I'm sure anyone in their 30s is more than sympathetic to the difficulties of making friends. Work beats you down, leaves you worn out, and schedules are hard to line up when those in your orbit are also trying to pay the bills and feed a family. People grow apart, they change, and eventually you stop hearing from your friends you used to play Halo with in high school.

Not that those four years were some kind of halcyon, but I do pine for those nights when my buddies and I would lug CRTs two neighborhoods over on foot with Xboxes and copies of Halo 2 in tow. There are many aspects of my teenage and childhood years that I think are best left behind and which I don't envy younger generations for missing out on, but setting up LAN parties is my "walked ten miles both ways in the snow," a sick point of pride for a moment in time that can never be experienced again by young or old. Four greasy, pimple-faced teens huddled around CRTs in a dark and tiny apartment bedroom shooting rocket launchers at each other in Beaver Creek, the way Peter Moore intended... I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss nights like that.

The CRT I have now weighs well over a hundred pounds, and since I'm built like a teacup pig, I won't be carrying that over to anyone's house, even if I had someone's house to go over to. So, while I cannot recreate the sensation of playing Halo 2 with friends back in 2004, I can at least experience the single-player campaign on period appropriate hardware, and that's something; and for what it's worth, I had a really good time going back and revisiting this game for the first time since release.

For the most part, Halo 2 is just more Halo, only with the added level of production you'd expect from a follow-up to one of the most popular and profitable games of its time. The set pieces are bigger, levels more varied, there's more guns, more vehicles, and they even paid big bucks to get legendary comedian David Cross to voice a character. Oh yeah and Michelle Rodriguez is here-- BUT HAVE YOU SEEN MR.SHOW!!?

Halo 2 certainly makes a strong first impression. The opening cutscenes jumping between the UNSC celebrating Master Chief's victory and Thel 'Vadam's punishment for allowing him to destroy Halo sets up the game's main conflict wonderfully. I was initially led to believe that The Arbiter would serve as the main antagonist of this story but was surprised (at least in 2004) when the game relinquished control of him to me. Introducing a deuteragonist and cutting Master Chief's screen time by about half was a bold choice, but one that I think pays off, as The Arbiter is a vastly more interesting character. The way in which his faith is shattered as he learns of Halo's true purpose, and his fight to expose the Hierarchs for their deception gives him more depth than Master Chief, who mostly shows up to say cool guy stuff like "I'm gonna need a gun B-)" and "Sir, finishing this fight." Perhaps there's something to criticize there about how little character Chief actually has, and how he could have been used to better effect in exploring the uneasy alliance that begins to emerge between the UNSC and rebelling Elites, but my vague recollection of Halo 3 tells me that I'll eventually get what I want, and there's still a lot more narrative here to sink into than the anemic story of the previous game.

I have more mixed feelings about Halo 2's gameplay, however. The opening few missions are the strongest, and the game wastes little time in introducing new weapons and vehicles for you to play with. Some may lament the loss of the Starship Trooper inspired assault rifle, but I personally favor the more focused burst action of the battle rifle. If that doesn't do it for you then you can always pick up an SMG and, through the power of dual wielding, it can as powerful as a single gun! Even the Covenant get some new weapons, like the plasma sword which can one-shot most enemies when timed right, and vehicle sequences are better about offering multiple rides, affording the player some freedom in how they have their fun. As good as these weapons and vehicles may feel, none of it would work if they weren't complimented by good level design, and for most of Halo 2, that is the case.

Things really start to drop off towards the end of the game. Levels design starts to backslide into Halo 1 territory, with identical hallways and samey arenas that break any momentum the player may have been building, reducing what should be the most climatic moments of the game to a total drag. It doesn't help that the Brutes - who effectively replace the Elites in the end game - are profoundly spongy and present in great numbers, which causes every firefight to be protracted just beyond the point of being fun. Master Chief's last level sends him through the corridors of the Covenant's stronghold during a Flood attack, and nothing about the level is set up in a way that encourages you to be an active participant in the fight. Just avoid combat and run to the goal. Boring.

