Halo 2 - XBOX - FPS

[RaidCarrierMan]

Year of release: 2004
Developer: Bungie
Publisher: Microsoft
Website: http://www.bungie.net


Game score: 42


Graphics: 4
Sound: 2
Gameplay: 2

Concept: 4
Execution: 3
Controls: 2
Enjoyment: 1
Replay ability: 2
Difficulty: 1
Learning Curve: 2


Patch version: Dynamic
Bugs: 5 (the sky is the limit...)
Modability / Community support: 0


Review

There are always games like Halo 2 every year, totally hyped, millions pre-ordered, and ready to bust the competition. But, aside from Half-Life 2, most hyped shooter sequals end up "console-railed," rushed in development, and linear.

Halo 2 is no exception to the general rule. But, it does have one or two good aspects that are worthy of mentioning.

First, the graphics. Although running on the pathetic XBOX system specs (see below), its graphics can match games such as Call of Duty or Unreal Tournament 2004, but can't even compare with Half-Life 2, Doom 3, or Far Cry. The Nvidia "X-chip" lives around the GeForce 3 graphics chip generation, so it is amazing to see full dynamic lighting with self-shadowing enabled with good performance. In fact, when playing 4-player split screen, the games framerate only slows down a little, even though the XBOX must render the game four times.

The other cool part to this game are three or four great moments in single-player. Probably my favorite was near the end of the game, when a massive battle was unfolding between elites, flood, and brutes. Regardless of Cortana's comment: "You might want to sit this one out," a hard song roles in and its impossible not to have a blast. Too bad there are so few of these moments.

The only neutral element of this game are the cutscenes. They tell the story fine, but it seems that Bungie forgot that they were developing Halo 2 for the XBOX. In every cutscene there are rediculous close-ups of characers, allowing the player to see pixelated textures and blocky character limbs.

Now, to the negatives. The first is the lame "weapon balancing." In almost every map, the sniper rifle rules all. Not only do they both get at least four shots off before any kind of reload, but while aiming the game pulls the reticle to enemy players. Considering the gun kills in two shots (but half the time one of those is a head shot...) whoever spawns closest to the sniper rifle wins. Then, afterwards, anyone who spawns will be immediately sniped because of Bungie's awful choice of spawn points. On any map without sniper rifles (there are very few) either the shotgun or the rocket launcher rule all, considering that they both give instant kills. Bungie goes on and on about their new weapons and perfect balance, but one of my favorite new weapons wasn't even in multiplayer: the fuel rod gun. The fuel rod gun would be a cool counter to the rocket launcher, but apparently Bungie wants the luckiest spawner to win.

Another crappy aspect of Halo 2 is the new character model, allowing any player to play as an elite in multiplayer. The model is stupid though, because the head area is huge and hangs down over its upper chest, so any sniper will hit it in the head and anyone who attacks from the front will hit it in the head. Playing as an elite may be new, but you won't be able to compete.

Probably the most frustrating aspect in all of the game is the matchmaking service on XBOX Live. Bungie brags how it is "dynamic" and matches players against people of the same level. Not quite. In matchmaking head to head, having never played the game before, I was ranked one, so naturally I was expecting to be matched against another level one. Instead I was matched against a level 6, and was severely pwned. How is that an advanced "dynamic" matchmaking system? It isn't even fair. When matchmaking in 4 vs. 4 games, the same problem occurs. The only real way to win is to happen to be matched with the better group of guys, making every match a random draw. Just playing today I counted fair matchmade games (taking the average of all the player's ranks on each team), and only one in five matchmade games were fair.

Now to the small annoyances that Bungie either completely overlooked or blew off without regard to their massive community. The first is their A.I. From my experience, the A.I. was better in the first game. Aliens will run right into traps, dive out into the open and get killed, overlook boarding a vehicle, and jump out from cover onto boxes, where they can be shot right off. Your A.I. teammates suck too. Sure, they can drive vehicles this time around...yeah...into walls, at enemies with rocket launchers, and unbelievably slowly.

