Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

40 to 100 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Disappointing"

After I finished Halo, I was eagerly looking forward to this game. However, when I finally got my hands on one of them, it was disappointing. Things could have been better, but alas it wasn't.

1. Gameplay - The first person aspect of the game is pretty much the same as the first game. However, unlike the first game, you don't have a separate health bar. You just have your shield bar. If it goes down, take over or you're dead meat. The shields however do regenerate faster than before. In the game you get to play as Master Chief as well as a Covenant Elite referred to as the Arbiter. New weapons have been added that include the Energy Blade, the Plasma Rod Cannon, Beam Rifle, Covenant Carbine. Even the marine rocket launcher has been upped by adding a target lock facility. New vehicles include the wraith (I don't know whether you could drive one in the previous game or not). The environments are repetitive as 75% of the game takes place on "forerunner" structures or in forests around them. However the pace that was present in the first game is missing. Somehow, the game becomes lackluster after the first few campaigns. And there are loads of logical inconsistencies in the game. The covenant elites, whose voice previously had a typical growling sound, has become more legible and human like. The entire planet of high-charity (the covenant planet) speaks English, which is a bit weird. And somehow the flood escaped the Halo in the first game and have landed up all over the galaxy.

2. Story - The game starts off with the Master Chief, Sgt. Johnson and the daughter of Late Capt. Keyes, Miranda Keyes receiving medal of honors for their work in fending off the covenant. This takes place on a space station just above Earth. At the same time, a covenant elite is stripped of his rank at High Charity. He is then asked by the Hierarchs to become a champion of their cause, called the Arbiter, and to activate all Halo in the galaxy, thereby starting the "Great Journey" for the entire covenant race. The hierarchs believe that the Halo is a religious structure, and it is the key to the salvation of their race. Meanwhile back near Earth, the Covenants have started a massive Assault on Earth, under the banner of the Prophet of Regret - a hierarch. Most of the fleet is repelled but the ship carrying the Prophet makes past into the city of New Mombasa. Following a small urban combat, the Master Chief, Johnson and Keyes, follows Regret who hastily jumped in slip-space, destroying most of the city. On the other side of the slipstream, Master Chief discovers that there is another Halo there, and regret has landed there. Master Chief goes down and kills Regret. But before dying regret had already called for help. The reinforcements come in late, but manage to bombard the Chief, who falls into a lake and is rescued by a mysterious tentacled creature. The death of Regret forces the other prophets to replace the Elites by the Brutes as their guardians. Meanwhile the arbiter is also sent to the same installation to retrieve the index that will activate the Halo. After retrieving the Index, Tartarus, the leader of the Brutes, tells him that the prophets have ordered the Brutes to kill all Elites. Saying so he pushes the Arbiter into the lake. He too is saved by the same creature that saved the Chief. He is revealed to be GraveMind - the hive mind controlling the flood. He says that activating the Halo is not at all desirable to the humans nor to the Elites and neither for the flood. Saying so he asks both of them to stop it from being activated. The master chief is sent to Prophet of Truth's ship, while the Arbiter is sent to a forerunner temple. The Chief soon finds that Truth is trying to escape. But he manages to get on-board the ship. Meanwhile the arbiter finds that Tartarus has activated the Halo using Keyes. Arbiter defeats Tartarus, and Keyes pulls the key out. At this point the Halo is deactivated, and so are all the Halo in the galaxy. They are said to be detonated from a remote location called the Ark, (which is only accessible through the Earth - not told in the game). Meanwhile Truth arrives at Earth. Lord Hood, commander of the army, orders the ship to be destryod, only to be asked by Master Chief to belay that order, as he was finishing the fight.

3. Music - Music in Halo has always been a ups. Martin 'O Donnel again strikes gold with Halo 2.

4. Graphics - The graphics of the game are a bit lame compared to the standards of the other games released alongside it. Halo 2 does a decent job, but nothing extraordinary.

A game that has a lame cliffhanger story and lame graphics and lame gameplay. Recommended for only those who would like to see the story continue from Halo CE