There may be good reason for this, however. Enough has been written about Halo 2's underwhelming conclusion, but a significant amount of cut content has bubbled to the surface in recent years to imply that the game was at one point much larger in scope. Take the opening sequence in which Master Chief "returns" the Covenant's bomb, which in the original gameplan would've instead saw him boarding and infiltrating their ship, or Alphamoon, a level that was far too large to reasonably ship. To quote Chris Butcher while talking about Alphamoon: "We were building stuff that just couldn't be played, in any engine, we built, and detailed, and went a huge way down the path with a whole bunch of environments and levels for the game that just totally didn't make it."

However, of Halo 2's cut content, Earth Ark is the most relevant to the final product's abrupt ending. Originally conceived as an ending to Halo as a series (there was no plans to make another game at that point in time), Earth Ark would've sent the fight back to earth for three final missions that would alternate between Master Chief and The Arbiter. A complete walkthrough of how these missions would have progressed can be read here, but my personal opinion is that it would have been a vastly more interesting conclusion to Halo 2, and arguably more than what we eventually got in Halo 3. It's a shame that development troubles and a prevailing need to actually ship a game resulted in a truncated conclusion to Halo 2, having a clear adverse effect not just on the narrative but the quality of gameplay during these final missions.

It's fun to think about this theoretical "true" version of Halo 2 and how it would've radically altered the way the franchise developed, but doing so is a exercise pleasant yet pointless as reminiscing on high school LAN parties. It also should in no way be taken as a sweeping condemnation of the game we got, which I think is very good despite circumstances leading to a compromised end product. It also has David Cross in it, which is at least worth a full star. Oh and Michelle Rodriguez, who is worth like, I don't know, 1/6th of a star. The system doesn't let me go that low so I'm going to round it down to zero.

I can now see why Halo became such a big deal after the release of this game.

Everything that was set in the first game was dialed up to 11. The combat is deeper, the levels are more structured, the story and lore are better, and the stakes and battles are bigger. It expands and doubles down on everything that made the first Halo so good.

The campaign here was amazing; I enjoyed everything from start to finish and never got bored. Unlike the first game, levels are reused. There aren't infinite respawning enemies, and the story is so compelling due to the expansion of the lore and the fleshing-out of the characters.

After completing Halo 2, I am officially a fan of the franchise. I look forward to seeing how the story turns out and how the rest of the series progresses.

Being from an overwhelmingly Sony devoted country, my exposure to Halo at the peak of its cultural impact was always one of looking over the fence at the neighbor's garden, indirectly consuming it through magazines, the internet or looking at its intriguing box art at the store. Eventually I would buy Halo CE for the pc many years after its time in the sun and neglect the boring campaign for the addictively fun throw plasma grenades at your own teammates online multiplayer, and only recently have I played it from start to finish, an experience which I can only describe as a Sonic the Hedgehog 1 situation where its couple of highs greatly diminish and disguise its numerous lows.

Historical hindsight had already prepared me for Halo 2's rushed development and anti-climatic ending, but it was still interesting and surprising to witness how many of its steps forward are undermined by a couple of steps back. Presenting a much tigther content-filled campaign with varied environments that lend themselves to more unique combat situations and replace the onslaught of endless corridors and enemy fodder of CE, Halo 2 quickly reveals the cost with its lack of sandbox-y freeform missions that defined its predecessor, and the iconic moments that seamlessly transition into big combat setpieces, greatly elevated by the haunting soundtrack, are severely gimped by the artificial difficulty that has enemies hit scanning you on sight and the baffling new HP system that puts you behind cover for long boring stretches of your playtime.

This sentiment even ends up extending itself into the story of Halo 2, a plot that, even with the introduction of much appreciated new intrigue with its Convenant inner conflict, isn't able to avoid making the illusion of scale and grandeur feel small and inconsequential, revealing a universe already running out of ideas. Halo 2 was a second awkward step from CE's first, and not the solidification of an identity for the franchise that sophmore sequels are known for being in the realm of videogames. Still, that only further cements how much of a big deal its online component was at the time and the transformative influence it had on the online console videogame landscape that is still felt to this day, considering it turned what was otherwise a fairly good-ish FPS series into the biggest franchise on Earth.