Before the game's release, Bungie went on and on about their A.I., so the community eagerly thought about A.I. bots, and Bungie was always really unclear about their bot intentions. On their faq, Bungie stated that "they have heard the community's pleas for bots" and were still thinking about adding them. So as the community kicks the idea around, Bungie comes in with a new update on Halo 2 called the "Rumor Buster" which tells the community that Bungie has denied bots all along, and that bots are stupid and pointless anyway. Even days or even weeks after this Rumor Buster post, the faq still stated that Bungie was still thinking about adding them.

On numerous updates on Bungie.net, Bungie bragged about their new physics. In games like Far Cry and Half-Life 2, the bodies flop around hilariously and add a sweet variety of death sequences, but in Halo 2, when a player is blasted into the air, the same stupid flailing limbs animation occurs, preventing any cool moments in large, explosive battles. Only when bodies hit the ground do the Havok physics kick in.

The last problem with Halo 2 is the unbelievable amount of exploitable glitches. After playing Halo 2 on live for only a week, I knew several tricks, such as "sword flying." In this one, it is possible to fly accross an entire map and stab somebody with the energy sword, with ease. There are worse flaws too, such as the "standby" glitch. In a game, a player can just reset their router, causing everyone else to have to wait to reconnect to the game while the cheating player can kill their idle bodies or capture the flag many, many times. Are the Bungie people gonna tell me that while performing "extensive tests over every nook and cranny" no one tried a router reset? I guess the test team was way too busy enjoying the fact that they were getting to play the game that millions of people were eagerly anticipating.

Good stuff: Good Graphics for the XBOX, Fun Moments in Single-Player.

Bad stuff: Absolutely no Weapon Balance, the New Player Model is Worthless, Aggravatingly Pathetic XBOX Live Matchmaking System, Crappy AI, No Bots, Stupid Havok Physics Implementation, Multifarious Exploitable Glitches and Bugs.


Reviewer System Specs: XBOX:
CPU: Pentium 3 733-MHz
RAM: 64 MB "Unified Memory Architecture"
Video Card: 250-MHz Nvidia "X-chip"
Sound Card:Built-in Intel (exact specs unknown)

[Starblade]

Halo 2- FPS

Year of release: 2004
Development House: Bungie
Publisher: Microsoft
Website: www.bungie.com

Game score: 80/100


Graphics: 4 / 5
Sound: 4 / 5
Gameplay: 4 / 5

Concept: 3 / 5
Execution: 4 / 5
Controls: 5 / 5
Enjoyment: 4 / 5
Replay ability: 5 / 5
Difficulty: 2 / 5
Learning Curve: 2 / 5


Patch version: n/a
Bugs: 5
Modability / Community support: n/a

Halo 2. The long awaited sequel to Halo. Because of the nature of this game, I'm going to review the single and multiplayer modes of the game individually.

SECTION 1: Campaign Mode (review based off of normal and heroic modes)

All in all, the campaign wasn't bad. It certainly gave some interesting moments, with being able to play both the Master Chief and the Elite known as the Arbiter. However, the AI, which was supposedly giving quite an upgrade, was a joke. For example, the Marines can now drive vehicles.

Unfortuantely, they're dumb as stumps. In one mission, the Marine was driving a Warthog with me as a driver. The Marine sees another being shot by some Elites, and drives over so that we might be able to save him. Whilst I'm shooting away, the Marine gets a plasma grenade stuck on him. In the 4-second time it takes for said grenade to explode, the Marine driver stops, the doomed Marine gets in, and we all blow sky high. Also, the enemies, be they Human or Covenant, can't resist the urge to follow you no matter what, even if they're quite obviously outmatched.

AI aside, the rest of the campaign was fairly enjoyable. There were certainly great moments, especially in the beginning of the game and the end, and there were hellish ones. Mainly, everywhere in High Charity that needed a flashlight. Welcome to hell, Arbiter/Master Chief. If you're the Arbiter, pray to god that you're going in the right direction. If you're the Chief, well, hope your flashlight doesn't die. Not that it helped, anyway, it can barely light the way two feet in front of you. Other than that, I'd give the campaign itself a solid 85/100.

