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Weak story and surprising bugs keep this from being a winner

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 14 / 18
Date: November 11, 2004
Author: Amazon User

With all of the hype and anticipation for this game, I must say that I was let down by the entire experience. I will break it down into the good and bad for simplicity:

The good:
- Most of the weapons have been improved, and the opportunity to dual-wield is amazing.
- Hijacking vehicles is fun, and adds to gameplay because you can get 'jacked too.
- Very good graphics on non-HDTV screens, nice lighting effects, and great panoramic vistas.
- Sound effects in 5.1 were outstanding - I could hear the elites coming up behind me - and the sound track was propulsive.
- Multi-player over xBox live was simply amazing.

The bad:
- The story arc for Halo was a major reason for my excitement about this game. In my opinion, Bungie blew it. The story for Halo2 was weak and not cohesive. We jumped from places and purposes without really having a good picture of what was going on. Characters that seemed critical appeared in one level and were cut down the next, without providing essence to the story. If you play far enough, you will run into Audrey from Little Shop of Horrors - a real head-scratcher why Bungie chose a character that looked like that. The real surprise was when, as it feels like the story is reaching some climax, the game simply ends and credits roll. I can only speculate and hope that there will be a Halo3 to pick up where we left off.
- Although the trailers and E3 gave a strong impression that the game was oriented around the defense of earth (urban warefare, etc) this is not the case. Only two levels are played on earth in the beginning. Furthermore, the demonstration from E3 is not actually a level that is played.
- On the bugs side, the most important for me was that THE GAME DOES NOT DISPLAY CORRECTLY ON HDTV! 16:9 widescreen is impossible without distortion, and 4:3 overscanned and cropped off the left and right 10% of the picture, making it very hard to read sheilds and grenade counts, etc. I was certain that the problem was with the system until we checked online forums and found that this is an issue that Bungie is working and hoping to have resolved in December... so we had to move the xBox to an old TV, which displayed fine.
- We played on an older xBox (unhacked) and it was pretty apparent that Halo2 was pushing all the limits on the box's ability to show the game. On Normal, there were occasional pop-ups and enemies that would appear from nowhere, and some choppy cutscenes. But on Legendary, rendering was slow when there were lots of enemies, and lighting shading effects were compromised.

After waiting 3 years, listening to the hype, paying $50 early, and setting aside a day for Halo2, I am very disappointed in the end. If you jazz on the story, I suggest you rent the Limited Edition pack of the game so you can watch the DVD, which explains a lot about Bungie's issues during development and includes scenes cut from the game. If the multiplayer mahem with added treats from Halo1 is what you want, then this is still your game.

Also, make sure you stick around to watch after the credits roll.

First there was Halo then there was Halo 2

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 16 / 22
Date: November 10, 2004
Author: Amazon User

First of all I love the first Halo, I have beaten it on every level of difficulty. Halo 2 is great!! I just got it today and i allready love it. It is a bit different than Halo but basic ideas are the same, shoot shoot and shoot some more. The graphics are a bit of a dissapointment, in some of the cut scenes the detail takes a second to fully come up.

Weapons:

Dual weilding isnt what its all craked up to be, with human weapons theres no grenade throw, reloading is slow and to melee you drop one gun, some times its hard enough to remember to reload one gun and with two its even harder. Covenant its a bit different the plasma pistols are only as fast as your fingers are over heating is a big problem, plasma rifles are better and worse they over heat easier but its easier to fire you only have to pull the trigger,needlers are much like human weapons. My favorite human weapon the pistol now does not have a scope and it has dual wielding. There is no assault rifle but a battle rifle, it is a hybrid of a pistol and assault rifle it has a 2X scope very accurate holds 36 rounds per mag but lacks auto fire but 3 round bursts. The submachine guns are very cool fast fire dual weilding. Sniper rifle, Shotgun, Rocket launcher,and grenade have all stayed the same. There are many new covenant weapons and old ones needlers now hold 30 rounds. Vehicles have mostly stayed the same. I hear multy player is great and xbox live games to. Great game overall.