Walking around its now empty and quaint servers inhabited with Halo 2 online purists that break you into submission on sight, it's impossible to get a sense of what it represented in 2004, being just a relic of simpler and more exciting times for videogames, and in the same way you will never again experience the Pokemon mania of the 90s or the early exciment of playing an MMO for the first time, Halo 2 is one of those cases where "you just had to be there". And I wasn't.

PS: finding out in real time that "Blow Me Away" was actually from Halo 2 all along is one of those special rare moments in life where you feel like you just gained a better understanding of the universe.

The step up in quality from Halo to Halo 2 is pretty remarkable. What was most striking to me from the outset was the storytelling. Halo 2’s story, albeit nowhere near Oscar worthy, is far more nuanced and engaging than the original's abysmal story. What’s more the cutscenes are stunning. I always looked forward to gawping at their incredible fidelity and excellent visual design at the end of missions. In the story itself, the back and forth between master chief and the arbiter not only gives a more holistic viewpoint of both sides of the war but also helps with the pacing of the game. Missions themselves are varied and for the most part well designed. The range of vehicles, enemies and weapons found throughout only added to the experience. Though some weaker levels and repetitive sequences of fighting wave after wave of enemies did drag it down. Moreover, the game’s ending left a sour taste in my mouth. The final boss was a bullet spongey anti-climax and leaving the game on a cliff-hanger felt criminal. Regardless, Halo 2 does enough for me to recommend it to those who haven’t played it before thanks to its tight gunplay, fantastic pacing and gorgeous cutscenes. Its by no means among the best in the genre by today’s standards, but the fact this has aged so well speaks volumes to the quality of the experience.

2004 Ranked
Ranked Shooter Campaign Recommendations
Halo Ranked

People like this game??? Really??? Because all I see is a busted up piece of shit with an uninteresting story, a broken and inconsistent checkpoint system, and a frustratingly directionless structure. I’ve already heard the ending is shit, so I don’t even remotely feel the need to finish it. Maybe Halo 3 is good, maybe it isn’t, I honestly don’t care, I just kinda hate this series tbh.

I’m honestly convinced that the only people who like this game are people who just happened to have an XBOX as kids.

Halo 2's campaign is something I both love and hate. The story is significantly more interesting with the politics of the Covenant and the whole story of the Arbiter. The levels themselves are a mixed bag of fantastic ideas and awful ones (that start of Gravemind might be the worst part of any Halo game). The difficulty is all over the place, and the game loves to throw droves of enemies at you seemingly out of nowhere. Not to mention the sniper Jackals. However, despite my issues with it, it's still one of my favorite FPS games ever. Some pretty low lows are balanced by extremely high highs. Stuff like boarding the Scarab, cutting the cables on the gas mine, riding the gondolas on Delta Halo, and so on. There are a ton of iconic moments that make the single player great despite its issues.

Plus, it has quite possibly the best multiplayer of any FPS game. Amazing maps, amazing weapons, and to this day some of the best gunplay in any shooter. I think Halo 3 is the better game overall, but Halo 2's multiplayer will always dominate.

Blow Me Away is still an absolute banger. More games need ridiculous insert songs like that.

Pardon me for overreacting but Halo 2 campaign is a disaster. You can see how much of it was cobbled together by overworked devs trying to salvage a project that clearly went way too out of scale for an underpowered original xbox. It was the most frustrating and underwhelming game on my Halo campaign binge.

The first level is the last good level, this is when the game doesn't show its flaws as intensity of encounters is still low and pacing is tight. The second level where the game establishes its worst trope is when it all falls apart. Let's lock the player in an arena and dripfeed 7-10 scarce enemy waves while they die of boredom. Let's do it again! And again! Bungie clearly didn't have enough levels and layouts for a substantial campaign in time, but this desperate attempt to pad out the play time is even worse than copy paste rooms in original Halo as the encounter pacing is totally out of player's control and it's frustratingly, ABYSMALLY slow. I'm baffled how they thought it's a good idea

On the other hand, the balance was hastily retouched to be all around wack: health is no more, hitscan is way overtuned and so is enemy melee which renders close quarters combat ineffective and makes attempts at weaving around enemy positions easily punished. Thus the best tactic is taking a mid-range to high-range hitscan weapons (of which there are quite a few new types in Halo 2) and trying to take out enemies from safe distance and cover. It's boring, and it's a preferable way to do things every time and you'll be in for a bad time if you're intent to do things differently on a heroic-legendary difficulty. These issues are exacerbated with introduction of brutes who are an awful damage sponges and have absolutely no good counter-approach except blowing them off with well aimed plasma grenade or 3 beam rifle headshots from a kilometer away.

