Blog Update

                Looks like I've got some explaining to do. I apologize for my absence from the reviews and the blog in general. I've been going through a lot of life changes like moving and getting started in new jobs. Its been a little tough getting situated at first, but now that everything is all set up and I have a much nicer job for myself, I finally have time to get back to my projects including the game reviews. I've also finally found an install for Windows Movie Maker again, so now I can actually edit my videos. That's the whole reason why the Halo 2 post stream footage has been absent. There was a whole two hours of footage where I was paused during the stream that needed to be cut from the post stream. Since Microsoft has taken down Microsoft Essentials, I haven't had a copy of Movie Maker in a few years. Basically that meant I had to look for free third party software, and believe me, that was a pain. Either the software didn't have what I needed, or it left an obnoxious watermark in the middle of the video (no thanks). After much looking around I finally found an old installer lying around on a disk I had. Low and behold I was able to install it and finally cut out the footage. Now I plan on getting back to the game reviews and the streams. Here's the thing though, I think I am putting the Halo marathon on hold (I know, after 3 months of nothing from my blog, that's kind of lame of me to do). That's not to say that the Halo reviews won't continue, but for now I wanted to give some attention to some specific games. Since it's now October, I feel this would be a good time to do some horror game streams and reviews. I don't know how many horror games I'll do, but I want to get at least one of them done. Here's what its looking like. I have a massive thing for Silent Hill every Halloween, so that is a must as far as I am concerned. It's also a game I started originally on my YouTube channel, but after 3 parts I lost the save file and couldn't continue with it, so this time I will finish. Crossing my fingers for a potential backwards compatibility update on Xbox One, hopefully adding the Silent Hill HD Collection on the roster (believe me as far as reviews go I have a lot to talk about with that one), that way I can possibly have time for Silent Hill 2 and 3 before the end of the month. My hopes are not too high for the update, but either way I want to surprise you guys with a co-op game with a friend of mine (all depends on how things pan out, but I have strong hopes for doing this play through). To sum it all up, I am trying to get things up and running again. While I have a clear view of what I want to do this month for upcoming videos, I'm not making promises on reviews or any lets plays. With the schedule I have, nothing is guaranteed, but I can promise you guys that I am going to be bringing content to the blog, twitch, and my YouTube channel one way or another. Anyway, this post has gone on long enough, so keep checking back for more content. I hope you guys enjoy what I have. As of right now Halo 2 post stream footage is up, the link will be at the bottom of the Halo 2 Review post. You guys take care and stay warm, its getting chilly.

Halo 2 Review

Halo 2

Introduction

After the massive success of Halo Combat Evolved in 2001, a sequel was inevitable. In 2004, we were introduced to Halo 2, considered by many Halo players to be the best of the Halo series. I was either 8 or 9 years old at the time and sitting around playing with my GI Joes in my room when my Dad called me into the living room. He then pointed to the TV and there, for my viewing pleasure, began the trailer for Halo 2. It was an amazing sight, showing off new features like hijacking vehicles, trading weapons with your allies, and even having the option to dual wield your guns. My mind was blown and I couldn’t wait to see it in our Xbox. To fill in the time, I played a lot of Halo Combat Evolved with my dad. It was a great time, but time went by so slowly at the time, I thought it was never going to come out. Finally, we got the game, and it was a preorder of the limited edition. Problem was, at the time, dad was over seas and he had the Xbox. We sent it to him and he began playing, while I waited anxiously to play. When my dad got back home safely, I was able to play at last and get lost in the new environments and graphics. It was beautiful, and I played it for hours. Heck I spent most of my time honing my driving skills in the multiplayer mode, where now instead of having to have a second player with you in a match, you could have a whole match to yourself. It got boring after a while, but I did get a lot of practice with most of the vehicles. Nowadays, I don’t personally share the same enthusiasm as I did back in the old days. I will make myself the minority of Halo players and go on to say that this is probably my second least favorite Halo game in the main series the only one surpassing that being Halo 4. Something about even numbers, heck if I know, I just don’t find this one to be that appealing to me in general. I’m not saying this is a bad game, this is still an awesome addition to the series, and adds a lot to the story which I’ll delve into soon, but I have a few complaints with mostly little things, yet they still kind of hurt my opinion of the game. So, what do I have to say about this game, well keep reading below and find out dear readers.