Good, but could be better

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 11 / 13
Date: September 01, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Halo 2 has good gaphics, good game play, and a good story. This game is a great sequel to the first. It has great multiplayer split screen game play.You get to be spartan and the Elite alien, you get to play both sides of the Halo 2 story! The thing that I don't like about Halo 2 is that the Flood returns. I hated fighting the flood in the first Halo, and wasn't expecting to fight them again in Halo 2. The main theme of Halo 2 was that you were going to have to protect earth from the aliens, you did do that, but I was expecting to fight them on earth the intire game, but you don't, you fight on earth for 2 levels and then you don't come back untill the end of the game.
This game still is a great game despite the few flaws. When you beat the game, split screen is still a very fun part of the game if you have a friend to play with (its acually my favorite part of the game).This is a great game so go play it!

Best Game on XBox So Far

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 15 / 22
Date: December 06, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I do think this is the best game for the xbox so far. Some People may argue with that, but whatever. Its my opinion. Halo 2 has evolved greatly from Halo 1 (which was also an excellent game).

The most obviouse and noticeable is the graphics. The lighting effects are incredible. When the Master Chief comes out of the shadows you notice the light reflection off his armor. It's amazing. Another graphic change that isn't a big deal, but it's something truely incredible is when characters talk, their mouths don't just bob up and down, it looks like they are actually speaking.

The gameplay in Halo 2 is pretty much the same as Halo 1. The only acception is the ablity to dual wield two weapons at once. This can make a major difference while playing multiplayer. The only drawback to this new ability is you can no longer use grenades because your "free hand" is no longer free.

The single player campain is great, but i can see why some people think it isn't up to par. In the first Halo, I enjoyed playing the missions over and over again. In Halo 2, it's fun to play them a lot, but i got sick of them, and, as in all FPS games, once the single player is over, its over. After defeating the game on legendary, they replay value is very low.

At about that time, multiplayer becomes the greatest aspect in the game. It's blast to play with friends on split screen and system link. I could do that four hours on end. The real beauty of Halo 2's multiplayer is in its online play. I haven't had much experience with this, though, because I have a terrible internet connection and don't have XBox Live. I have played online at a friends house, and I could hardly leave it alone! There is really no gaming experience equal to getting an "un-freakin-believable" (25 kills without dieing) and then getting to rub it in while you view the stats screen.

Bottom line: if you haven't already, buy this game!

Graphics: 5/5

Gameplay: 5/5

SP story: 4/5

Multiplayer: 5/5

New features: 5/5

Amazon Not Shipping Pre-ordered games

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 11 / 14
Date: November 10, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I see others are irritated by Amazon not shipping pre-ordered copies of Halo 2, so I thought I'd just add my voice to the chorus of jeers. When you pre-order a game you expect the game to be delivered in a timely fashion, not 5 days after the release date which is what it looks like Amazon is going to do with my order of Halo 2. Worse, I could easily run down to Best Buy and pick myself up a copy right off the shelf, but Amazon has placed my order into its "order cannot be canceled" mode. Its been in "processing for being shipped" for 3 days now with a delivery estimate of November 8th. I have written an e-mail to Amazon's customer service and have not gotten a response. This is the last time I'll pre-order a game from Amazon.

***UPDATE****
I just received an apology e-mail from Amazon saying that they received their supplies late and that they are "currently processing the order" (whatever that means). I can understand that the game is very popular and there are a lot of orders to process, but still, that's why you offer pre-orders so you can anticipate this demand.

First Impression? A little better than mediocre....

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 33 / 67
Date: November 10, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Bungie/Microsoft, I hope you are listening...

I have played some multiplayer and some of the mission. But, already I can tell you that this game is not the huge leap we were looking for. I keep asking myself, "it took 3 years to come up with this"? Issues:
- During the cut-scenes, things (usually characters) just pop into the picture after a short delay. I know they are using the gaming engine for this, but it obviously works so poorly that Bungie must have seen this in their testing. Why use the game engine? Just put a movie clip in there!
- Dual Wielding is cool, but takes too much of the screen to show both guns. The perspective should have been better.
- Graphics in multiplayer are not that great. At a distance, things look distorted (this is on a brand new Sony 57" HD Widescreen TV running my Xbox in HD Widescreen mode)
- Can anyone else not understand the "creatures" when they talk?
- The manual does not address basic issues like what the buttons do. For example, they say the white button is for "active camo", but never tell us what this is. My white button has always been used for a flashlight.....