The campaign itself is a hot mess with uninspired and constrained level layouts and slow uneventful venicle sections taking up way too much time. There's no Keyes, no The Covenant, I struggle to come up with any level that genuinely stood out. Nothing as dreary as the Library this time, but flood exclusive levels take up one too many spots on mission select screen yet again.

Is it all so bad? No. Arbiter is a good addition and his cloak ability adds some strategic opportunities in combat the game so desperately lacks. The plot is kinda trashy but I definitely appreciated how the story enriches the universe by adding some lacking nuance to covenant and flood. And there are plenty of situations in the back half of the campaign when it pits two hostile opposing forces against each other and lets you use an on-going conflict to your advantage, which is when the game shines the most. Oh and Anniversary visuals are just beautiful, one of the better realized visual remakes I've seen that genuinely enhances the game with some subtle touches original lacked.

But all in all, incredibly frustrating balance and sloppy encounter design makes it the worst Halo campaign in my eyes. It aged way worse than Combat Evolved which was a rough game with genius DNA and it doesn't hold a candle to Halo 3 which made away with almost every issue listed in this review. It presents an interesting case study of what can go wrong during game development when you have a remarkable framework but make unfortunately bad decisions to sink it down. Kind of a bummer.

Halo 2 is visually a quantum leap above 1, and introduces a lot of neat new mechanics, but it is ultimately the inferior package.

Dual wielding sure looks cool, but it's inconvenient to use as you need to drop your secondary weapon whenever you want to do anything with your other hand, such as throwing a grenade.

The story is....far less compelling. Things happen, it's a bit of a mess, the perspective will suddenly switch between Master Chief and the Arbiter, and it's abruptly cut off at the end.

The Arbiter was a nice attempt at a change of pace, but most of his stages (as does the entire second half) suffers from awful, messy and repetitive level design. The levels past the halfway point are utterly unfun and are nowhere near the quality of Halo 1.

All in all, it's an acceptable, but somewhat disappointing sequel and easily my least favourite of the Bungie Halos.

As a sequel to Combat Evolved, the best way to describe Halo 2 is: impressive. The game takes a big step up when it comes to presentation, boasting some incredibly impressive cinematics and setpieces for its time, which give the series much more narrative substance than what the previous game provided. The story does a good job of contrasting the two major factions and giving more personality to the characters from the first game while introducing new ones as well such as Arbiter.
The game also adds new weapons, vehicles, and even the ability to dual wield! So far this sounds like far and away an improvement over the original, and yet I couldn't quite feel that it was, at least not by all that much. While I found a lot of the new weapons fun to use, some of the new vehicles were pretty slow and the sections featuring them ended up overstaying their welcome, while dual wielding kind of felt a little superficial to me and I ended up not using it all that much since being able to melee and throw grenades were options not really worth giving up.
If anything, it felt to me as if the ability to dual wield was used as an excuse to throw in a lot of bulky enemies, especially towards the end when you had to fight all of the brutes. I gotta say that having more enemies that take longer to defeat just made certain parts a bit more of a drag to me. Speaking of enemy types, there's several factions within the game that are often at war with each other, sometimes even within the faction itself, and while there were moments like this in CE they didn't feel as numerous to the point where it often felt better to leave them alone to let them duke it out. Even the "big hype" moment of the game where it started playing Breaking Benjamin was like that—so much that Cortana even told me I should just "sit this one out" and that seemed like a waste of the theme.
Finally, let me get to the story. Combat Evolved's narrative was fairly simple but pretty underdeveloped, and yet it still found ways to create effective moments such as the first breakout of The Flood. They are, of course, back in this game but they just aren't able to send the same chills that their masterful introduction did. It was incredible storytelling through gameplay, and I never found anything of that level here. The cutscenes of course do make up for this as there's much more to dive into than what CE had to offer, but even so while the story was appreciated I wouldn't consider it compelling enough for me to consider this the clearly superior game. Part of this I feel comes from the inclusion of Arbiter who, while isn't a bad character in his own right, splits up the narrative between him and Master Chief with the events happening concurrently. This sounds like a cool idea, but it made certain moments feel disjointed as I wasn't following exactly who was where and at what point so I'd find it surprising to see my other protagonist in one place when I never took him there. It just didn't really work for me as well as it should have, and in a way the increased story focus in this game ironically made me less invested in the narrative than I was in CE. The abrupt ending certainly didn't make matters any better, even if I have to admit that the cliffhangers made for some cool scenes.
All in all, I probably sounded more negative than I should be considering the score, but I should emphasize that most of what I enjoyed about the first game is still here and presented in a flashier package so I'd still recommend it pretty highly. I guess I just hoped that I'd like it even more.

