some really nice touches bring out the effort that was put into it, from the shine on each weapon to the level design and character design, couldn't ask for better for the console, second: gameplay, this is it, this takes the cake, lots of games might be similar to halo 2, but the fun here is second to none, you never really realize when you've already learned the controls, it's that easy and intuitive, the speed of the game, the A.I, the weapons, the explosions, the control you have on you own arsenal, the dual wielding (which opened a whole new dimension of fun and possibilities), the cars, the carjackings, all this came together to blow me away, and I haven't even started on multiplayer, I finally beat the game on normal mode, I never touched the game again for about a year until I finally got my DSL internet and thought: "let's give halo 2 a try online", OMFG!!! this is NEVER ENDIND FUN, it really is, true, you have the same basic kind of games, capture the flag, slayer, etc, but it's the variety of ways and combat what'll keep you wanting to be better than everybody else and you can even create your own games, it doesn't get any better than that, it's the thrill of the chase, it's the satisfaction you get when you get a headshot with your sniper riffle and you see the body of the enemy slamming on the ground and you hear the other guy on your headset going "DAMN!!!", it's the excitement when you shoot your rocket launcher and you see the rocket whizzing through the air straight to a warthog with 3 guys in it and you get a "TRIPPLE KILL"
it's the fear you inflict on your enemy when you're three feet away from them with you energy sword out and you see them shooting like crazy or trying to escape, it's the fun of throwing granades with precision and you see the guy flying through the air from the explosion, it's the laugh it causes you when you stick somebody with a sticky bomb and they don't realize it and all you do is wait to see the BOOM and see them fly!!! it's the rush you feel when you're on your ghost running everybody over and you hear that scream: "AAHHHHH!!!!!!", it's the satisfaction, emotion you feel and fear you have to look behind when you're running away with the enemy flag and you depend on your teammates to defend you or when you meele someone with the flag itself..oh my god!! I wanna play right now!!!, GOD!! I can go on and on and on about this game but all I'm doing is wasting my time and yours when we both could be playing, go! go!! go get it, buy it, borrow it, steal it, do yourself a favor and get it somehow ok??? and if you don't like it or hate it, well, there's something obviously wrong with you...

One of the best games I ever played

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: August 06, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I bought this game nearly two years ago and I really enjoy this game as much as I did the first Halo. The graphics are outstanding the best I ever seen next to a PC game. The single player campaign was also great, great story but the ending left you on a cliff hanger and now we got to wait until 2007 for the ending (Hope they continue the series somehow though).

The Xbox Life multiplayer I loved for the first few months especially CTF (Capture the flag). Very enjoyable but what made me stop playing after awhile was the fact that you can't pick a server like normal the computer does it for you. Most of the time it also put me on the losing team so I stopped playing.

Overall a great game and I recommend it to any fan of shooter games. If you didn't play the first Halo I would say play that first so you would understand the story line. I would of gave this game a 3 star review because of the way the Xbox Live multiplayer works and the cliff hanger waiting where you got to wait three years for the ending.

The reason I ranked it so high is because of the graphics, the single player campaign (Even though it left me on a cliff hanger), and the multiplayer (Even though the computer picked for me which I hated and the fact that many times I would be put on the losing team without being able to move to the winning team). Even with the faults overall the multiplayer was good.

If you don't have it already get an Xbox 360 soon since within a year Halo 3 will be out and we will see how it ends.

Simply Amazing

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 7 / 11
Date: November 10, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Sorry to all those preorderers, just reserve it at best buy next time........This game is amazing. It is a wonderful second addition to the original. Its graphics are revamped and several custom options give this game a great feel. If I had to pick one game I could have for xbox, it would have to be this one. Also the aluminum case and extra features of the limited edition version are a nice bonus. Only problem is controls are slightly different and may take getting used to, and cut scenes can sometimes seem choppy.

halo 2 is just another step forward to a better world !

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 9
Date: November 18, 2004
Author: Amazon User

All right people , this is the end all beat all FPS of 2004-05-06 till halo 3 comes out :D, i have been playing halo since its launch on xbox and i have beaten h1 on legendary and h2 on legendary, YES the game is to short but who cares we waited FOREVER for this game to come out.

