Please provide evidence that justifies your opinion. Do not flame someone for having a different opinion to you. You have every right to leave your opinion, but leave your hate for one another at the door.

Else, don't post.

I loved periodically switching to the Arbiter that was cool and new

The game had solid cutscenes(I like exposition-type stuff, nerd nerd) but threw too many firefights at me and the later levels were very low-detail and boxy compared to the first halo.
Brutes were hard to fight with an xbox controller because they were bullet sponges and ran super weird, BUT! they were fun to screw with and have awesome voices, good mix between complexion and savage.

Chief has a lot of one liners, and hell yeah for the "Boo!" moment

Getting to know how the covenant felt about things made me end up playing halo3 for the stealth xD


Coagulation was a disappointment, everything is brown, even the ambient lighting was brown, and everything had a crappy brown cubemap applied to it to try to make it even more brown and I have no memerable moments that remind me of coag :/

so basically(context of topic title):

[*] Annoyingly long firefights: outskirts, floodlab, oracle [/*]
[*] Expositions: detracts action-only players, attracts nerds [/*]
[*] Christmas Rush: Half of the levels are low-detail [/*]
[*] Awesome assault music samples: incubus and breaking benjamin stuff [/*]
[*] Real is Brown abuse [/*]

Edited by OrangeJuice on Oct 24, 2014 at 02:51 AM

Having the covenant refer to their fellow species using Human nicknames pissed me off.

The Good
-Beautiful environments
-stunning atmospheres
-amazing music
-amazing cutscenes
-best art direction in the series
-story is told really awesomely despite my opinion the story is total crap.


The Bad
-Arbiter missions force you to primarily use covie weapons, and give you the most uninteresting enemies to fight (see heretics below, brutes, and flood)
-Heretics have less diversity in their ranks than any level in the original game, except POA. Also your range of weapons for their missions is all plasma or clone weapons.
-Dynamic between human and alien weapons is almost entirely erased, most guns are clones of the other and the more unique properties of the alien weapons is removed.
-Story makes little sense, questions go unanswered to this day. (Why did Truth want to start a civil war right before their victory? Why did Regret attack earth while the rest of the Covenant knew it was the humans home planet? What happened to release the Flood on Delta Halo? Why did Cortana not go through with her plan to detonate in Amber Clad to destroy the High Charity and the Halo Ring as planned?)
-Later Chief missions try to get rid of Human weapons as well
-Story is fractured and has no momentum until near the end.
-Story is written around removing the most interesting and smartest enemies from the first game, and replacing them with enemies that were never created with the purpose of being replacements.
-Flood are used as the primary enemies for fights... no longer used to flip the dynamics of combat like they were in the first game.
-Linear environments
-Mechanics don't work requiring player to stick to strict pre-planned strategies.

I'll add more as they come to mind.

They're also all speaking English. I think that's more for the benefit of the viewers, rather than a true representation of Covie conversation.

Halo 2 as a whole to me is a Halo game, albeit a lackluster one campaign wise. It set out to do so much more (similar to it's predecessor) and ultimately didn't accomplish it. While I felt the art direction was some of the best in the series, I felt that other things such as the new enemies (the brutes and the drones at that time) were wasted opportunities that instead felt annoying and tedious to fight. The word tedious is the best way to describe Halo 2s singleplayer to me. While it does offer some high points and a new perspective to the Halo story, it feels like all of the good things accomplished were drowned out in a sea of mundane events. The ending probably didn't help add to any sort of pay off. I could basically describe it as Halo 3 lite, while I also believe Halo 3 has a ton of flaws it felt like many complaints with Halo 2s gameplay were fixed (a good example is the evolution of brute ai from H2-Reach, H2 being mindless bullet sponges, H3 being easier to kill elites, and Halo Reach being the most fun and interesting to fight imo). Bungie set too many high goals that weren't achieved or fully realized (similar to their most recent game *cough*).
Edited by ZOBI3KING on Oct 24, 2014 at 04:18 AM

Bungie didn't realize what they were trying to create. Halo 2 was such an ambitious project that unfortunately couldn't end up being good. It was rushed out and it has a plethora of issues.

Good:
-Best Halo OST
-Well animated cutscenes
-Good graphics for an Xbox game, though there were plenty of Xbox games that looked better
-Great art style
-Beautiful backdrops

Bad:
-Sound effects are dull
-The voice acting for most characters is okay at best
-Extremely repetitive and tedious
-Most of the gameplay is remaining in one area and waiting for the next event to happen
--The encounters last WAY too long.
--Especially apparent during the horizontal elevator sequences
-Your arsenal is limited depending on which character you play as
-Brutes are epicly boring to fight, with drones and flood not being much better
-The variety in enemies drops as the game progresses
-The levels are less open than in the first game
-The game is designed to be played a certain way, you get punished for thinking outside the box
-Plotholes galore (see Masterz' post)

Ultimately, I am disappointed with Halo 2's campaign and I think it is the worst Halo FPS. I would talk about the multiplayer as well, but that's for another thread.
Edited by Oskarmandude on Oct 24, 2014 at 10:18 PM

Halo 2 overall was a bad game.