replayed via Master Chief Collection w/ co-op partner MagesticSapling on Heroic

Halo 2 was the first ever FPS I played, back during its release of November 9th, 2004, when I was merely five. I have no idea how or why my parents were able to let someone my age touch an M-rated game like that, especially since the disparity between mine and my older brothers’ age were rather minimal to begin with, but whatever. It’s the game that cemented not only Halo’s status as an icon of gaming, let alone one for the new generation of FPS franchises, but also gave Microsoft a solidified position on the console market that they’ve been holding over with scattered, rather downtrodden results. That last part is also accurate to the development of Halo 2, due to it being so rotted with crunch and issues influenced from personal life and suit meddling that its bleeding turmoil permeates throughout the campaign, especially during its closing hours and on Legendary difficulty, that it’s a miracle this was ever released and held to high acclaim to begin with. Though, words from the people involved are able to detail this…

Unlike the first game where it felt like a retrofitted Marathon entry, 2 feels more akin to Bungie’s lesser known (and equally harder to access) Myth duology, which in turn was a large homage to the dark fantasy series The Black Company. It’s not quite as apocalyptic or doomed by comparison, but similar inkling is felt: Chief may have won the battle on the first Halo ring, but the war on the Covenant - soon revealed to be the Prophets and Brutes specifically - was ever brewing into catastrophic degrees, and one Thel ‘Vadamee became branded as a heretic due to the immense failure that had occurred for that faction, yet was given a chance, albeit suicidal and high in cost, by becoming the Hierarchs’ newly designated Arbiter. The dualist approach of storytelling gives way to both heroes’ conflicts, with Thel learning about the corruption and outright lies the Prophets have utilized in their false ‘religion’ to propagandized and weaponize sects of the troops for their own gain, Chief once again picking up arms to fight back against the threat, and both of them learning that there’s far harsher secrets the Rings have below than anyone could imagine. Although the depth in narrative isn’t quite significant, and to reiterate the inharmoniously turbulence of the development unearths obvious changes (Miranda Keyes lol), there’s a grander, more palpable pulse beating throughout the campaign’s oscillating beats, there being differences and unveiling of the key individuals involved as the progression continues. It also helps that the attempts of humor is more potent, not luxuriating in the solemn revelations for too long if one cares more about the action than the inspection.

The two sides of Halo 2 also give way to the gunplay, because as everyone knows it’s called such since you can wield two guns. This makes certain weapons more viable, such as the Plasma Pistol becoming a better way of softening up any enemy, but it also serves to crutch others, such as the Needler’s capped damage output for faster speed can only ever become as powerful as it once was by procuring both and going to town. There’s similar improvements and blows outside of this, where the Energy Sword’s dominance is established as one of the best close-encounter finishers, while the Shotgun’s pellet spread and range deduction means it’s nowhere near the force of nature it once was and serves as a mere sidegrade at best to some of the other arsenals it shares favors with. Weapon swaps tend to occur more frequently from either helpful ammo drops, or from beneficial gains via enemy or careful observations in the environments that allows for management and hold of the situations at hand. Plus, a lot of things sound cooler, be it from the arsenal as I hear the pings and energized blasts from each piece, ambiances to , or the way, way improved music, incorporated more often to help give weight to the type of things you’d be doing even if it was in the smallest of doses. Those benjamins knew what they were doin from their breaks, it’s easy to revel in hard-ironed bravado if I had some backing music accompanying me.