Ok heres the details, The graphics are ART! they look fantastic. the controlls are good and games great, FLAWS i dont like the fact i cant see health , Bungie didnt put a health bar on the screen so after your sheilds go down you can get hit maybe 3-5 times depending on the weapon damage... you can now play as a Elite !

Multiplayer, My friends and i have tornaments all the time and the system link is good, and the levels are fun so thats cool.

IMO BUY THIS GAME ohh and get the limited edition it comes with a neat DVD. :p

PreOrder Not Shipped

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 13 / 30
Date: November 09, 2004
Author: Amazon User

While Im sure this game is awesome, Amazon hasnt even shipped it yet. Why bother using Amazon pre order?

Great!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 7
Date: November 28, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Halo2 is a great game with spectacular updates from Halo.

Vehicles -
Specter - 2 stars - pro, seats four people con, horrible turret

Phantom - 4 stars - pro, tough con, can't get in it!

Ghost - 5 stars - pro, more of them, easier to kill, and you can board them! con, become annoying after a while in campaign

Wraith - 5 stars - pro, can board them con, hate the mini guns on them in campaign and why can't you use them?

Warthog - 5 stars - pro, great phsycs when playig a demo durby, love the gaus gun!

Scorpion - 5 stars - pro, big boom! con, too slow

Online Play -

Best Matchmaking I've ever seen. Worth getting XBox Live for. Never gets old. Love custom game feature.

Weapons -

Brute Shot - 5 stars - pro, shoots grenades! con, what con?

Particle Beam Rifle - 4 stars - pro, head shot! con, overheats too fast

Carbine - 4 stars - not much to say, nice gun

Fuel Rod Cannon - 5 stars - pro, bigger than big boom, hunter weapon right in you hands! con, why isn't it in online play?

Battle Rifle - 4 stars - pro, love those head shots con, hate it when I get shot in the head!

SMG - 5 stars - Great dual weapon

( Great thing about smaller weaons is the dual feature; hold more than one gun at a time! )

I think that I've given you enough info for now. JUST GO BUY IT FOR PETE'S SAKE!!!!!

Damn Perfect WITHOUT Multi-Player use!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 7
Date: August 24, 2006
Author: Amazon User

The title of this review says it all. I play this game on somewhat of a late-nightly-fighting-insomnia basis and I have NEVER played this game through XBOX live, just the damn "campaign" mode and it's become the needle in my arm I knew it would be, it's that good!

Where to begin? Let's start with the "cinematics" as they are so appropriately called. The game is worth it for just that! Their not quite TV movie quality, they just need a slight push to be that, but it does achieve the feeling of suddenly taking over in the middle of a scene rather a level within a game. An excellent voice cast: Robert Davi (My favorite choice.), Keith David as the excellent character Arbiter who actually has a strong character arc (movie lingo for a charcter that changes in one way or the other.), Miguel Ferrer, and Michael Wincott (my other favorite as the Prophet of Truth. His voice just resonates with evil!) However, David Cross as Marine is like Fat Albert as a marathon runner, it's a bit of a stretch. Michelle Rodriguez as a marine fits like a magnum round in a chamber, it just works. By the way, an enemy that as Gravemind says is "flesh and faith and is the more deluded!" Does that sound familiar? Promises of a "Great journey" promised to them by their religous leaders! Wanting to eradicate another species, essentialy because of their non belief! I'm just saying.