I will admit that I like the new weapons and I do like that the AI can drive the Warthog, even though the AI sometimes gets stuck. I also like that we can handicap a person in multiplayer. One of our team members is just naturally better than the rest of us so we can hold him back a little bit to make things fair.

I hope that what is going on here is that Bungie is limited by the Xbox hardware and had to compromise. I am sure they will never admit this since they are owned by Microsoft, but it's gotta be true. Or, all of their talent left after the first Halo and they could not reproduce the results. Finally, maybe nothing could have lived up to the hype....

Consider this game Halo 1.5 with Xbox Live capabilities and some new maps. We should have had this 18 months ago. Bungie, try again with Halo 3 on Xbox 2!!!!

For your reference, I am not a diehard gamer. I am a 32 year old guy who likes to play video games with his buddies once a week. Eight of us usually play Halo via systemlink with two TV's. We have been playing Halo for a couple years now and have always had a great time. Since it came out, I have also played the Halo mission all the way through several times. Your mileage and preferences may vary....

Halo 2 is great, but when's Halo 3?

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 8 / 9
Date: November 14, 2004
Author: Amazon User

That's right, I've actually finished the game and I enjoyed the game thoroughly. The graphics are really cool, and the game play is nice. Overall, everything is more or less better than before. That is everything, except for a few things like having to hold X longer to get into a vehicle, not always knowing where to go in a level (a personal difficulty,) and the lack of a true health bar.

Now, my main problem with the game, don't worry no spoiling here, is the end of the campaign mode. Put simply, it pre-empts Halo 3, and it better come out soon!. Yet, ignoring that the game is great fun, because, well it's a Halo game.

I dont know.... Is this Halo 2 or Halo expansion pak?

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 11 / 15
Date: November 11, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Dont get me wrong, its still Halo, but its not Halo on fire going 1000 miles per hour with ninja's chasing it, Like Bungie Said. I don't really understand all the 5 stars, unless those people never played the first one. My halo 1 disc is faded and probably warped, because I played it so much. We own 2 xbox's and have the system link and everything just because of Halo. Maybe we expected to much. Well onto Halo 2. From what I can tell they didn't do a whole lot with the weapons. Yes you can hold 2 which is pretty sweet, but not as cool as some people would have you believe (although having 2 needlers actually makes the needler not complete crap, But again you have to have 2 or it is still complete crap) They added a few new weapons, and the new battle rifle is sweet, but a couple weapons like the new covent sniper rifle feels a bit corny, it should be alot cooler, and not just shoot some little white dot, but what do you expect from the convent their guns run on AA batteries. And what the heck did they do to the shotgun?!? it looks like a flare gun! I must have missed something to, because I thought there was suppose to be like 5 different types of warthogs, one with snow skies and tank tracks, there is only 2(I havent finished it yet but I have only found 2) and the second one just has some rail gun on the back, not that inventive. And I was almost positive there was suppose to be ATV's. Now I can't say they lied because Im not one of those people that looked on the Bungie Website daily for info. but how cool would those have been? And then their was the convent missions, man those just plain sucked. I wanted to be done with it way way before it was over, and it just took forever. Plus, why would I want to be an elite anyway? I hope someone got fired for that one! haha. It left me wondering if they actually had this game done like 2 years ago and just sat on it so they could hype it, because they didnt do enough to it to take all that time. We should be on Halo 3 by now. I also agree with the one guy that said it wasnt open enough, I miss those big battlefields. Remeber that feeling that you got when they dropped you on the beach and you stormed the convent with your guns blazing and grenades rolling around and bodies flying and grunts screaming, and Elites laughing. Remember that!!! ya you wont get that in Halo 2... lets see what else can I complain about??? : ) no really the graphics are great, but long are the days where good graphics could push the game from good to great. And the new convent spetre is cool, and I like how you can get into the wraiths but they should have improved more.
I havent really played to much of the multiplayer but im not that impressed again. Good thing they left in blood gultch and battle creek, and I havent seen all of them yet but I hope longest and the big snow level are there. Why wouldn't they just leave all the old ones the anyway? Some of the new levels are kind of weird but I hope they get better as we play them. Bungie dropped the ball here again though, they didnt put the option in to have BOTS so you could practice "Multi-Player" when you dont have people over to play. And ya I know you can get Xbox live for all that but I just dont understand what people think is so great about LIVE. I love when all my friends come over to my house and we sit down with like 4 tv's going and just play with each other, and yell and taunt one another, its a blast. What is so great about sitting in your room by yourself, shooting some moron kid, in France that you dont even know yelling through a headset. Or how about the guy that sits on Halo 2 23 hours a day and knows your respawn sites and knows were every good gun is and just murders you ever 7 seconds... Man what a blast and it only cost you 50 bucks a year for live, plus 40 a month for broadband! Please Sign me up! I guess you gotta have friends to use the lan party though, and if you play Live all the time you cant go out and make any... Sorry Im just mad because I think bungie sold out to Live and left the BOTS out on purpose so people like me would have to get Live to play the multiplayer option, well guess what not gonna happen. Guess I'll go back and play Perfect Dark again. Well anyway, if you have Halo 1 go get Halo 2, you'll like it, but its no even close to the 1st one in innovation. If you haven't played Halo 1 please get it, before you go and play Halo 2, Then and only then will you get the true Halo feeling down deep in your soul.