Story

The game is set in the same year as Halo Combat Evolved, just a little further along in the future. The opening starts up looking over the first Halo rings ruins, as a Covenant ship soars over it, flying toward many more ships and a giant space station called High Charity (the Covenant holy city). We soon find ourselves in a court-like room, focusing on three new aliens called the Prophets, and a zealot class elite (in Lore he is known as Thel Vadamee’). He is charged with the crime of allowing the destruction of the Halo ring from Combat Evolved, being the shipmaster of another Covenant ship around the Halo next to the Truth and Reconciliation. He is mocked by the elites and prophets on the side seats surrounding the room, and is called a heretic. Requesting that he be allowed to continue his campaign against the humans, he is denied by the Prophet of Truth, the leader among the three high ranking Prophets in the Hierarchy of the covenant, the other two being the Prophet of Mercy and the Prophet of Regret. The brutes and their chieftain Tartarus (new gorilla looking aliens in the covenant) escort him away to his public punishment. They burn his armor and strip it off in front of a huge crowd, constantly calling him a heretic, before Tartarus presses a red-hot brander against his chest, branding him with the mark of shame. Meanwhile, the Master Chief is on board the Cairo station orbiting above Earth. He’s been given an upgraded suit since the last game, thus giving a reason to give a tutorial of your basic movement and showing off your much-improved shields (they charge back up a lot faster). Soon Sergeant Johnson from the first game comes up to escort you to an award ceremony for your actions on the first Halo ring. The celebration is short lived however as a fleet of Covenant ships is spotted and begins attacking the orbital defense grid (the Cairo station and many other stations that act as giant magnetic accelerator cannons) and Earth. The human fleet fights back in the background and you are charged with repelling boarders from getting on the station. After fighting through a couple of rooms, you are offered to look out the window, only to see one of the stations (the Malta) blow up. After fighting through more of the station another station (the Athens) explodes as well, and Cortana informs you that the explosion came from inside the Athens, concluding that the station was blown up by a bomb. Admiral Hood (the man who gave you and the rest of the attendees the awards) rightfully assumes they brought one onboard the Cairo, and orders you to find it and stop it. Eventually you come across Johnson again, who is assisting Miranda Keyes (the daughter of captain Keyes). Miranda and Johnson if you haven’t already guessed are major characters in this game and get a lot of character development throughout the game, and this is just the beginning. Soon after killing a butt ton of Elites you stop the bomb and drag it to an airlock to guide it to the Covenant capital ship that broke through the fleet and headed straight for earth earlier. You end up taking out the other capital ship (so still kind of a victory). Now you’re heading to Earth to stop the Covenant invasion, only to have your dropship shot down by a new Covenant vehicle called a Scarab (a giant four-legged walker with a massive laser gun and anti-air guns). You shake off your weariness and proceed through the city of Mombasa, fighting through many Covenant foot soldiers, and being introduced to drones (technically in the first level), and a new variant of the Jackals that uses a Beam rifle (the Covenant version of the sniper rifle). After a while you come across the beach and board a warthog, driving across the beach, and continue through tunnels filled with Covenant soldiers. Toward the end, you find a convoy of Shadows (New Covenant vehicle carriers) which Cortana says you should destroy before they meet up with the rest of the Covenant. Whether you destroy them or not doesn’t seem to matter because as soon as you drive out of the tunnel, the next level begins. Johnson drops by and leaves you with a scorpion tank to drive across the bridge. Your goal in this level is to destroy the Scarab, but to do that you have to make your way through the rest of Mombasa. Along your way you will fight Wraiths (which is the Covenant mortar tank from the first game you can ride now), banshees, and ghosts. You go from using a tank to a warthog, to a new warthog variant with a gauss cannon (basically a small cannon) to get there. Eventually you come across some marines trapped in a building by wraiths, only for you to destroy them and then assist the marines in destroying the scarab. All you gotta do is jump on it from one of the bridges and kill everyone on board. The mission ends with the scarab blowing up and Johnson bringing you on board the UNSC frigate In Amber Clad. The capital ship then begins to make a slip space jump inside the city (this causes a massive wave of kinetic energy through the city, basically destroying the city). Miranda flies the frigate in between the ship’s hull, getting caught in the jump with the capital ship. You now take a break from the Chief and go back to the story of the elite we just watched get branded. The brutes from earlier are dragging him to the Prophets, which Tartarus says have something special in mind for him. Dropping him before the Prophets, they order Tartarus and his brutes to leave the room. The room the elite and the Prophets are in is the Mausoleum of the Arbiter (a title elites used to hold in great respect, now a rank of shame but of great importance). The Prophets decide instead of killing the elite outright, they would make him the Arbiter, sending him on suicidal missions which would end in him dying eventually. They brief him on an elite on the first Halo’s ruins that is talking smack about the Prophets and calling them and their great journey (a form of religious ascension in the Covenant religion) false. The Prophets go on to say that this elite is the real heretic. So, you and an elite unit of elites and grunts are tasked with killing the heretic leader. You now play not only as the Master Chief, but also an elite, called the Arbiter from here on out (don’t worry the Chief is still in the game, there’s just some Arbiter stuff you gotta do too). After fighting countless heretic elites and grunts, you find out that they are working with the sentinels from the first game. Further along you get your first glance of the heretic leader boarding a banshee after mentioning something about an oracle. You follow in pursuit go inside of the other side of the station. Here you and a spec ops commander begin pursuing him, only to hear and eventually find the Flood. Nothings really changed with the Flood since the first game except that now they can be resurrected by infection forms if they die and their bodies haven’t been destroyed. Regardless of this, you must find and kill the heretic leader. Eventually you follow him to the heart of the station, placing himself behind a shielded door. The Arbiter has the others leave after planning to cut the cable that attaches the station to the remains of the first Halo. You do exactly that and continue your pursuit of the heretic leader while the station is in freefall. Eventually after returning to the side of the station that you were on in the mission before (via banshee as crazy as that seems), you chase him into the hanger where a Seraph starfighter (Covenant starfighter you can’t fly) is, only for him to show you how he got the idea that the great journey is a lie and the Prophets are full of dooky, the oracle aka 343 Guilty Spark from the first game. In boss fight fashion, however, you defeat the leader and Tartarus comes in to pick you up and take the arbiter to the Prophets. We now return to the Chief, to find both ships getting out of slip space and coming across another Halo ring. Miranda and Cortana both know what their duty is, knowing that at all costs they can’t let the Covenant activate the Halo. You and a couple ODST’s (basically spec ops marines) land on Halo through drop pods and begin fighting your way through Covenant to take out a special target in this region, the Prophet of Regret. This should in theory put the Covenant on the Halo in disarray. This mission is basically just you fighting Covenant and making your way across a valley for Cortana to explain what the hologram of the Prophet is singing about. Simply put, he wants to activate the ring and begin the great journey. From here Miranda tells you that she’s located a structure that looks like the original library from the first game, and goes off to get the index before the Covenant do. You continue your task of taking out the Prophet after many gondola rides that take you to the temple he is in. Again, in a boss like fashion, you fight him, boarding his floating chair with two giant lasers and smashing his face in with your fists till he dies (won’t lie this is pretty satisfying when you pull it off, unless you’re doing it in legendary mode, eugh). After that the Covenant that showed up moments before you killed Regret begin shooting a laser and glassing the area (these Covenant ships were going to do this regardless according to Cortana as she says earlier that it sounds like killing Regret would be doing a huge favor for the other Prophets for some reason). You run until you run out of space to run on and fall into the water below the temple, only to be unconsciously dragged down by some eerie looking tentacles and a voice telling you that this is not your grave. Now we switch back to the Arbiter as he passes by some honor guard elites shamefully giving their armor to brutes in response to the death of Regret. The Prophets explain that the elites are being replaced as the protectors of the Prophets by brutes, but not to worry as the death of Regret has not been in vain due to the discovery of the new Halo. 343 ended up telling them about the sacred icon (the index from the first game) and the Prophets order you to go get it. So, you are taken to the outer region near the library and proceed to lower the barrier guarding the library, fighting a new form of sentinels called an enforcer (a giant sentinel with beams, missiles, and arms that pick-up vehicles and crush you in one go. You fight through lots of sentinels and Flood and end up coming across the spec ops commander and his men, only to go onto the next level and fight the through a downed sentinel factory and making your way to a gondola (this game really likes those by the way) to take you to the index. There you find Johnson and Miranda grabbing the index, only for the Arbiter to stop them by having them both knocked out. Tartarus arrives with his brutes and takes the index, then after telling the Arbiter that the Prophets ordered him to kill the Arbiter, your pushed down a hole to what seems like a bottomless pit below the resting home of the index. The Chief, waking up from being unconscious last time we saw him is being held by tentacles in a dark room, and is introduced to an enormous Flood creature called the Gravemind (this is the leader of the Flood). Soon another set of tentacles bring down the Arbiter, thus introducing the two main characters and explaining the new mission the Gravemind has for both. The Gravemind teleports them to two different locations to stop Halo from being activated. The Chief (who you are now in control of again) is teleported to High Charity right in front of the two remaining Prophets, gloating over the fact that they now possess the index. Chief then proceeds to fight his way through High Charity to stop and kill the Prophets before they can activate the ring. Along the way, you end up saving marines from jail (this isn’t important at all since none of these guys survive) and begin seeing the Covenant fighting each other (elites, grunts and hunters seem to be on the same side, while brutes, drones, and jackals are on the same side as the Prophets). In the lore, this is called the great schism, and this is important story wise for the rest of the series, so keep it in mind. Toward the end of the level, you see In Amber Clad come out of slip space inside the city, only to crash into wall. At the end of the level, you find out that there are Flood life signs coming from In Amber Clad, but Johnson and Miranda’s life signs alive and well where you are heading. You then watch the Prophets Truth and Mercy boarding Phantoms (this games Covenant drop ship variant) with Tartarus, Miranda, and Johnson, the latter two being captives. Tartarus is given the index and is sent to Halo to activate Halo. Suddenly Flood infection forms come out of nowhere and begin attacking them. The brutes manage to kill all but one which starts strangling Mercy. As Tartarus is about to take it off, Truth orders him to leave him to die. We now go back to the Arbiter and find him teleported to a cliff edge, overlooking the Control room across the water. You begin walking through the area killing brutes and seeing a lot of dead elites along your path, and eventually a live elite uncloaks himself and explains that the brutes did this. Now you and the remaining elites go on a mission of revenge against the brutes, jackals, and drones, saving and recruiting grunts along the way. After fighting through all the brutes in the area, you run through a door and find the spec ops commander in a wraith, asking you about the council elites, only for the Arbiter to tell him the brutes murdered them. You then see Tartarus and Miranda get off a Phantom at the door of the control room and enter. We then go back to the Master Chief for the final time in this game, and see him ask the suffocating Prophet of Mercy where Truth is going, saying he’s going to Earth to finish what was started. After yanking the infection form off Mercy and killing him, Cortana explains that the giant structure in the middle of the city is a Forerunner ship, and that Truth is planning to take it straight to Earth. You are tasked with boarding the ship, leaving Cortana behind in the city in case Truth does activate the ring, so she can overload In Amber Clads engines to blow up High Charity and Halo. Flood end up coming from In Amber Clad and dropping combat and carrier forms all over the city. You fight your way through the Flood infested city, killing Flood and Covenant, and listening to Truth and the Gravemind argue over each other. Eventually you come across a green energy beam connecting the city to the ship. The Chief jumps into it and soars through the air into the ship, leaving Cortana behind, but assuring her that he will come back for her after Truth is dealt with. Cortana watches as the ship lifts off and goes into slip space. The last mission goes back to the Arbiter, where the spec ops commander tells you that Tartarus is going to start the great journey, and offers to help you stop him. Blasting your way through ghosts, you come across an unmanned scarab, which the commander claims can blast through the main doors. Your new mission is to commandeer the scarab. Along the way you free elites and hunters to fight along with you, eventually making your way to the scarab. Before you can board though, a single human under the capture of the brutes manages to jump on before you. This happens to be Johnson, who tells you to either help him, or all of them were going to die. You are now tasked with escorting Johnson in the scarab via banshee to the control room doors. He blasts the doors open, and you head inside to begin the final showdown, you versus Tartarus. Arbiter explains that the Prophets and the great journey are not as they seem. 343, who is under the capture of Tartarus as well as Miranda, begins explaining what Halo does to everyone there. The Arbiter simplifies it for Tartarus saying the Prophets betrayed them, to which he throughs 343 at Johnson knocking him to the ground, and forcing Miranda to shove the index into the control panel and activate Halo. You now must kill Tartarus for Miranda to get down to the platform and take out the index, stopping the activation. Johnson will shoot Tartarus 3 times with his beam rifle, deactivating his invincibility, and allowing you to attack and kill him (careful, this final boss fight is pretty difficult, as Tartarus’ hammer can kill you in one hit). After Miranda pulls out the index and stops the Halo, she and Johnson are shown a hologram of all the other Halo rings, which 343 says due to the deactivation of this Halo, all the others are on standby mode and are waiting for remote activation by something called the Ark. The Arbiter joins the two at their side and asks where it is. We then cut to the Forerunner ship, about to be blown out of space until Chief informs Admiral Hood that he’s on board, telling him he’s going to finish the fight (the tagline for the third and next game). Finally, we go back to a completely Flood infested High Charity where the Gravemind’s tentacles approach Cortana and tells her that he will ask her questions and she will answer them, thus the end of the story. That’s one heck of a cliff hanger folks.