It also helps that level design feels a lot more fleshed out as to what it wants to be, emphasizing the linear nature but using that open-space philosophy 1 tried to dabble in more succinct manners. They still couldn’t quite get the reuse aesthetics down, but it’s not as egregious as before at the very least, with better signage and distinctions made to guide the protagonists throughout the structures. Both may be lone wolfing it for a majority of the time, but the way they go about it is fairly unique. Chief’s able to push forward with little issues, while Arbiter needs to camo in quick pace to gain the upper hand, or altogether avoid the firefights. Arbiter largely deals with corridors or otherwise tight compactors in the places he visits, while Chief is able to breathe more often until the chokes tighten up. Of course, the biggest hurdles to go over are all the times you wait for things to happen. Like, a LOT of waiting. Like oh my god why is Oracle like that and why must I and my friend suffer through connection errors that just got patched the day we finished this. You also got the dang gondolas and transfer vehicles in Delta Halo that could seriously use a speedboost. I believe people mark Quarantine Zone as the game’s worst level, but at least you can rush through to the end and only have to deal with a slow ride against the Flood! The last quarter, specifically when Gravemind starts, is when it truly begins to showcase its uneven and cobbled together nature, cause it’s when the first game’s trapping of “just throw a lot at them” rears its head again, only this time worse because of the aforementioned balancing muddying up the encounters. As far as I’m concerned, being able to beat this solo on Legendary is a mark of a hardened player, something I doubt I’ll ever do at any point in my life.

It’s easy to deride 2 for a lot of things, since it’s the second Halo entry to have the flaws out in full force (I’ll go over Reach later…), but when all’s said and done, I’m not sure I can bring myself to agree fully. Top to bottom, I’m fairly confident in saying this is one of the best FPS titles to have graced the genre, especially considering the period it was released in where more landmarks were either on their way, or already established themselves. This one’s definitely a case of rose-tints being tied on, but what can I say, when I first laid my eyes on this, I was blinded by its beauty.

It isn't the full improvement over the original that I'm hoping will happen, but the Halo series is truly beginning to mold into its own identity and something special as it begins to solidify itself as the gaming icon we see it as today.

From the introduction of the cinematic cutscenes to the larger variety of locations, you can still feel the actiony science-fiction war epic the original was aiming for, but now with even more to love about the universe. The breaking of factions as the Covenant aims to complete its mission of the Great Journey once again as Master Chief is left to orchestrate their destruction offers the same exhilarating feel of Combat Evolved with more to learn and appreciate. It's far less conclusive than CE (The ending in particular I feel pretty lukewarm on) but it gives us more of a reason to completely grasp every side of the picture. While character-wise the Arbiter and his missions weren't as interesting as MC's, the change in pace and objective offered a more introspective look into the Covenant and peaked my interest of the internal battle brewing between the Brutes and the Elites. Seeing it all interwoven so neatly until the last moment was brilliant and I really can't wait to see how the adventure develops further into the future.

The gunplay was already so well constructed in CE, it's no secret, even to Bungie. From the bigger additions like new vehicles and duel wielding to the smaller things like the improved health gauge system and shorter level times, it's the same satisfying combat but even more fast and fluid. Duel wielding two guns and immediately throwing a bomb to bouncing back and taking out a long rifle, it is unbelievable both how well the game holds up and how much of a badass you feel. One thing I loved about CE was how the science fiction and more realistic-war aspects complimented themselves so well, and it could not be more true here even as this grow more experimental.

It's clear that there's still more to improve though. The stronger variety in locations was a pleasant surprise, but the confusing sense of progression in certain levels, broken checkpoint system, and onslaught of repetitive corridors and waves are unfortunately still present. It's an improvement compared to CE but with how progressive everything else feels, it stands out as outdated and the weak link.

