The Wait Is Over

The simple answer to the question "Should I buy this or not?" is: if you loved Halo, BUY IT! If you hated Halo, DON'T BUY IT, or possibly rent it! If you have never played Halo, try it or try this game; Halo 2.

But, there is more to it than "How you felt about Halo will be how you feel about Halo 2".

Doom 3, Half-Life 2, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas; these sequels are games from series with origins from the '90s and have each created a reputation that is not only known amongst probably at least 90% of gamers worldwide, but are known amongst people who may never even pick up a game to read about it. Suddenly, the video game is not some child's toy, tucked away in a bedroom, but something that can create such a reputation, that it may become more heard of than a box office topping movie.

But while a game like Doom 3 has had 11 years now, to spread its reputation and get a huge fan base, Halo, the first game in the series, has only had 3 years. But in those 3 years, Halo has made a reputation for itself, larger than most of the games ever made, and it is right up there with Doom and Half-Life. In fact, because Halo has created such a great reputation for itself, it is still a high selling game, even 3 years after its release, and preorders for Halo 2, before its release, reached over 2 million copies (although I'm not 100% sure, the 1.5 million was the most well known number of preorders). How did it accomplish this? Well, to anyone who has played Halo and loves it, the answer is obvious. For anyone who hasn't played it, here's a brief summary of most of what makes Halo great.

The original Halo was released in 2001 as a launch title for the Xbox console. To this day, it keeps selling strong. Its secret? Halo is possibly the best multiplayer console game ever made. Although games have come out since, surpassing Halo in terms of graphics, physics, A.I. and just about everything else a game includes, Halo still stands as one great multiplayer game.

At the time of its release, the PS2 didn't have a network adapter in sight and it didn't seem to try hard to make system link games (games which you can connect 2 or more of the same game console together to play a game against another person, using 2 or more televisions at once). So, with console gaming increasing in popularity, the Xbox had one major advantage over PS2 - the ability to allow for large multiplayer games. Users of computers have enjoyed this for many, many years and so, with consoles starting to become the platform of choice, and large multiplayer gaming being a highly demanded desire, Halo was about the only game (if not the only game) and the best game to fulfill the demand.

But being the king of network gaming on consoles wouldn't guarantee a good game. Thankfully, it was. With several maps, several vehicles, several weapons and the ability to customize game types, the multiplayer was great, not to mention the fact that it allowed for 16 players to player across 4 televisions.

Halo also included a great single player mode. Great physics, huge outdoors areas, the best graphics around at the time of its release and a great feel to it, not to mention Co-op play, allowing 2 players to complete the game together.

So how does this help you make up your mind about buying Halo 2?

Simply put: Halo 2 is almost exactly like an updated version of Halo.

It seems Bungie decided to play it safe and only change enough of the game to be able to call it a sequel. So does this mean that if you own Halo that you should not waste your money on this? No way, far from it.

Halo 2 has 2 major differences between itself and the original Halo. The graphics and Xbox Live.

Halo had top-of-the-line graphics when it came out. Amazing for its time. Halo 2 expands on this, by adding better lighting, grass that actually sticks up out of the ground and a lot more bump-mapping (the technique used to give a texture the appearance of roughness, by changing the brightness on each part of the texture according to distance, direction and brightness of surrounding lights, a.k.a. makes things look more real).

So, now that all that is explained, it is now time to go right into the main part of the review:

Graphics:
Like it says above, Halo 2 takes Halo's graphics to the next level. Basically, Halo 2 looks a lot better than Halo. Unfortunately, though, many people, including myself, think the graphics of Halo 2 are not revolutionary. They are great, but not something to compete with Half-Life 2. There are also a lot of small problems with the graphics. Mainly, when it switches from one scene to another, it renders the objects in a scene, but it may be another frame or 2 before everything is textured properly. So, great graphics, with some minor problems.

Gameplay:
Halo 2 has basically the same controls and same feel as the original. Somehow, the original managed to make a console FPS (first person shooter) fun to play, instead of difficult because of the controls. This seems to be a very hard thing to do. So, basically, this game has the same top-notch feel and gameplay as the original, which is a great thing.

Sound:
This game supports Dolby Digital 5.1, which means: Great sound! You can hear which direction a sound is coming from. The game has a lot of sound in it as well. Whenever a piece of terrain is hit, it makes a sound for that type of terrain. So, if you shoot dirt, it sounds like dirt. This is the same for basically anything in the game that you can shoot. Everyone in the game talks as well. You, your allies and the aliens. Every once in a while, someone will shout out some funny comment. Long gone are the days in which there are subtitles, but no voices. The music is also very good. I can't really figure out how to comment on it, all I can say is: they did a good job. So, overall, the sound is great.

A.I.:
Unfortunately, Halo's A.I. has never been too advance. It wasn't exactly average, but wasn't exactly at a FarCry level. Allies shoot, take cover an move forward when the time is right. Enemies did the same, but they also retreated and dived behind cover. The A.I. in Halo 2 has no big noticeable difference between itself and the original, with one exception: allies driving vehicles. In the original Halo, you had to drive the vehicles in single player mode. Your allies could sit in a seat/on the side of a vehicle, or take up position on the vehicle's gun, but they would never drive. Halo 2, on the other hand, actually has your allies sometimes telling you that they will drive. Unfortunately, the driving A.I. is not too bright. It is a good attempt by Bungie, but sometimes the driving can be appalling. Nevertheless, the A.I. in Halo 2 is adequate to give a good experience, without being appalled at anything, except some occasional driving.

