Halo 2 Ending

[Switch]

I didn't think it was a good ending at all. I was expecting things to continue on for twice as long as they did! Took me totally off guard, all of a sudden BOOM the credits. Sort of... "Huh? Is that it?". Totally blatant attempt to achieve 3 things IMO.

 

1: Get it out before Christmas for extra $$$.

2: Allow there to be a Halo 3 even though they could have fit all of the remaining material into Halo 2. More $$$ for Microsoft!

3: Allow them to release Halo 3 as one of the big titles, maybe even the premier title for XBox Next/2/Xenon-whatever. :P Even more $$$.

 

Very good game, but let's face it, as people have said... the ending sucked.

[DreamOfTheRood]

I've become sort of a Halo2's-ending apologist over on unfiction.com. I recognize the disappointments with the ending, but I don't think that it comes from the game just stopping.

 

This game ended up being about one thing: the dissolution of the Brute contingent within the Covenant. The political machinations within the Covenant was much more ... I don't know the word ... they inspired a much more urgent feeling within me. It was like, "I need to stop these guys RIGHT NOW."

With Master Chief, I just didn't get that feeling. In fact, it was much more like, "ZOMBIES!" And don't get me wrong, I love me a good zombie. However, it became a bit frustrating after a while, because Master Chief's storyline didn't have nearly the kind of emotional impact.

In hindsight, I would have released two games simultaneously, one game that focused on Master Chief's storyline and one that focused on the Arbiter's storyline. The Arbiter's storyline obviously ends with Tartarus, but Master Chief's storyline ends with stopping the very imminent Second Invasion of Earth.

I have my own speculation on why the Bungie squad stopped where they did. They probably want to give us a good, old Western epic of a game with Halo 2.5/3 or whatever, and I suspect that involves the Flood. Remember when the Flood were driving around those Covenant vehicles? If Gravemind's children could learn to operate Covenant technology, then they could surmise the location of Earth as well. We could have all three factions (Humans, Covenant and the Flood) having a battle royale on Earth. In my opinion, if we got that, it would be worth the wait.

[mrpyromania]

(Slightly Off-Topic) That would be tottally awesome. You know what else would be to? If you could play as a combat form in Halo 3.

 

Ahem,I think they cut it short beacuse of time contraints,or could have been for more $$$...Who knows?

[DreamOfTheRood]

I think you're probably right: time and money. See, I go back and forth in this. I really want to believe that MS and Bungie are in this for the right reasons, that they released the game in this unfinished state due to this huge marketing campaign. I mean, for months and months, Halo 2 was being touted as having a release date of Nov. 9. That's what everybody was looking forward to, so Bungie had to pump out the sequel in its unfinished state so they wouldn't completely disappoint fans.

I think they made the wrong decision, but the made a judgement call. I respect that.

 

Is that Hellsing in your signature?

[Btcc22]

Halo 1.05 you meant, not Halo 1.5. The patch was a mess, and if you mean Halo CE, so was that and it's not "Halo 1.5". They released 1.06 just to tidy the mess up they made which split an already decreasing community of different versions into even smaller sections than before.

 

Yet again here's a detailed look at the game (not the same as review posted earlier!). This time it's not my opinion as I don't hold the game in such a high regard.

 

Halo 2 review

 

Halo 2. Ha-lo-2. No other console game has ever been as anticipated or received as much hype as this. The big daddy has finally arrived, and it’s going to kick your ass.

 

For this review, I have decided to split it into two parts – single player and multiplayer, as they are essentially different games. I’ll get to this later.

 

Single player

 

I’m going to try and keep this as spoiler free as possible, for those who haven’t played the game yet.

 

The game seems to start off on a bad point for those of you who had played the first Halo as you start off nowhere near where the old game left off. I suppose this is for the new gamers who have never played the first game – so you can just pick it up and play straight away. For the more regular Halo players, it appears to presume that you have read the series of Halo novels (which I suggest you do anyway, they are a great read and give you great insight into the story) to allow you to link the two games together. Even then it doesn’t do a very good job of connecting them.

 

Enough griping for now, this part of the first few minutes is a very minor factor. You start the game on an orbital station just out of Earth’s atmosphere. The first process is very much the same as the original Halo, you are required to run through a series of diagnostic tests to get a feel for the controls and to set them up for your preferences. Immediately I was overwhelmed by the amount of detail. It was simply breathtaking. The Chief has a sexy new look, and the detail on fellow characters is incredible. After the diagnostics, you get a chance to have a little wander around the room. Looking out the windows allows you to see the amazing background detail. Other orbital stations, Earth, other marines going about their business, all looks great. After you finish gawping you move onto the next part of the level, with a familiar character (to those of you who played Halo 1). This part strangely reminded me of the beginning of Half-Life, but that’s just me. You get to meet a few new characters after this, but now is when the action starts. You almost immediately get thrown into battle (after around 5 minutes of initiation and cut scenes. The Covenant make their presence known, and start attacking the various orbital stations. The first objective is relatively simple; defend the station.

 

Throughout the level you get a great feel of gameplay. Straight away you get the chance to experiment with the new ‘dual wielding’ aspect of that game – you are presented with a selection of weapons and there are various combinations you can choose. I loved this, you immediately get to play around with the fun stuff. Now you get to use these weapons! An epic battle ensues where you have to force boarding parties backward and stop them from taking over the station. This is basically the main body of this level, killing stuff. This is great however, it gives you time to relax and adjust, without the nuance of difficult tasks to complete.