Gameplay

                So along with an awesome story, Halo 2 adds a lot of new things to help you in your adventure. First, new weapons were added for both sides. For the humans, you have the battle rifle (a three-shot rifle that acts as this games magnum from the first game), the magnum (not the same gun from the first game, instead it acts more like a pea shooter), and the SMG’s (this game weaker version of the assault rifle). Covenant now have the fuel rod gun (like the one from PC Halo Combat Evolved multiplayer, but has an ammo count now), the beam rifle (their version of the sniper rifle), the carbine (their version of the battle rifle) and new stationary guns. There are now two versions of the plasma rifle, one being the normal blue one and one being the red brute variant (the red one has a higher rate of fire but over heats faster). Halo 2 also allows you to use energy swords (they were in the first game, but were only usable for elites), this is a big deal because despite it being a melee weapon, it’s a one hit kill weapon for the most part. The coolest addition to this game is the ability to dual wield smaller weapons like pistols and SMG’s. This can lead to some awesome combo’s and double the ammo for your selected guns. Apart from weapons, we also have new vehicles. Humans have a new warthog with a gauss cannon, while the Covenant get the specter (their version of the warthog), a wraith the player can drive, and undrivable vehicles like the phantom (the new dropship) and shadows (transports that are only used in one level). The Covenant have three new species in this game, those being drones (flying bugs that are essentially grunts with wings), brutes (ape like aliens that usually come in pairs, and when one dies the survivor will drop his weapon and start going berserk, beating you repetitively) and finally the Prophets (you’ll only see Regret in the gameplay). The Master Chief works exactly the way he did in the original game, but feels a bit lighter in his jumps. He does have a much-improved version of his shields which recharge a lot faster than before, and unlike last time, your health meter doesn’t exist, instead it auto heals with your shields. The only new gameplay aspects you’ll see in this game are when you play as the Arbiter. Since you are an elite, you can cloak yourself temporarily (this replaces your flashlight). Apart from that, nothing else is new here. It’s the same play style as before, just a little bit lighter in some aspects. This game also adds some easter eggs that are worth looking for called skulls. These can change certain aspects of the game that either make the game easier or harder depending on what skulls you find. They are only active as long as you’ve activated them while the system was on, once it turns off you must find the skulls again to turn them on again.