SECTION 2: Matchmaking mode and Multiplayer (or, surviving Hell 101)

This is where things go downhill real fast. The number of glitches and exploits here are unimaginable. For example, the damned router glitch, in which if one does a certain thing to his router (like I'm going to tell you how), he can make it so he is the only one who can do anything, and almost guarantee a win. The ability to pick up items through walls. The ability to warp certain objects (flags, bombs) to the other side of the level (I've only heard about this one, it's never happened to me personally). The instant rocket/sword kill. There are several more, but I'll end the list there. To make things worse, game magazines tell the masses HOW to do this.

Then there's trying to get INTO a game. You don't actually choose what map or gametype you get. You only choose between several categories, such as Big Team Battle or Team Skirmish. The game does the rest for you, and puts you into a game with similarly ranked players. Several have complained about this, because the ranks really don't mean anything, and they want to play specific gamemodes.

For example, I'm rank 12 in Rumble Slayer (free for all). For all you know, I'm rank 50 in everything else, and I just don't play Rumble Slayer much. So, I'm matched up with people down to rank 9 and up to rank 15 (the game gives the ranks some wiggle room). I just won, pretty much. Also, in a ranked team game, if someone quits, the whole team suffers. People quit the second their team begins to lose, weakening the whole team.

So for matchmaking, we've got mass exploiting and cheating, 'ranked' games, people quitting left and right, and lag. Mass lag, which almost cripples the bigger games. Fortunately, the latter happens less often than the others. But what is the multiplayer's saving grace? The answer is the custom game.

The custom game suffers from the same problems as matchmaking, but as it isn't ranked, it doesn't affect it as much. The creator of the game can only invite his/her friends to play if he/she wishes, so there's little chance of a cheater popping up, and if he does, he can be kicked. Custom games also let you choose everything you want, and alter existing gamemodes. Also, one can 'glitch' out of some levels, adding a bit of exploration to the game. Unfortunately, you can do that in matchmaking too, and can make you very hard, if at all possible, to find. But that's only a minor irritation compared to the other problems, due to the ability to leave feedback on suspected cheaters. Or you could leave something positive, like a good session. Custom game mode is the most enjoyable of the three experiences Halo 2 gives.

For matchmaking, I give it a 20/100, and custom games, I give a 90/100.

All in all, other than matchmaking, a fun game to play.

Good stuff: Great graphics, excellent gameplay, just fun to play.

Bad stuff: Cheating, matchmaking, holy f******* glitch Batman!, and occasional gamekilling lag.


Reviewer System Specs:
XBOX
Dolby Surround Sound
XBOX Live
XBOX Live Headset Communicator

[Sword_Monkey]

An objective version of the first review.

Year of release: 2004
Developer: Bungie
Publisher: Microsoft
Website: http://www.bungie.net


Game score: 76


Graphics: 4
Sound: 4 (You cant knock Steve Vai solo guitar riffs)
Gameplay: 5

Concept: 2 (Its not revolutionary)
Execution: 3
Controls: 5 (easy to pick up, very easy)
Enjoyment: 5
Replay ability: 3
Difficulty: 4
Learning Curve: 1


Patch version: Dynamic
Bugs: 5 (the sky is the limit...)
Modability / Community support: 0


Review

FPSs come out in the hundreds every year, but you will most likely only ever listen to the hype about a few, and most of the time the hype is for a reason. The Half-life series, Timesplitters, Tom Clancy Ghost recon, legends in their own right.

Halo 2 is the same, it continues on with the same good points as its predecessor. It has good points and bad points.