The Story. It completely recons some of Halo 1's stuff just for the sake of it. Not only that but it also added so many unneeded elements that end up just getting skipped by anyway. Bungie really needs to start telling simple stories because they aren't good at telling complex stories. Halo 1 was great because the story was so simple. Halo 3 may not be as simple as Halo 1, but it's less of a mess than Halo 2 was. Halo: Reach's story was way over Bungie's head and I can't speak for Destiny but I hear it isn't well in story at all.

Gameplay. Ew. Brutes though, like why. For me the weapons feel the flimiest of all Halos. Vehicles also don't handle too well, or they just don't feel right. I'm not sure. Whatever it is though, I'm sure the tank could be just a tad more slower.

Graphics. No idea what went wrong but I think Halo 1 still looks better. They just seem chalky. (I don't harp on this much though).
Edited by MatthewDratt on Oct 24, 2014 at 11:10 PM

Granted Halo 2 has it's problems, and maybe I thought the gameplay was so fancy shmancy because I played it when I was 8 and I feel nostalgic, but to this day I have to say Halo 2 has really nice artstyle, environments, music, characters, and animations. So basically, what Masters4690 said. I don't dislike anything in particular besides the Arbiter mission where you were dropped off by a phantom at a flood 2sppoky4me level and you mainly had to use plasma pistol and rifle, the most annoying weapons of all time. And If you did ever get your hands on a br or smg you had like -30 bullets. Furthermore, the sword elite ai needs some improvement, their animations (which I really like) dotn resally allow them to outspeed the chief, so they just kinda run at you until you get cornered or somethign lol and then you die. Brutes are dumb too but idk, I like them that way. And what masterz1085 said about the Heretics, yes they had few ranks, but I thought it was a really cool thing and still do. The heretic elites did look really rebel-y and militia-y and the Halo 2 covenant looked sexy-y overall.

There's no doubt more I could list, but I only have so much time :-)

Good:
- Allies could use any weapon given to them, offering countless ways to mix up gameplay. I remember going through high-charity with a squad of carbine-rifle marines, kicking everything's butt. This option was unseen in Halo 1, and immediately upped the usefullness of your allies
- Featured some of the very best level design in Halo history. Much like Halo 1 and Halo 3, Halo 2 offered a series of very iconic levels: The Mombasa levels, Delta Halo, Uprising, High Charity. Levels of this quality were unseen in for example Halo 4
- Unlike some other members here have claimed, levels had more ways of playing them than some might think. Ever tried playing the Uprising ghost-session on foot, together with your elite allies? No? It was awesome
- New enemies: rangers, drones and brutes. All of them interesting. Brutes might have had wonky animations, but I enjoyed mashing them up in the halls of high-charity together with a squad of rifle-Marines. Fighting drones was a fun twist, especially with needlers and/or smgs
- Best soundtrack of the series, sharing this title with Halo 1
- Awesomely complicated easter eggs, such as getting the scarab gun by hijacking a banshee in one of the mombasa tunnels at exactly the right moment. IWHBYD was also terrific

Bad:
- I missed the assault rifle
- Glitchy cutscenes
- Legendary sniper jackals, ALTHOUGH this made for a very fun co-op experience. Going through the Mombasa alleys with your bro, co-ordinating with eachother to quickly and perfectly execute the snipers was a unique experience
- Hunter fuel-rod cannon became a beam in Halo 2, Halo 1's cannon was always my favorite hunter weapon

Overall:
My all-time favorite Halo game. The absolute best original Xbox game I ever played. Everything felt just right in a sense that was lost after the original trilogy.

I think I should start by saying that my perspective is quite warped due to my inability to feel "enjoyment". No matter;

Good:
-Interesting and memorable level design.
-Campaign from 2 perspectives.
-Giving allies weapons, which as Lodex stated, could change everything.
-Good soundtrack.
-Varied and interesting weapon set.
-Good art direction.
-Interesting story.

Bad:
-Jackal snipers on Legendary.
-Hunter beam. I simply find the Fuel Rod Cannon more interesting and threatening.
-Lack of ammo.
-Flood were lackluster in my opinion.

To be fair, though, the assault rifle in Combat Evolved basically functioned as an SMG. I think the only difference between the H2 SMG and the H1 assault rifle was muzzle climb and the ability to dual-wield.