At the hands of the grand vastness of outer space, there is no end to war. Master Chief's struggle yet style continues to carry him forward to epic proportions, with even more potential from here on out. I can't wait to continue along the series playthrough.

Halo 2 is a game I both respect a ton and wish it was brought more disrespect.

It's both equal parts a dated simulacra of early 00s fps wrapped around a campaign strained to its maximum with melodramatic soap opera military galore, and also simultaneously one of the best multiplayer accidents of the century to this day. It is monstrously awful to play through, majorly due to how Bungie course corrected the design constraint to where almost all projectiles now act as hitscan (and true hitscan weapons are FAR FAR more often used against you now), and also because the story is really not great. Reevaulating it is hard though, because this was the particular entry that made me fall in love with the Arbiter and the elites as a whole and kind of stuck me into the series. This crap made me pick up the books and I still stan a few of those so I really have to pull back my punches here. But I can't in any decent degree of earnesty say that this story is anything above poor taste schlock, bar the scene with Gravemind (although Gravemind itself is to blame, like the ending with Cortana is fucking questionable on multiple levels that requires more time talking in the scope of Halo 3). The levels are "mostly" bad, with threads of mechanical intrigue that lead to mostly nothing. It's so self-aware of its shortcomings that they had to put in so much more cover than you ever had in CE, with so many walls that block line of sight that AIs slowly move their ass around so that you can quickly recharge your busted new health system. Vehicles do feel at their best here, and while the soundtrack pulls sooooo much weight it can't assist the Library 2.0 design that a good third of the levels follow to an uncomfortable degree.

Despite this rough unpolished side though I can still reconcile that Halo 2 was one of the greats of my childhood because even on a re-re-re-visit to Halo 2's multiplayer the shocking amount of competence on display there still exists. The maps are absolute ace, some of if not the best in the series with quite a few technical but simple to pick up knowhow that makes gunfights more risk-reward heavy. The BXR defines the game but it also formulates the meta, where now before being close up in Halo was only a two hit risk that costed a weapon slot at worse, is now a constant one hit nightmare that forces you to take up specific space. You have to really consider the routes you take, and the way you flank in and come together on an enemy. The new weapon design really feels crafted for the whole experience but it 'really' isn't. In some ways the ending result is luckier than whatever Master Chief ever pulled out of his ass in the campaign. It's wonderful, still a champion of fps multiplayer design to me that is only moderately replicated, fully riffed off in 3 because it worked just that well.

So is Halo 2 worth anyone else's time? Probably not honestly. I feel like most people who try to join 2MP are going to get wasted because it's reaching Quake 3 player amount levels, skill required at the door included. But if nothing else, it's worth throwing on the tv with a buddy post-covid on the couch and loading up custom games, because that's constantly fire.

Cortana: Don't worry baby, he's just a nerd!
Arbiter: Why do they always pick thugs?
Years Later
Cortana: Hey baby remember me?
Arbiter: Beat it chick!
Cortana: Why can't I find a good man?

Halo 2 é uma melhora em praticamente tudo do seu antecessor, as suas novas implementações, como o manejo de duas armas, veículos, novos inimigos e um novo personagem jogável deixaram o que já era bom ainda melhor. Sua trilha sonora está entre as melhores que já ouvi, e ajuda bastante carregar a história que tem mais momentos inspirados que no primeiro jogo. Talvez a única coisa que não tenha curtido tanto é sua conclusão, que apesar de entender o motivo, achei muito abrupta, esperava algo mais grandioso pra recompensar essa Grande Jornada.

Halo 2 is a legendary game with a amazing narrative. If youve been thinking about playing it its a game everyone has to experience. From its defining multiplayer to its legendary campaign. Or the amazing ost. This game for the standard of 2004 is insane. And its such a shame halo games arent made with as much love and passion as these were back then. I will always have so many good memories on this game whether it being one of the first games i picked up for my og xbox or the countless hours ive spent playing it in the master chief collection. Absolutely one of the best games ever made