Multiplayer

                Multiplayer is where this game shined the most, according to most of my friends, and for good reasons. First, this game is the first game in the series to utilize Xbox Live, the online multiplayer feature for the Xbox. For a fee, you could use this service to play with friends when they weren’t able to come over and join you on the couch. You could also meet people from all over the country with this feature as well, which allowed multiplayer to be more of a social gathering for the console crowd. For PC users this is nothing new, but for console players, this was bit of an improvement and has become a standard for consoles nowadays. You still have the couch co-op mode and competitive multiplayer modes from before, so if you didn’t have the money or the ability to play online at the time (like me) then you weren’t entirely out of luck. Game types like territories (kind of a king of the hill variant where you captured certain zones), juggernaut (kind of like tag, but the juggernaut was stronger and got points for killing others, and the goal was for the other players to kill him to become the juggernaut to gain points), and assault (find the bomb, take it to the opponent’s base and blow their base up. Along with default maps that came with the game, you could also download maps either through Xbox Live, or the map pack expansion disk sold separately. I will say right now, as far as Xbox Live goes, I didn’t have access to it back in the days of the original Xbox, in fact I didn’t get into Live gaming till 2010 on the Xbox 360. All I got was the couch multiplayer experience, which was still fun and a lot of my favorite gaming memories were on this games multiplayer with friends on numerous all-nighters as a kid. A cool new perk in this games multiplayer is the ability to add emblems to your character model, and customize the colors a lot more. You can also choose between either playing as a spartan (the type of soldier the Master Chief is) or an elite. There is nothing different between either one’s gameplay since the flashlight/camo mode is disabled.

Version

                After the success of Halo Combat Evolved, the creators of the game (Bungie) probably saw this as a good opportunity to include a special edition of the game. This edition added an alternate designed instruction booklet, a booklet called Conversations from the Universe (which added some bonus lore to the series), a behind the scenes disk, a free month of Xbox Live (or at least mine did I’m not sure any other versions did), and it all came in a steel book case in a plastic case. The standard edition just came with the disc and the normal instruction booklet. In 2007 the games for windows live program began (not sure why people didn’t like this) but Halo 2 became one of the games on that program in the form of Halo 2 Vista (which was to promote Windows Vista). This version of Halo 2 supposedly improved the graphics, however apart from HD tv compatibility, I didn’t see much in terms of graphics updating. I didn’t get this game till 2012, and trying to get it to work on windows 7 I remember was a pain, until I got the client for it. Around this time though support for the game was gone and I couldn’t get any support for the game. I pretty much thought I got a useless game, but after getting it to work, this was my go to version of Halo 2. Apart from Having my own version of the game besides having to play my dad’s Xbox all the time, I could also play online with other players (till the servers were shut down) and link it to my Live account for unlocking achievements. Nowadays we have once again the Master Chief Collection, which included the anniversary updated graphics mode (this was a selling point and was also to get people hyped for Halo 5 through terminals you could find in the game. This game looks beautiful and makes this game a lot better for me personally. My original complaint with this game and why it ranks so low on the list for me (well except for one other thing) was the color choice for most of the game. This game was not that colorful in my opinion, usually sporting a lot of brown/tan and grey. Halo Combat Evolved had a lot of grey in it too and the last mission was all brownish, but it at least had a lot of colorful areas throughout other parts of the game like when you boarded the Covenant ship and saved the marines in the second mission. It’s a nitpick on my part but I really am not that entertained by these environments. The anniversary graphics made it pop out a little more and made the color of the area’s a bit brighter and not so washed out. Anyway, if you want to play Halo 2 online nowadays, you either get the collection, or download a mod for the vista version (by the way the vista version is compatible with windows 7 through 10, you don’t have to have vista, in fact you could play it on windows xp with a crack you could find).

Final Thoughts

                Let me start off by saying yet again, I don’t think this game is a bad Halo game, its story is wonderful (albeit a bit fast), and it adds a lot of new content while also improving on a lot of things from the original game. That being said, the reason why this game is my second least favorite Halo game is because of two things. First the one I’ve already said which is the color choice and just the way some of these environments looked, which is due to the use of brown/tan and grey all the dang time which for me hurts my eyes after a while. The environments though quite the spectacle considering you could go literally wherever you wanted, just didn’t feel that exciting to me. Maybe it’s because most of the environments felt more like old ruins (which they were), rather than the environments we saw in Halo Combat Evolved which looked and felt more like an alien installation, versus what it looks like in this game which made me feel like I was exploring old temples like I was Indiana Jones. With that out of the way let me explain the bigger reason I rank this so low, which is all due to the legendary difficulty. I hate legendary in this game. First of all, this game introduced sniper jackals, and in legendary mode, particularly in the second level, these guys are everywhere, and they are one hit kills. THEY SUCK. The elites have a much stronger melee attack and in legendary it is also a one hit kill. THEY…. Don’t suck as much because that’s pretty much how they were in the first game. I spent one of my summers trying to beat all the Halo games on legendary at the time, and this one took me two whole weeks to beat. I rage quit this game so many times, and though I beat the game eventually, I am still trying to beat this game on legendary in the vista version and haven’t gotten past level 2. I know that technically I could just stick to normal mode, but when you’re big into completing a game to the fullest like me, this is a must. After that week and I finally beat the game, I was met with not a sense of accomplishment, but a sense of thank goodness, its finally over. I didn’t even get a legendary ending, despite what people were telling me. Halo Combat Evolved had one, why didn’t this one do that. By the way, playing with a buddy made Halo Combat Evolved a lot easier cause if one of you died, you respawned next to your buddy who was alive so long as he wasn’t in immediate danger. Halo 2 said nope and decided if one of you guys die on legendary you both go back to the checkpoint. WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT? This game’s legendary mode just sucks, IT SUCKS…. But I digress. Take these with a grain of salt, I am just one person with one opinion of this game, and again I don’t hate this game. There’s just a few things that just ruin this game for me is all, and believe me when I get to the Halo game that is my number one dislike I’m sure you guys will agree with me, or not who knows. Now, for the next game I’m reviewing, I am going to try to review two games, however this isn’t a guarantee. I will be doing the twitch stream of both this next week though. The next two games up on the list are none other than Halo 3 and Halo 3 ODST. These games are going to be a lot easier, who knows maybe I’ll add another player to the mix and we can play together, then again maybe I’ll wait till reach. I don’t know, but I’ll see you guys next time. I hope you guys enjoyed and come back next time. Till then you guys have a fantastic night, and take it easy folks.

