Halo 2 is the second instalment in the Halo series by Bungie... Does it match up to the greatness of Halo: CE?
Well, there are many additions into this game, the majority of which are sensible. The first, and most noticeable addition, or "upgrade", rather, is the change of the HUD, or Heads Up Display. First of all, the "health" bar has changed, rather than showing the shield recharge bar and health bars like it did from Halo 1, it simply shows a shield recharge bar, without a health bar indicator – to me this is a disadvantage to the game as the player will not know if he/she is close to death or not. However, a sensible, and more realistic addition is the ability to dual wield weapons – or hold 2 light-weight weapons at the same time. However, there are disadvantages to this, as the player may be unable to melee or throw a grenade.
A more popular addition is the ability to play as "The Arbiter" – an Elite soldier chosen to lead the group or something like that. Instead of the "light" option that Master Chief has, the Arbiter has the ability to go into camouflage for approximately 5 seconds – personally I find this useless, well, what good does 5 second camo do? Only very little, kill 2 enemies at most. And the recharge time seems like 10 seconds. However, as the Arbiter, you play more entertaining levels, and you have the ability to side on with other Elites, who have better AI and are stronger than Marines. Also, new enemies faced in this game include Drones, Brutes, Heretic Grunts, Heretic Elites and there are also new 'levels' of Grunts and Elites.
Another addition is that you are now able to swap weapons with your allies – if they are holding a weapon you want, just swap it with them, no hassle done. And another addition in which I haven't heard much complaining about is the "destructible" vehicles – vehicles can be destroyed in this game by shooting at them. Additions to weaponry include the Brute Plasma Rifle (quick-shooting version of Plasma Rifle), the Fuel Rod Cannon in single player, the Beam Rifle (Covenant Sniper), the Energy Sword and Brute Shot (mini-grenade launcher). Additions to infantry and enemy include the Brutes – an aggravated bunch who don't like their rivals, and players may find them frustrating to kill on the Legendary difficulty.
The campaign in Halo 2 is pretty good – at least there's no "Library" again (man, I hated that level so much). The fact that one can take on the role of The Arbiter, and the fact that the game has 2 protagonists (Master Chief, and the Arbiter), keeps the player engaged and hooked, despite the fact that there were only 13 playable levels (well, come on, if you have 2 protagonists, the game cost $90 brand new at the time, you gotta give us more content), these levels are addictive, and up to 4 players can play co-operatively, if one finds difficulty playing by themselves.
Again, Halo 2, just like Halo 1, has a great, but kind of a sad storyline. I'll describe one protagonists storyline so as to not completely spoil the game. The Arbiter, a disgraced Zealot Elite (those freaky gold ones from Halo 1, remember?), was sentenced to some sort of Covenant Jail, responsible for not doing enough to prevent the destruction of the first Halo Ring. He is released by the Prophets to squash a Heretic threat in some gas station in the middle of nowhere. However, the Prophets change the 'safekeepers', from Elites to Brutes. Elites, along with the Arbiter, are outraged, and side with the Human Marines, along with Hunters and a portion of Grunts, thus leaving the true rivals to be Drones, Jackals, Brutes and the Prophets. The final level concludes with the Arbiter killing off a 'boss' Brute – Tartarus. A pretty good storyline aye?
Multiplayer Halo 2 is pretty smooth also. A remake of the famous Halo 1 Blood Gulch can be found here – only this time it's called Coagulation, and the lighting is dimmer. A pity they did not recreate Sidewinder, I was fond of that map. Anyway, as I was saying before, Multiplayer in Halo 2 comes with new multiplayer maps, though not all of them as good as Halo 1. Most maps in this game are dull, however, this flaw can be made up for with the introduction of Xbox Live into Halo. Using Xbox Live, players can verse up to 16 people online in different maps – however – a sensible addition that could have been added could be Xbox Live Co-op Campaign Mode.
As continued from Halo 1, there is co-operative campaign mode for up to 4 players. However, there is a catch when playing on Legendary difficulty in co-operative mode – if just one player dies, the whole team must revert back to the previous checkpoint.
Graphics in this game are excellent, all characters are able to be seen clearly, and many say that the graphics of Halo 2 are more detailed than that of Halo 1, i.e. Master Chief, Elites, Grunts are much more detailed.
Audio in this game is crisp and clear, everything can be heard clearly, and the music slides in at correct points. The sound effects are precise. However, the audio also depends on the quality of your television.
This game, in terms of the replay value is not too bad. There are 4 difficulties in the campaign mode, there is co-operative campaign, Xbox Live and multiplayer. However, admittedly, campaign does get boring after being played repeatedly several times. As said before, with two protagonists in the game, 13 playable levels is nothing, in my opinion, there should be at least 18.
To conclude, I say that this game was not worth it's money when it was first released, however, now, this game can be bought cheaply second-hand in gaming stores on the Xbox Platform or brand new on PC for users with operating systems Windows Vista or above, and if you don't have it yet, well, get it now! You've been missing out on a great first-person action game, filled with a great storyline, great action, great multiplayer, great storyline, and a pretty short (13 levels – 4 difficulties) but entertaining campaign mode.