The Review to Read!

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 9 / 11
Date: November 12, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I have read a few mixed reviews and wanted to wait until I finished the game to write my own. I want to start by asking if I am the only one that noticed: The first long (8-9 minute) Halo 2 trailer of mostly game play missing from the game? If you remember this trailer it starts of with Master Chief landing on Earth (in the process of being destroyed) and (the player) moving him through a medical area with dead and injured soldiers, up some stairs in a mostly destroyed building, and eventually into the back of a warthog battling through the streets. It the showed Master Chief jump on a ghost kicking off a brute and ended with a pretty cool cut scene. The reason I bring all this up is this was all demonstrated game play action that was in the trailer but nowhere to be found in the entire game.
Ok, with that off my chest I will simply state the pros and cons.
Cons:
- Story was too scattered with a failed attempt to add what was meant to be cool twists. What's up with the plant thing? lame
- Playing as the Arbitor sucks. I want to be the hero not the enemy
- Game too short (I played on Heroic and felt the urge to pop in Halo 1 after I finished, still thirsty)
- Aliens speak english. They were much scarier in #1 with the foreign words (should have stayed that way and been translated in the cut scenes)
- Most weapons seem less powerful, don't sound all that great, and don't have that weighted solid feeling the original ones had.
- My final complaint is that the game should have been spent traveling to different parts of earth fighting covenant and saving the human race instead of what it was after about the 3rd or 4th level.

Pros:
- Music similar but improved and built upon adding allot to the game.
- Graphics look great!
- Levels are visually stunning and massive.
- Game play is great if you can let go of your frustration with the story.

Finally, I will say this: the game is worth having for sure and looks to have some pretty awesome multiplayer value. The campaign, while disappointing compared to its predecessor, is still a top notch FPS.
In short Halo 2 is to Halo what the new Star Wars movies are to the old ones: visual improvements at the sacrifice of simplicity and substance.

Halo 2 a disappointment...bungie didnt complete game

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 10 / 13
Date: December 26, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I loved Halo Combat Evolved. Great game, good story line. Halo 2 has this enormous hype, I didnt even bother getting the game until juts recently...I was disappointed. The graphics of the 1st one were sketchy in some areas like the cutscenes, but it was a little better this time.
Environment was destructible which was a plus. More variety of weapons...duel wielding is great. It sucks that you cant throw grenades, but what do you expect.
The thing that made this game a disappointment was leaving Earth. Since 2 Christmases ago, I've been reading up on Halo 2. First they said it was going to be on Earth primarily. Not true. It was 3 levels of Earth (which were mediocre), followed by being aliens for 2 levels, then master chief, then aliens again. I skipped through the cut scenes because they were boring. The story didnt matter to me anymore.
I saw someone play a level on the cd you get from xbox magazine, and it looked amazing. I didnt see that level at all. I believe Bungie were making this amazing game, but all this hype and pushing the release date back made people angry, so they had to release what they had.
I heard of all this major bump mapping, but it didnt really make much difference to me, and I'm a 3d graphics major. I heard of a little ATV supposed to make an appearance, but didnt get to see it.
All in all, I heard so much good things about this game, and halo 2 didnt deliver on half of it.
The first cut scene was just too rediculous...master chief and the bomb...c'mon. major disappointment.

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