At long last I give you footage of Halo 2. Enjoy here!

Halo Combat Evolved Review

Introduction

    Halo, a franchise that defined Xbox gaming and greatly improved console shooters. It was one of the first games to be released on the system, originally that wasn’t going to be so though. The original plan was to release it on Macintosh, and was going to be an RTS (real time strategy) game. This would later be acquired by Microsoft and used for the direct x machine itself. Steve Jobs was furious and Bill Gates got the dough. E3 of 1999 highlighted the game in a somewhat primitive state, however it looked like it was going to end up being an awesome game. Now was it? Let’s find out and delve further into Halo Combat Evolved. Spoiler warning is issued now, because the story is revealed in the story section (duh), so play that game if you don’t want to spoil yourself, it’s a short game.

Story

             

                The story of Halo takes place in the year 2552, and follows the United Nations Space Command (UNSC) starship The Pillar of Autumn after fleeing from Reach, a colony planet that is relatively close to Earth. A massive group of Aliens called the Covenant had attacked Reach a little earlier, prompting the ship to make a random slip space jump away from Earth to prevent an invasion. The novel The Fall of Reach elaborates more on the events leading up to this game, which I may review at some point in the future, but for now I am focusing on the story of the game.

                As the crew exits out of slip space (by the way that’s this games version of warp or hyperspace), they come across a planet called Threshold, and in front of the planet is a strange metallic ring world in its orbit. It’s not long before the captain, Jacob Keyes, is informed by the ship A.I. Cortana that the Covenant ships followed their slip space coordinates and are about to wreak some havoc on the ship. With that being said, the ship is set on red alert and the captain has Cortana wake the Master Chief, your character, from cryo sleep to join in on the action to repel boarders until the crew is off the ship. After a brief tutorial on how to look around, move and jump, you make your way up to the bridge to meet captain Keyes. He along with Cortana explain what is going on, and Keyes informs the Chief and Cortana that they are going to be working with each other to keep Cortana out of Covenant hands. Should the Covenant take possession of Cortana, they could learn everything about humanity, including the location of Earth. So, the two of them make their way through the ship to a life boat, escaping the ship and landing on the ring world. The life boat makes a hard landing on an earth like cliff head, killing everyone on board except you and Cortana (gotta love the luck of the protagonists). You make your way across the map to find other life boats with survivors and are tasked with helping them. After wave upon wave of covenant dropships come by and attempt to kill you and the survivors, a dropship comes by, flown by the lovely (?) Foehammer, and picks up survivors as well as drops a Warthog (a beef up Jeep with a chain gun) to help you find more survivors. Along your travels Cortana informs you that she is hacking into the covenant battle network to locate captain Keyes. After finding three life boats and saving their survivors, you are picked up and sent on to a canyon to board a covenant cruiser where captain Keyes is being held. You and a squad of marine’s travel through a canyon in the dark of the night to board the cruiser using its gravity lift. After utilizing a sniper rifle to make your venture easier, you eventually get sucked up the ship with your squad and proceed to fight through the ship till you find Keyes in the brig. Keyes informs you that he overheard the covenant talking about the ring world, calling it Halo. Cortana analyzes the information and uses the battle net to learn that Halo is believed to be some kind of weapon linked to covenant’s religion, and they are looking for the control room of Halo. Keyes then makes it their mission to find the control room before the covenant, and they escape the ship using a covenant dropship, due to Foehammer picking up enemy bogies. The next level has you and two dropships full of marines storm an island installation that houses a map room called the silent cartographer. After a beautiful beach battle, you drive off to find the map room and just as you enter the installation and find the door to the main installation, you are locked out. The chief then must find the security room to the installation further around the island. After deactivating the security, a dropship carrying heavy weapons to you crashes outside, leaving you with some rocket launchers to take care of some of the bigger aliens. Making your way back into the installation, you fight your way to the map room, and activate the map. After acquiring the location of the control room, you radio for an evac, when Foehammer tells you that contact with captain Keyes’ team has been lost, speculating that they may be out of range (this comes up later). Once your back on the dropship, Cortana has Foehammer go within the island to the next destination, how they get there I have no idea because these two places are two completely different environments in and of themselves. The chief and Cortana are dropped off on this ledge inside an underground building, and make begin their trek to the control room. Along the way they get word from Charlie team, another group of marines on their way, and get their assistance in fighting off the covenant along the way (well halfway there anyway, marines don’t follow in this game like they do nowadays). You go from a metallic installation setting to a huge snow-covered canyon, and have access to warthogs, ghosts (an alien hovercraft with plasma guns) and the oh so lovable scorpion tank (your average human tank). You will need these vehicles if you want to traverse these places in a meaningful time, especially the tank, because the covenant have their own mortar tanks which can cause a lot of grief along your way. Eventually, the chief and Cortana, after running and gunning through more alien guarded rooms, you come across a snow-covered bridge right in front of the control room, a giant temple looking installation that you need to get to before the covenant (even though the covenant appear to be there already). You have two ways of getting there, one being going across the bridge and fighting a metric butt ton of covenant till you get to the bottom and make your way up the walk ways of the control room temple, or if you are quick enough, you can grab a banshee (an alien plane with plasma guns like the ghosts) and fly to the doors of the control room to cut out about 5-10 minutes of gameplay. Once you reach those doors you can fight your way through the last bit of covenant and access the control room. Cortana is uploaded to the control room and begins gathering information about Halo, stating it was built by some species called the Forerunners, and begins to explain Halos purpose before discovering something that captain Keyes was looking for when they lost contact with him. She becomes very concerned and orders you to leave her in the control room and go save captain Keyes. Without knowing what you’re up against, you are taken by dropship to a swamp filled with eerie green glowing trees and fog that goes on forever. Upon starting the level, you see some covenant troops running from something, however we won’t find what they are running from for a while. Along the way you find a downed dropship, as well as a downed covenant dropship. Something is up around here and the environment does a great job of letting you know that. Eventually you come across an installation that is assumed to be the one captain Keyes and his men went to discover. An explosion can be seen along with human gunfire behind some covenant troops running out of the installation. The chief goes inside, taking a large elevator down. Along the way, you fight covenant and find walls splatter in covenant blood, corpses of covenant soldiers, a mysterious green goo dropping from the ceiling at certain points, and eventually come across one of the marines. This marine will shoot at you with his pistol as he crouches against a wall. He shouts at you, screaming about monsters that killed his fellow men and how they aren’t going to get him. When I played this back in the day, it was kind of unnerving and although I normally shot him to put him out of his misery, it’s a good touch to what is to come. After exploring more, you come across a hall with human blood splattered everywhere and marine bodies along the way. In the cut scene the chief approaches a locked door where the blood leads too. Hearing something behind him, he turns around, only to see nothing but allowing the player to get a sense that something different is around. He unlocks the door and a marine body slumps over him. He turns around again, gun at the ready and backs into the room. There is blood everywhere, and a marine helmet with a camera on it. The chief takes the