The Gameplay? What I look for in a good game is not only the quality of the graphics and bodycount, the two most important things I look for is the number things to do and when you beat the game is repeating it worth it. On both counts, HALO 2 OVER acheives both of these things. The number of weapons to use and the number of ways to try the missions, just keeping your fellow soldiers alive is a challenge, it works on every level. You get to do everything you wanted to do in the first game in this one (drive a Covenant Wraith, jump on and knock people of Ghosts, dual weld weapons, use weapons that you couldn't use in the first game, and shoot while other characters drive.) As far as the graphics go, everything is eye-achingly detailed. The Covenant and the much better looking than HALO Flood are more detailed than the humans, but that's expected, it seems logical that it would be easier to create something that doesn't exist(i.e. alien worlds, aircraft and weapons that don't exist, etc.) that you have no real examples of verses something like a realistic human faces, but even their it's amazing to see their movements and expressions (I love the guys with the Austrailian and Spanish accents.). The Covenant is more of a formidable enemy, with the addition of the Brutes, ape-like creatures with rhino-esque hides. At one point during the game, as the Chief, it becomes a four-way battle between you, the Flood, the Elites, and the Brutes! Stunning! There's also a moment when encountering all this that it's nearly pitch black and only a few lights are one. You are moving around with your flashlight on, hacking and blasting away at everything in your path! It's a real rush.

The weapons are somewhat better than HALO's, this time I think their more realistic. The assault rifle from the first game was full automatic but you could waste ammo, this one is more accurate as well. Not to worry though. The submachine guns, which you can dual-weld ala John Woo are, true to advertising, bullet-hoses. I miss the scope on the pistol but within the game there's really no need for weapon that weak. I love the energy sword, it's the ultimate anti-Flood weapon, give me that and a shotgun (also with a more realistic ammo carrying capacity than HALO) and no Flood, or Brute for that matter, will remain standing.

As far as the vehicles go, they've gotten some much needed upgrades. The Warthog is still my favorite. It's been improved with a power-slide feature that is murder against the Ghosts. They also had the thought to put in a horn, just a marvelous attention to detail. The Scorpion tank has less of a loading time between shots and the machine gun is more accurate than before. They've added a Spectre, which is the Covenant equivalant to the Warthog, although the Warthog is a better vehicle in my opinion. A boost feature has been added to the Ghost as well as the Banshee. The Wraith Mortar Tank is a mixed blessing. It's rounds are strong but their's not much of a close quarter accuracy as opposed to the Scorpions main gun. The best improvement however is that all of these vehicles aren't as indestructible as they were in the first game. When using The Warthog, for example, you can shatter the windshield, have the engine catch fire, knock out the tail lights, and even destroy the thing if it gets enough damage. Same thing with the tank. It all ads to the realism.

Also as far as complaints about the suit and the life meter being gone, it merely adds to the realism. Your sheilds do charge up faster in this game verses the first, but it puts you on the same level with the Elites you encounter. In other words, it's know somewhat more of a fair fight which makes it more challenging!

As I said, I haven't played the Multi-player mode yet, and I don't think I will. If I wanted to do something like that, I'd get Battlefield 2. I'm still way to involved with the story and the gameplay of the campaign mode to care about that stuff.

A damn exhausting, miracle of a game in every way!

Just a personal note: Damn you people at Bungie for making HALO 3 only available on the XBOX 360! Why would want to dissapoint the people who have made the previous games such success by letting the final chapter come out on a console that very few people have? Why make us spend more money than we have to? Oops! I just answered my own question! :)

November 8th?

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 15
Date: November 10, 2004
Author: Amazon User

K, its november 9th, a day after it said it would ship it. So, i felt like this was cool since thats when everyone else was going to get it anyway. WRONG!!! All it says is "Item Is Being prepared to ship". ? Wut ? Does that mean its coming tomorrow or thursday or mayb even friday?! I should have just preordered and done in store pickup somewhere else. Amazon is great for most things, but Halo 2 is the only thing i hav ordered from amazon that was not sent in the estimated ship date. Its cool tho, ill get it soon so im still happy.

Riding on the coat tails of success

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: February 04, 2005
Author: Amazon User

In a nutshell I felt that H2 was not as good as Halo in many ways. It was a let down.

When I got Halo for the X-box and began playing it I was thinking what is all the fuss about (especially after I experienced a poor PC demo were it ran like crap on a fairly high-end machine displaying nice graphics at best). After finishing it on the X-box I could see why it was voted game of the year. Unlike the PC port the X-box version was great. In fact it was so well done it seemed like the console and controllers were built around the game. It runs, looks, and plays great.