Multiplayer:
The multiplayer is still great. There is still split screen and system link and now there is Xbox Live. I haven't played system link or split screen yet, but Xbox Live is great. This time round, I think Bungie have chosen to have different maps for different game types. For example, there are a few maps only able to be used for Capture the Flag. Multiplayer lives up to the original's greatness and people who love to player multiplayer games will be able to enjoy this for many, many hours.

New Features:
Halo 2 looks like Halo (just better graphics), feels like Halo, sounds like Halo and, well, seems to be Halo with better graphics. Apart from the levels and story, the difference between the 2 games is just enough to really be able to call Halo 2 a sequel, instead of an expansion. The biggest difference being:
Xbox Live: Halo 2 may not be the revolutionary game which people were hoping for, but its Xbox Live feature is the most revolutionary thing to happen to video gaming since the ragdoll effect (probably). Halo was a great game to play with friends, but what happened if you wanted to play 16 player, just couldn't find enough people, enough Xboxes or big enough televisions to be able to split each screen into 4 player's views? You were just out of luck. But, now, Halo 2 has brought Halo into a whole new dimension. 16 player requires barely more effort than turning the Xbox on and pushing a few buttons. So, why is Halo 2's Xbox Live feature so revolutionary? First off, Halo 2 has a feature called something like "Couch Mode", which allows a group of people to stay together until they stop playing, instead of facing all new people every time you start a new game. It's basically like inviting your friends over and connecting all of their Xboxes and your Xbox together and playing - the people never change. The second great feature is to do with the host. Usually in online games, a person will set up a game and they are the host. If the host leaves a game while it's going, the game will stop, because there will be no host anymore. Halo 2 actually reassigns the Host status to a different person, so a game will not stop half-way through, because the creator decided (s)he didn't want to play anymore. The third thing, and best thing of all, Bungie.net actually keeps detailed statistics on ALL games played. You can play a game of Halo 2 and then jump online and see how well you did in that game and all the other games you played over Xbox Live. It keeps tracks of simple things, like how many times you died and how many kills you got, as well as more interesting things like how many shots you fired, how many of your shots actually hit people and who killed you the most times. The statistic tracking goes as far as recording where you were killed and were you killed people and allows you to view the map you were playing, online, and see where those kills happened! It's great.
Dual Weapons: A lot of FPSs have the ability use 2 guns at once, but not to this extent. The games that allow you to do this will usually allow you to use 2 pistols or 2 machine guns. Halo 2 steps it up a notch and allows you to use a combination of 2 of any of the "small" weapons. This includes the pistol, the SMG, the plasma pistol and the plasma rifle (I think). Using this looks and sounds hard, but usually it is easy. You use the left trigger to fire the left weapon and the right trigger for the right weapon. It can be a little difficult when you have a pistol and an SMG, because the SMG lets you hold down the trigger, but the pistol requires you to pull the [controller] trigger every time you want to shoot. This is great fun.
Changes To Weapons: This is mainly for people who have played Halo. There have been a few changes to weapons, excluding the dual thing. First, there are more weapons. Maybe half a dozen new weapons, including an energy sword. The machine gun is now gone, though. The 2 largest changes to the old weapons are: the pistol can no longer zoom in and the rocket launcher can lock onto vehicles.
Hijacking Vehicles: As people, who have kept up with the news about Halo 2, will know, you can now jump on a vehicle which is being driven by an enemy, and smack them out of their seats, and then hop in and use the vehicle. There's nothing much more to say about this, other than it is a pretty good new feature and works quite well.
Vehicles: First of all, there are now a few more vehicles available, including a warthog (the 4WD, with bouncy suspension, featured in the original game) with a different type of gun on the back, as well as the old one. No vehicles have been removed. Secondly, the Banshee (the games only airborne vehicle) is now available in multiplayer. It was not available in the original game. Thirdly, all vehicles are now destructible. In the original game, the Warthog and the Scorpion (the tank) were indestructible. Now they are not.

I am probably missing some more new features, but there are a lot, and I guess I have to leave some surprises.

Basically, overall, although the game feels exactly like Halo, there is enough new content and gameplay additions and tweaks to make this a worthy addition to an Xbox owners library, even if they own Halo. Xbox Live makes this game so great that even if it didn't have a single player mode, it would still be highly recommended by me, and the feature makes me forget about how much I would have loved a system link and/or Xbox Live Co-op mode. If Epinions allowed me to rate products out of 10, I would give this game a 9. If Epinions allowed me to give a product a rating out of 100, I would probably give this about 95 or 96. It's not perfect nad it's not revolutionary, but it's still a very good game. Thanks to Xbox Live, this will probably be the best game an Xbox owner (who has Xbox Live) can get this year. Even if you don't have Xbox Live, this is still a really good game to get.

My last words are about Xbox Live (again). I have played it quite a bit and I have experience barely any lag. I am using a 256K connection, playing from all the way in New Zealand and it still runs great. The only problems with lag I had was with vehicles, although, these games were 10 people.