footage card out of the helmet and watches it, revealing the mission Keyes and his men were on through the eyes of a marine called Wallace Jenkins. They traverse the installation, coming across dead covenant with their insides scrambled. Eventually they come across the room the chief is in, and begin to hear noises along with a screaming marine over their radio. Suddenly the noise is revealed as a door is bashed down by spore like creatures which begin attacking and latching themselves to the marines and Keyes, ending the video with Jenkins falling over and presumably dying. Chief throws the card away and readies his weapon, and when the cut scene ends, in the letter boxing you read the tagline, “The Flood”. You are now in the room and are trapped as doors are bashed down by these same creatures. Fortunately, the chief’s shields are more than capable of stopping and killing any of the spores that get past your gunfire. The spore creatures go down quickly, but soon the door you came through gets bashed down and reveals not only more spore creatures, but zombies. You heard me right, zombies, or at least zombie aliens. Your new objective is simply to escape. Sounds easy, but when you get to the room where the nearest elevator is and activate it to come down, the elevator comes crashing down in a fireball. My young self was shocked when I saw this, and the music that accompanied it made it even more horrifying. Hope seems to be lost, but you must go on. You traverse through the rest of the installation and come across another elevator, taking you further down, showing alien blood splattered all along the walls as it goes down. As the elevator stops, you find the zombies, now with guns, but now you see zombie humans as well. Fighting through the onslaught of zombies you make your way to the next room with an elevator, and finally make your way up and out to safety. Up above you find marines that are hiding from the creatures. Foehammer asks what’s going on in the area, and informs you that there is a large structure not far from where you are, and that she can pick you up there. You and the marines make your way up to the structure, fending yourselves from the creatures as floating robots come out of nowhere and help fight them off with you. Suddenly you are teleported onto a pipe and are greeted by a blue glowing ball robot calling itself 343 Guilty Spark, the monitor (caretaker) of Installation 04 (Halo). He informs you that these creatures are the flood, and that it is his duty to assist you in stopping the threat. He teleports you to a large facility called the library, where you are tasked with recovering an item called the index, the key to activating Halo and stopping the flood. As you traverse through countless halls of nothing but flood (including a bulbous form called a carrier that explodes into spores), Guilty Spark tells you about how the flood will consume all if you don’t stop them. As you listen to him, and hear his signature humming, laughing, and talking to himself, you may start to realize that he isn’t exactly the sanest sounding guy to be around, but since he’s all you got to get through doors and get help from the flying laser shooting robots from earlier (sentinels), you get used to it. Eventually you find the index and take it, in which Guilty Spark takes it from you for safe keeping till he teleports you to the control room. Once you teleport into the room, you’re given the index back and plug it into the control panel. The startup fails however, and Cortana (“Remember me”) pushes Guilty Spark back to the ground, and scolds the Chief. Guilty Spark is angered at the fact that there is an A.I. in the system and demands the index back. Cortana says no and begins explaining Halo’s true purpose. Halo doesn’t specifically kill the Flood, it kills their prey. It sends a wave that wipes out any sentient life in the galaxy and erases them, ensuring that the flood can’t infect anything else and essentially starves the flood. The chief now identifies Guilty Spark as a threat and Guilty Spark demands the index back, to activate Halo with another “Reclaimer”. The chief plugs Cortana back into his head and declines, to prevent the activation. Now, you have not only the covenant and the flood after you, you now have the sentinels after you. You and Cortana both now come to the realization that Halo needs to be destroyed. Cortana devises a plan to delay and prevent the installation’s activation from another method. You are now tasked with going through the same level where you were looking for the control room, but backwards to destroy three pulse generators. These generators are in rooms three of the snow-covered canyons. Each one is in a room with a platform on the walls of the canyon. You go inside, and use your shields to overload the pulse, causing it to fry itself. This will drain your shields however, and there will always be some sort of resistance which can easily kill you, so be careful. Through the level you can see two interesting plot developments begin to unfold more fluently. One, Halo’s environments are constantly being damaged and destroyed by the flood, and two the flood and covenant are seen engaging in very large fights. Both are nice touches and show a coming end to the game. After the last generator is destroyed, Cortana now decides to teleport you herself to the covenant cruiser from earlier to rescue Keyes again, this time from the flood. Cortana explains earlier that they can destroy Halo by overloading the Pillar of Autumns engines. The ship crashed in a desert and is still mostly intact, all they need is the captains Neural Implants to initiate the overload of the ships engines. So, Cortana teleports you to the ship, which is now heavily damaged, and has you rescue the captain. You will go in and out of the ship as there are holes across the ship, forcing you to make your way back on the ship through that oh so trusty gravity lift from earlier. Upon finding the captain, you realize that the captain is now one of the flood (his case is much different however as he is turned into a form called a gravemind, which can be used to control the flood and command ships using its hosts memories, but I will get to this in Halo 2). Cortana urges you to be strong and end his suffering, in which the Chief punches through his face, into his skull and pulls out the implants. They make their way back to the hanger, and commandeer a banshee to take to the Pillar of Autumn’s crash site. The chief crashes his banshee into the side of the ship and climbs into one of the life boat bays. You are now tasked with making your way to the ships bridge to initiate the overload sequence. There are lots of covenant, flood and sentinels on your way so be careful, they are all high ranking and ticked off. As the chief gets to the bridge, Cortana begins a count down, only for Guilty Spark to shut down the sequence. Asking for plan B, Cortana mentions that the engines can be overloaded by cracking the engines shields with a big enough explosion, which to the chief simply means blow that stuff up with a grenade or rocket. Your now off to the engine room, but before that, look for the armory along the way, there are rocket launchers and grenades, just be careful of intruders. Now it’s time to blow some engines up and get away. Simply push the button on the corresponding engine shaft, throw a grenade in and blow it up, on the four that are highlighted. Once that’s done, run to the elevator, and get in a warthog. Cortana calls for Foehammer to pick them up at a junction on the ship. As you drive through a ship that’s blowing to pieces, you eventually are told to stop by Cortana, saying that this is the spot where Foehammer will come to pick you up. Look to your left to find one of the sadder moments of Halo as Foehammer is shot down by banshees. With her gone, Cortana comes up with a plan B, which is to get to a longsword fighter (cool looking human Starfighter that you won’t be able to fly until we look at the Custom Edition for the PC). In the most climactic driving sequence in the whole series (in my opinion), you manage to drive to the longsword and escape. By the way, whole escape, starting as soon as you got in the warthog, is done in less than 5 minutes, otherwise you blow up with the ship. As you escape, the Pillar of Autumn blows up and one of two things can be seen. Normally the flood can be seen walking toward the ship as it explodes, however if you beat the game on the Legendary difficulty (the hardest difficulty) you will find a marine sergeant (sergeant Johnson) trying to pull a rifle from one of the aliens, when they both see the ship blowing up next to them. Realizing they are both doomed, they comedically hug each other, with the alien even grabbing the sergeant’s butt. As the chief and Cortana manage to get far enough away from the explosion, they look out the window at the destruction of Halo. Cortana explains that they are the only two left from the whole crew, but assures him that their mission is finished, with the chief responding that their mission is only just started. Thus, the end of the first Halo game.