First, the graphics. Not to be as biased as the first review, the graphics are running on a console, a dedicated machine for gaming and gaming only, so its graphics can match games such as Call of Duty or Unreal Tournament 2004. The Nvidia "X-chip" lives around the GeForce 3 graphics chip generation, so it is amazing to see full dynamic lighting with self-shadowing enabled with good performance. In fact, when playing 4-player split screen, the games framerate only slows down a little. It does look good, you never get to see levels appearing in front of you as the console rushes to keep up with you, however detail can often be seen to be rendering as you look at it, not a good sign. Bungie, it could be argued, may of rushed this one, you look at the Master Chief and think 'wow' but then see the Hunter and choke on its ugliness, the first Doom game could do better, MC may of had 10,000 polygons but the Hunter looks as if it had 10, and the other minor Covenant characters lack due attention too.

The storyline is a continuation of Halo, it is a new chapter though Halo 1 being a standalone, however as many have said before Halo 2 leaves you on a cliffhanger, and so is not a stand alone storyline it beckons to Halo 3 for completion. Some people don't like this feature, others don't mind personally it left me hungering for the next one, and that wasn't a bad thing.

Cut-scenes are rendered in-game, not beautiful movies of Square Enix level, but still decent enough they are also fluid and timely, leading into combat and out of it smoother than most games.

The controls are extremely easy to get the hang of, I have witnessed Playstation veterans complain but then sink into the use of the controllers with ease. Music is awesome too, Bungie did well to get orchestras and rock legends in to make their theme tunes, nothing can get you going more than the trademark guitar riff that embodies Halo 2.

Glitches are not uncommon, the Sword flying is one, although it requires another player to initiate and so is impossible on single player, it is also impossible to find by yourself, especially in two hours. But it does not have as many glitches as Half-life 2, which is a comparably legendary game, which can be completed in its entirety in 1 hour and 20 minutes purely on the exploitation of glitches.

Multiplayer

Some may say the sniper rifle is the be all and end all of Halo 2, it can strike at any distance and kill in one shot, but that one shot is difficult, especially if the opponent is moving, let alone in a vehicle. A sniper has to be good, very good to take on another good player, as any good player will know how to take down a camping sniper.

The new character model, allowing any player to play as an elite in multiplayer, is very nice in appearance. It has large head but crouches giving it both advantages and disadvantages, but both are minimal and really of no consequence in competitive levels. It is debatle too that the larger head area and crouch of the Elite model is actually representative of the meshes surface area that is open to headshots, it may be the same as a Spartan model.

Probably the most frustrating aspect in all of the game is the matchmaking service on Xbox live. You will often be pitched against an opponent of different skill level if you like to go one on one, but then again one on one attracts the best of the best if you are going for it be ready as it will take a while before you have the skills to compete. Team play however is fantastic fun, although slight annoyances include team-killers and snipe-whores.

AI, is frankly amazing, the first review misses out key details. This may be because they ahev not completed the game to a level that shows the AI to be what it can be. Try the first level on legendary difficulty, you will fight it out noting where things are, seeing the patterns you have come to know in the AI. But then you die, repeat the past section but the AI behaves differently, it sees you on a turret waiting for it and it won't come out into the open. It doesn't repeat itself. Often the only way to find an enemy elite on heroic and upwards is to hurt them and look for the shield recharge animation its a dead give away, especially when they hide behind objects. On Halo 1 all sorts of things let down the AI, roars of "Woot woot woot!" before an invisible elite killed you with a glowing energy sword, now they swap weapons at the last moment, so that the sword isn't seen, great improvements. Although the allied AI now that it can drive still has its L plates, and fails its test.

Bungie were thinking of including bots in the game, but they didn't so that is irrelevant to the review, moving on.

In games like Far Cry and Half-Life 2, the bodies flop around hilariously and add unintended hilarity to the death sequences, in Halo 2, when a player is blasted into the air, the same thing happens. Thankfully it has been toned down since Halo 1 where the Master Chief looked to attempting to flap off every time you fell off a cliff. The physics engine tries to be too 'Hollywood' like in most games, sending vehicles flying off spinning in the air to an impossible degree, and the rag-doll physics still hasn't been refined as much as it needs to be.