 

As the game progresses though, I couldn’t help but feel the level of fun drop off slightly. If you have seen the E3 2004 footage of New Mombassa, you will most definitely be disappointed – hardly any of this level remains and what is left has been almost completely changed anyway. Throughout the new version of Mombassa, I never once got a feeling of war – but the E3 footage looked completely the opposite. When you finish this level, that’s it – no more Earth. Why this is I have no idea. After all the advertising for the game leading up to its release, such as ‘Earth will never be the same’ I got the feeling that the game would be largely based on earth. This was disappointingly not the case.

 

Throughout the game, you really do tend to get a feeling of massiveness. Levels seem to be huge. Not necessarily in physical size, but in playing length too. They certainly spanned some quite large distance. The graphics never once seemed to sputter though when big areas were rendered. It still looked fantastic. Graphically, Halo 2 is in a league of it’s own. There are areas that really make great use of the new lighting, everything seems to have a much more realistic feel to it than the old game. The only graphical flaw would be during cutscenes. When a lot was going on, the framerate dropped slightly. Luckily, this didn’t appear to creep into the actual game though. The main problem though was the textures – at the start of a cinematic there would be texture ‘pop in’, where it took a second or two for the game to load up all the textures and put them onto the models. While slightly detracting, I didn’t see this as a major problem. It has also been stated that this is due to the none existent loading times for the cinematics. I feel this is a fair trade off.

 

Now, we get on to one of my favourite aspects of the game, the sound. The music was absolutely perfect and it really fit into the feel of certain levels. It also helped to set the correct atmosphere for the levels. Sound effects were superb too, guns sounded great and you really get the feeling of bullets and debris flying past you. I only wish I could appreciate it fully by using a 5.1 speaker sound system.

 

The game play was spot on, the controls were tight and playing with thumb sticks was very easy with this game. You always felt like you were in control of your character which I never really feel often in an FPS on a console. Now, time for another gripe. Pretty much at the end of every level, you were faced with a boss battle. Yes. A boss battle. In a Halo game. Why Bungie decided to do this is beyond me, and it really seemed to disrupt the flow that was ever present in the first game. It seemed to turn it into more of an arcade shooter than a tight FPS at times. This, I was extremely sad about.

 

The story left a little to be desired in my view. If you have read the books, you will be disappointed with the lack of tie-ins. Many story twists were made to keep you interested, but it never really seems to get anywhere. The biggest problem with the story was the ending. I won’t go into too much detail – but even if I did there wouldn’t be much of an ending to explain. It was almost none existent, and seemed to end the game half way through, almost where you would have expected Halo 2 to begin. It’s very hard to explain, but once you play the game you will understand. The entire game doesn’t seem too long, I managed to complete it in around 6 hours.

 

Now, I am not saying you should not buy Halo 2. It is a masterpiece of a game and I strongly recommend that you purchase it. The few small problems just make the game a little less enjoyable at times.

 

Graphics: *****

Sound: *****

Gameplay: ****

Story: ***

 

Overall ****

 

Multiplayer

 

Prepare yourself for a completely different game. It seems to me that Bungie put most of their effort and resources into the multiplayer aspect of the game. I can safely say, without a doubt that after around 3 weeks of owning that game, that it is the best multiplayer game on a console. Ever. There is not one thing about it that I could fault.

 

The netcode is superb. You never have to lead a target to land the shots; it is just like playing the game on a LAN. I have only experienced slight warping of players, but nothing major. The way the game utilises Xbox Live is like no other game – and it is great. You never have to look for a game, you just hit the A button a few times and you are straight into a game. Brilliant. There is also a party system that you play with your friends, where they follow you into whatever game you go into. The clan support works much in the same way, your clan goes as one group into a game and plays together. It is by far the most organised and simplest ways of playing an online game.

 

The action in game is fast, furious and full of fun. It was everything I could have hoped it to be and more. You will always be guaranteed a close game where ever kills count. The team speak function is a very good idea – to talk to your team, you simply press the white button and your voice is cast over your team’s radio frequency. If you talk without pressing the button, your voice is broadcast to all players around you within a small radius, brilliant for trash talking your opponents when you are in a close combat battle. The boarding of vehicles means you can never relax when you are driving either! Team play is now a major factor. You really do need to work as a team to get the best results. This really makes the game more realistic, rather than going round as a lone gunner all the time.

 

The level design is excellent. Everything is brilliantly placed and well set out. The weapons are excellently balanced and everyone will have a chance, much unlike the situation in Halo 1. This means games are much more fun for all. Dual wielding plays a major part in multiplayer, those who master the right combinations will be the ones who excel.

 

Overall, the multiplayer experience was a better one that the single player. I will definitely be playing this multiplayer for years to come and so will many others. This game will dominate Xbox Live and it sets an incredibly high bar for other developers to catch up to. Maybe this will force developers to put effort into their multiplayer, rather than pumping out glitched, untested games like Black Arrow.

 

Enjoy people, this is the pick of Xbox Live.

 

Overall: ******

 

 

Reviewed by Andy F for TouringNet.co.uk.

TouringNet Handle: Yayap

May not be copied or re-used in part or in whole without prior permission from the author or website unless any use of it is properly accredited to the author and TouringNet.co.uk.

 

6 out of 5 for Halo 2 Xbox Live...he doesn't think so anymore. :P

[Lason]

The ending was pretty good. Im more sad that they have manhandled the plasma rifle,plasma pistol amd made the SMG to weak

[Btcc22]

MrPyroMania; yes I can back that up with proof. Bungie said it.

[mrpyromania]

And I say this:Cite your source.

[Btcc22]

One of the interviews on the Halo 2 LE DVD. :D

[oblivion234]

i personaly think halo 1s is better.