Gameplay

          Let me start by saying that this is my first experience with a game not being on the Sega Genesis or Nintendo, so I was very wasn’t very familiar with 3d gaming on consoles at the time. This game blew my mind, and the control felt so natural to me. You had your standard movement controls, jumping and shooting, but being able to look around in a 3d environment on all axis was mind blowing for me (I was 6). Nowadays I have a little more background with console shooters, including older ones like 007 Golden Eye and even the ports of Quake. I’m not going to say that these games were bad, but I could never get used to looking around on these games. Games like these I would’ve felt more comfortable with using a mouse and keyboard. With Halo, I had no problems simply because of the control schemes. This game makes you feel like you are not only playing a game, but you’re also watching a movie. Seeing the dropships land was so mesmerizing to me, and to this day is still something I really get a kick out of. Along with good movement control, you have your basic shooting, crouching, zooming feature for guns like the pistol, sniper rifle and rocket launcher, and reload controls. You can carry two weapons at any given time, and can have four of each grenade the game has to offer. The guns include the pistol, assault rifle, sniper rifle, shotgun, and rocket launcher. The covenant will drop plasma pistols which can overload to take out shields instantly, and the plasma rifle, a rapid-fire plasma gun. In the PC version, there are additions like the flamethrower and the fuel rod cannon in multiplayer. There are only two grenade types, but both are devastating. You have the normal fragmentation grenade and the plasma grenade which will stick to enemies. None of these guns are situational, but don’t expect to see these guns in every level. If you should run out of ammo and can’t find ammo or another gun, you have the option of beating your enemies to death with a melee feature. This feature is good at taking out enemies from behind should you whack them in the back. As far as vehicles go, you have the warthog, a Jeep with a gun that can carry a weapon wielding passenger as well, the scorpion tank, which is just an average tank that can have four guys sit on the sides to shoot their guns and protect you, the ghost, a one-man covenant hover vehicle with plasma guns, and the banshee, a covenant plane that also has 2 plasma guns and a fuel rod gun that explodes on contact. Human vehicles (warthog and scorpion tank) cannot be destroyed, but covenant vehicles (ghost and banshee) have a health meter and will explode after enough damage is done. The banshee in the original console version of Halo is only available in the campaign, but in the PC and Master Chief Collection it can be used in multiplayer. The scorpion tank is used in only one level, and that level is the assault on the control room, that snow level I was talking about, however it can be used in a couple multiplayer levels. All vehicles can and will kill upon the slightest tap on a target in its path, so don’t end up in front or get backed into, because you will die. You yourself are a Spartan II super soldier, which means you are strong, accurate, and have a shield to protect your health. Your shield will go out, so once it does, keep an eye on that health, and hide in cover until that shield recovers. If you lost health, find a health kit when you can. Your marine allies are not very reliable, but get one in a warthog chain gun and you got yourself a rather useful marine to watch your back. Just keep an eye out for marines behind you in the heat of fire, they can shoot you by accident which thanks to the shield isn’t much of an issue, but the guys can and will throw grenades and can hurt you bad (seriously these guys suck sometimes). The Covenant have 4 different species. Grunts which carry plasma pistols and plasma grenades are the weakest of the species, but can be dangerous in groups. Jackals, again a week species that carry a plasma pistol, but carry an arm shield and use the pistols charge feature to take down your shields (be careful, I hate these guys). Elites, which are the alien version of you and use plasma rifles and plasma grenades. These guys can use melee and can sometimes be invisible. Watch out for the ones carrying swords, they will whack you with it and kill you in one hit. Finally, you have the Hunters, big armored metal knights with orange slugs as innards. They are strong and can kill you and your guys easily with melee using their giant metal shield, and their fuel rod cannon. If you have a pistol however, shoot the orange on them for an easy one hit kill. Finally, we have campaign difficulties, which are easy (for those who don’t want to lose at all), normal (for those who have some experience with first person shooters), heroic (a hard mode which makes enemies a little more aggressive) and legendary (makes enemies more aggressive and a lot stronger, this will test your patience and then some).