True. I didn't miss a weapon filling in its role in Halo 2, as that was indeed mostly the SMG. I did however love the assault rifle's design and sound effects. It is to me the most iconic weapon of the series in that regard, hence why I missed it so much in Halo 2!

I agree, the assault rifle was much missed, but its not quite the same as the SMG, for one thing It had an ammo counter and direction indicator, also, It had faster melee speeds.

I have to say, although I enjoyed Halo 2 as a whole I did hate on these five things (the rest I actually quite liked)

MC Armour is somehow weaker than the MK V

Those frigging plasma cannons on the wraiths, you should be able to use them!

Miranda keys cable car dissapearing while you watched.

the lack of explanations as to how to turn on your invisibility as the arbiter, It took me ages to work out it was Q.

There is a few differences, but due to the way the enemy health and ai work you don't really get the same experience you would in H1 using the AR. I think the SMG is actually more acurate than the AR as well. Time to pop open H2EK.

The Good -

> Cinematics

> More vehicles

> More weapons

The Bad -

> Glitchy character scripts.

> Lackluster flood

> Is it me, or does the bitmap quality from halo 2 feel a little crappier than halo 1?

> No achievements.

(And don't say H2A will fix the last problem, it won't H2A is evil don't buy it. Donate your money to ce3 instead.)

Actually the Halo 2 vista version does have achievements. And personally, I didn't really see anything wrong with the flood, care to enlighten me?

They aren't really as fun as the first game or used in as many interesting situations. there are almost no 3 way fights and the shotgun is super sucky against them.

Were many other games doing achievements at the time, though? I may be wrong, but I thought achievements weren't really a thing until the Xbox 360.

As I said before, ON WINDOWS VISTA the Xbox version I don't think had them.


Edited by Jobalisk on Oct 26, 2014 at 09:52 PM

Needs alot more AI

I just wanted to make a comment about what you said about the story; Truth didn't want to start a Civil War, but he was worried that the elites would rebel so he made the first move. Regret didn't attack earth, the rest of the covenant did not know that earth was the human's home, they knew that earth had a forerunner artifact and regret went to earth to find that. The Flood on Delta Halo, I believe, is supposed to be a mystery. One possible explanation was that Delta Halo's monitor went rampant and couldn't perform his duties; therefore the flood couldn't stay contained and the ring fell into disrepair (delta ruins, rusty metal, etc) and lastly, cortana was not able to follow through with the plan because the gravemind got to her (the story pokes that the gravemind had somehow infiltrated the high charity network that cortana was on when cortana says "I feel some presence, fighting back, for a covenant construct it's unusually formidable", this is why cortana was in such bad shape in Halo 3.

On that last one, according to one of the wiki pages on Halo Nation, it was actually Medicant Bias that was preventing Cortana from stopping the lauch sequence. I'll link to the article once I find it.
Edit: Here;

http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/High_Charity_(level)

Though it doesn't say it outright, in the transcript, it links to the Medicant Bias page.
Edited by austen1000 on Oct 29, 2014 at 02:06 PM

That's probably open to debate. It doesn't seem like anything officially links the two.

The flood to me in halo 2 seemed, just tiresome.

Infact the only memorable experience I had playing a few flood levels would be the mass of infection forms scurrying up the spiral ramp in the heretic mission.

I guess maybe the flood vehicle engagements ruined it for me?

Engaging vehicular battle with the covenant and the forerunner sentinels was fine.

But having the flood take part in vehicle engagements too made me think of them as just another covy.

As masterz said, H1 really nailed the flood theme. Even to this day I get the heebie jeebies busting through the library with my Ar and shotgun.


Gud times.

The problem with flood and vehicles is that once they are in them, they don't have any different behavior. You aren't fighting a Flood form, you are just fighting that vehicle.

A good point. What alternate characteristics do you think a Flood-operated vehicle should possess? Aside from reckless driving, I suppose.

how about, instead of you boarding things the flood leap off if you come to close and try to board you. or just kill you if your on foot?

Yeah that would be cool. Maybe something where they try to use the vehicles for traveling fast and leaping off. Would be pretty scary to see a ghost boosting at you and then the flood leap off or infection forms leap from it onto your own vehicle. You'd need some significant new mechanics for flood vehicle combat just like you have for on foot.

True, but It would be pretty epic, or even better, a ghost comes screaming up to you with a second flood riding it like the passenger on a mongoose and they both jump off! (after all this is the flood we're talking about. don't expect them to ride vehicles the way they were intended to be driven.)

It might be a bit more frightening if they tried to kamikaze you with a hog or banshee.

what about both? (random choice between the two depending on how damaged the thing is. and other factors)

A ghost, with infection pods all over the front.
Boosts up to you...BOOM...infection pods attack.

The funk is real.

Hmmm nice ideas.


U listening 343i ?


U LISTENING!