Overall a legend of its time, the fabled Halo-beaters of Half-life 2 and Killzone, failed to surpass, although Half-life 2s fanbase are not wrong when they say that it too is a legend. However its legendary status does not detract from the fact that it is still not perfect, there are too many errors to say this game is a shining example of FPS. For that you need Call of Duty 2 or the likes, this game just doesn't cut it, and frankly is 'just another FPS'. Lets hope Halo 3 smooths over these blemishes and makes something everyone can enjoy.

Good stuff: Good Graphics although only to the standard you would expect, Playstation 2 could match and beat them, so it doesn't perform to its potential. Very good on LAN with friends, more competitive online. Weapon balance, the weapons aren't all the smae damage wise like in games like UT.

Bad stuff: Absolutely no Weapon Balance (wait thats good its called being realistic). Cliffhanger ending got me hooked, but is damned annoying. AI takes a leap from too easy to quite challenging from Normal to Heroic.

Reviewer System Specs: Xbox:
CPU: Pentium 3 733-MHz
RAM: 64 MB "Unified Memory Architecture"
Video Card: 250-MHz Nvidia "X-chip"
Sound Card:Built-in Intel (exact specs unknown)

[TairosAurelius]

Well, I'm with the first review. Halo 2 has earned the distinction of being the most overrated game of all time, rivaled (but not surpassed) only be its predecessor.

[BeserkWraithlor]

I agree with RaidCarrierMan on the weapon balance. They are very poor, and it is not skill that wins you the game, but the weapons. You have shotgun and sniper? Free win. The new weapons are boring and stale. The Beam Rifle is a pathetic reskin of a Sniper Rifle, and the Battle Rifle is a cooler version of the Halo 1 Pistol. The SMGs are nerfed Assault Rifles. It seemed that Bungie wanted the weapons to look cooler, but they were not interesting or fun to use. The Covenant Carbine is a wannabe Battle Rifle that fails to impress. The Brute shot is tons of fun though, and I really enjoy the shooting and slicing.

I would also like to point out the vehicles. Yes, they are fun to use, but they are horribly overpowered. They have unlimited ammo, and never have to reload. They also dish out tons of damage, and take tons of punishment from normal guns. The feature where you can Hijack vehicles and knock the driver off, is not practical. Vehicles can see everything around them, thanks to the 3rd person view, and they can run away and mow down the person before he gets up close to hijack the person. The only way you can take out a vehicle is greandes, or rocket launcher, and they are rare to find in the map. Banshees and Scorpian tanks are unstoppable, and you should surrender, or die trying to beat them.

Halo 2 is a very fun game, but you cannot master the game, so that means Pros, and noobs are basicly equal. The weapons and vehicles determine the outcome of the game, and the game is all for fun, but the Developers forgot the balance. Halo 2 is a decent game, nothing special. Its the hype that makes the game so popular.

[Starblade]

For the record, the claim that unbalanced weapons are 'realistic' revolves around the fact that Plasma weaponry exists. Which it doesn't.

[evilmegaman]

you mean plasma weapons DON'T exist? Then explain why that plasma tv I used in Dead Rising was a weapon....



:argh:

[Sword_Monkey]

My point in the review over weapon balance was that the weapons don't do exactly the same amount of damage per second as each other. Games such as UT play on this, my point about being realistic referred to them doing amounts of damage according to what they were.

At no point did I mean they were meant to be based on real weapons, it's set in the future, that would be a ridiculous statement.

And neither me nor Starblade gave the game overly generous marks that make it sound like the best game ever, we didn't say that, all we say is that the first review is extremely harsh and very biased.

Reviews aren't to trash games you hate, they are for gamers to attempt to objectively describe the game in such a way as to make others who are also interested play the game. The review isn't really on any side, in the end it is up to the reader to make the judgement on whether they want to play it.

[Starblade]

Oh, I thought you meant more along the lines of "no, X SHOULD be that overpowered over Y. That's how it is in reality!", instead of "X doing y per second is more fitting than z per second", if you get what I mean.

Once it shows up and we've played a decent amount of it, you and I should do a review on it, Sword Monkey, and see how it stands up to Halo 2 and the other 360 shooters.