Multiplayer

There are two types of multiplayer in the console versions of the game, Co-op and split screen multiplayer. Co-op is console exclusive and allows you to play side by side with buddies on the couch, or in the Master Chief Collection through Xbox Live through the campaign. Good way to get those achievements in the Master Chief Collection, and it’s just a good time on the original Xbox version. Split screen is the main multiplayer aspect of the game. It’s for good competitive gameplay with buddies on the couch and can consist from having 2 to 16 players (for more than 4 players you must have 3 more Xbox’s and 3 copies of Halo along with cables to connect to. You also need 3 more tv’s and enough controllers) duking it out in free for all or team play. Game modes include slayer (Kill players for points), capture the flag (capture the enemy teams flag), king of the hill (keep inside of the hill to gain points while keeping others out of the hill), oddball (find and hold a skull to gain points, and defend yourself from others trying to take the skull from you), and race (race to checkpoints and be the first to finish). On top of those game types, there are also sub types in each of these game types. Some types change the type of guns you can use, some make you invisible and so many more. Each player can choose a color for their specific character and make their own name for their own profile, so everyone can see who is who. The original Xbox version of the game had no online multiplayer and was limited to couch lan play, however from what I’ve heard there were tunneling programs where you could make your own servers to play on the Xbox with others from around the world. The PC version of the game would be the first to incorporate online play, along with lan play on your network, however Co-op is not present in this version. Xbox One’s Master Chief Collection took the content from the PC version and allowed players to connect through Xbox Live, while still allowing players to play couch lan and couch Co-op. The PC version added new maps, and added the flamethrower and fuel rod cannon to the multiplayer. It also introduced the banshee to multiplayer maps. These were added to the Master Chief Collection version as well.

Versions

Halo Combat Evolved originated on the original Xbox, but was ported to the PC and Mac in 2003 as stated above, it added multiplayer content not present in the original Xbox version. In 2011, Halo Combat Evolved Anniversary was released on the Xbox 360, incorporating achievements, Kinect support and new graphics which could be toggled between. The Kinect support was for voice commands, allowing you to shout commands to do certain actions, however I only used it to analyze and scan things for the new scan log incorporated into this version. The graphics are gorgeous and were going off a similar design to Halo Reach released the year before. Skulls (campaign benefits that changed certain aspects and physics to the game) were also added to allow for more challenge and benefits for the player. Multiplayer was simply an add on to Halo Reach’s multiplayer, only adding maps. Halo Master Chief Collection was a compilation of the four main Halo games, and as such included the anniversary edition of Halo Combat Evolved, however multiplayer from the PC version of the game were used instead of Reach’s multiplayer, now allowing Xbox Live in Halo Combat Evolved Multiplayer for the first time. As far as the definitive version of the game goes, I can’t simply pick one. For Campaign, I would choose the Master Chief Collection simply because you have the option for the enhanced graphics and Co-op multiplayer, but for competitive play, the PC version is the better game because of the servers you can make and the lack of screen peeking (where a player peeks at your screen and uses that to find you and get a quick kill on you, basically cheaters). A multiplayer based version that allowed for custom maps called Halo Custom Edition was made for the PC version to allow players who had the skill the ability to make and play your own maps. The maps I’ve seen are amazing, and the skies the limit with what you can make for your map (provided you have the skills to make a map in the first place, I know I sure don’t). I’ve seen people make huge maps with all kinds of weapons and vehicles (including that longsword fighter I was talking about earlier which now has a nuclear bomb feature, warning that thing hurts EVERYTHING), and I’ve even seen single player campaign maps be made, including reimagining’s of the original missions from the original game. The modding community is huge for Halo PC and will continue so long as there is imagination for the creators.

Final Thoughts

I am a huge Halo fan, ever since the game came out and I played it with my dad Christmas night. It was a beautiful experience and I will never forget that. It was also a good bonding experience with my dad at the time, and I’ll never forget that either. Looking back on it even in its older graphics, it’s still a good-looking game and looks better than some of the games I’ve played nowadays. I love coming back to this game and consider it tied with Halo Reach as my favorite Halo game in the series. I have fond memories playing this game alone and with friends, and even now am still making great memories with this game. Nowadays I see speed running dominating this game in ways I had never seen before, and they taught me awesome tricks 7-year-old me would’ve loved to know playing this game on legendary. If you get the chance, try this game out, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed. With that, I believe this review has gone on long enough, and I hope you guys enjoyed what I got to say. Next week I will be discussing Halo 2. As my first review, let me know what you guys thought about it. I will say this now I am giving more of a basic review of these games simply because I feel games are better experienced than read. Thank you, guys, for watching and take it easy.

Check out the twitch stream I did of the game here.

My First Few Reviews

              For my first few reviews I thought I would take on a series I have been playing the longest. Halo has and always will be one of my favorite gaming franchises of all time. So for the first few reviews, I am going to review all the Halo games by release date. Heck maybe I'll do a stream of each of the games too. The reviews will start this upcoming week, starting with Halo Combat Evolved along with Halo Combat Evolved Anniversary since both are essentially the same game. Hope you guys enjoy, keep an eye out for posts, I might just do a stream of the game this week. Take it easy guys, and take care!

A Change of Pace

               Hey guys! For those of you who follow my other blog UrbanerPilot, you may have noticed I haven't put anything up in a while. Writing is my passion and I will continue to write over time, but to fill in gaps I want to take some time to enjoy my other pastime, which is video gaming. Currently I am going to college to become a journalist, but to get more of a profile for a potential job, I figured I'd start by blogging. I also thought this would be a good idea to get those creative juices flowing and improve my writing, and since I love video games with a passion, I thought this might be a good subject to try working with. With that being said, I will be writing reviews for games and talking about games in general. I will try to have a review of a game every Friday, and will update the blog here and there with other gaming stuff. I'll even provide links to upcoming twitch streams and post streams on youtube. Again, for those of you who do follow UrbanerPilot, I will be continuing writing my stories and such, but to keep you guys from waiting, and to benefit my writing skills, this will be here for the meantime. I hope you guys enjoy!