With H2 however the X-box is showing signs of old age and is also beginning to show its lack of functionality. In game and in cut scene there were drops in frame rate and/or lag in object redraw due to the extra graphics and modeling. This still could have been acceptable in-game were action or graphics could get intense (i.e. Fable) but in cut scenes? Come on. I will always appreciate speed over graphics (not that the graphics of Halo are bad, they are great even 2 years later).

While the controls in Halo were no nonsense and very well thought up, the addition of duel weapon wielding in H2 caused confusion. Not only did you immediately lose the grenade functionality with dual weapons, now you had to keep in mind that Y was for dual weapon and X was for switch weapon. When you wanted the secondary weapon (i.e. more ammo) to be your primary that required going from the duel wield to single (dropping the secondary), switching between the primaries and then going back into the duel mode. Needless to say it was kind of a pain and when thinking back to the ease of use in the first game this was an addition H2 could of done without. A free hand to throw grenades is still more effective then a dual weapon wield anyway. Even the reloading of dual weapons was a bit silly. Since this is physically impossible to do (outside of games) even the animation wasn't there for it. Your character would simply lower both weapons out of view to reload both at once.

Controls in the first Halo were excellent. In fact they are the best I have experienced on the Xbox. I don't know if it was because of a steady frame rate or not, but the tracking of targets was very precise. You could spin around and find an attacker accurately just as you can fine tune into a target at a distance in front of you. This is no longer the case with H2. Aim a little too far to the left or right and you lose tracking altogether. The effect is kind of like using a mouse cursor that has acceleration built into it. Its annoying because just as you get used to a certain rate of turn the tracking takes off on you and you get to start over.

Also close combat in the first Halo was fun. Dodging (and turning to shoot) those big guys as they where trying to body check you was quite an experience. In H2 your character is slower. He gets pummeled by shots and those body checks (the addition of Brute Pistols didn't help matters). I also found the character ALWAYS got stuck on some container or part of a wall when trying to avoid getting hit. This usually meant death.

I did like the additional use of vehicles in the game and I have noticed that the relative strengths of vehicles have been adjusted to be fairer. For example no longer do you have a lumbering tank that can ONLY take as much damage as Master Chief's shields and health can withstand (my biggest complaint of Halo). As far as the extra weapons are concerned they are mainly alien duplicates of what already existed on the human side and were not really necessary. Even the power blade is kind of redundant considering the use of the existing melee.

Another thing I didn't like about H2 was the size of the battlefields. They are generally smaller and felt more like a series of gauntlets to get through from point A to B rather then the large areas one could explore and do almost at leisure in the first Halo. Sometimes, I admit, those seemed too big for their own good, but this was better then feeling "boxed in" all the time.

Maybe I am just speaking for myself when I say that the story in H2 was hard to follow, but I found that when I finished the game I had only a brief idea of what transpired during the game. It seems the creators of H2 have made the assumption that everyone who is going to play H2 has already played Halo before hand. Still, that's no excuse for the "snippets" of a grander story they presented.

I am not even going to go into the conclusion of H2 because that is a whole other gripe I had with the game and I would inevitably give away the end and ruin it for those who have yet to play and finish it. All I will say about it is that what you have been lead to believe this game is about through advertising is misleading.

As far as the Limited edition is concerned; it has sleek unique packaging and a "making of" DVD, but if you don't have a DVD player or a DVD attachment you won't be able to run that extra disc. I think that's something that should of been allowed to run natively under the Xbox. I'm still debating over whether or not the extra cost was worth it.

H2 is definately worth a looksey, but for those of you who haven't played the first one, go there instead.

To the Person who thinks Unreal is better than H2

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: November 10, 2004
Author: Amazon User

As far as I'm concerned, I've been playing games since all that was available was Intellivision and simply put, Halo 2 is one of (if not THE) best release of 2004. Speaking of running around shooting monsters...what the heck do you call Unreal? Quality strategy? A solid and replayable game running around limited and boring maps? Have you even PLAYED the game? Do it, then come on here and state the game is "hyped".

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