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!