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!
