The Rest -
Let’s make no mistake - Bungie has done an excellent technical job crafting an amazing game. Graphics, lighting and physics are pretty impressive. But they had also done an excellent job crafting the first game so that’s no surprise. And, as every self-respecting game player knows, graphics do not make a game great. Sequels are about giving the player another reason to pick up a joystick and spend 10 to 20 hours (or more) of their life bathing in the soft, radioactive glow of their television ruining their thumbs and wrists while others go windsurfing. With all of the hype surrounding this game, the long wait and the enormity of the first release, Halo 2 just doesn’t feel like a new and changed enough experience to make it a must play.

It seems that the ring-shaped Halo was a holy relic to the Covenant and the human’s destruction of it in the last game has made a bunch of already pissed off aliens that much more pissed off. This time, the Covenant are much more personified by attractive and colorful cut-scenes of their ceremonies, executions and government assemblies. It’s interesting to see how the Covenant side of the story unfolds but I couldn’t help but be annoyed by the fact that the Covenant elders speak English with old English accents - but that might just be knit-picking.

One of the promises of a sequel is that all of the things we loved about the first game will return in new environments. Even though the action in Halo 2 has moved to the urban environments of Earth, it still feels like we are wandering through the same nondescript facility hallways of the ring planet. It’s instantly disappointing to have identical gun battles in hallways with arcane alien symbols and flashing lights on the walls just like in the first game. The environments simply don’t feel new enough to make the game itself feel new. There are a few interesting scenes like the first street fight when the Master Chief makes it back to Earth with his squad, but these are few and far between. The rest of the game is a mix of dull hallways, eerie rooms and rubble strewn clearings that merely serve as a format for gun battles and aren’t very interesting to look at.

Halfway through the first Halo I found myself becoming very bored with the duck, shoot, throw grenade format of the entire game. The few new weapon additions don’t do much to change this hum drum game play. There is the Covenant Carbine gun and the Particle Beam Sniper Rifle added to the original weapons like the Needler, the Plasma rifles and various machine guns. None of these change the methods of approaching combat very much accept for the Covenant Energy Sword which requires close combat but is very effective and fun to use. Still, game play ends up becoming little more than room to room clearing missions, dodging grenades, aiming and shooting at hordes of the same enemies we all fought in the last game. The ability to wield two weapons not only does little to change the game play but it causes a lot of confusion when picking up weapons and putting them down in the middle of a gun fight. The second weapon also gets in the way making the already claustrophobic viewing frame that much more cluttered. It’s also bothersome that you can’t throw grenades while holding two weapons. I might not complain about this if Midway’s Area 51 had not found such an efficient way of handling these problems.

The addition of Xbox Live play is the game’s biggest draw. The previous game only gave you the chance to blow away a friend in a split-screen perspective which got old very quickly. I guess the real problem is that I was never overwhelmed with joy to play the first Halo either and by picking up the sequel I was expecting the game play to change enough that maybe...just maybe I would see what all of the fuss was about. Halo 2 does change a bit as you move to the latter levels and the story brings new elements into the game but the game play stays and never makes me truly feel like I’m playing a separate game, only an extension of the first. Being that Halo is the Xbox’s killer-app and it will obviously be seeing more sequels, one would expect it to have a deeper sense of space and character development but it feels a bit shallow and unsustainable unlike Half Life where the story and characters are just as important as the game play.

Fans of the first game will certainly like the second. Just don’t expect to do much more than lean on the trigger and dodge oncoming fire in Halo 2.

With all of that said, I'd still like to commend Halo's developers for making such a technically well crafted game and say that I'll still be one of the first in line to buy the XBOX 360 version due out sometime next Spring.

Make sure you leave us comments below if you agree or disagree with us.

Posted: June 4, 2005