Trailblazing, such a jump from Halo CE, Bungie outdid themselves, milestone for storytelling in action games and so on and so forth. Anyway.

This game is fucked up on legendary. Anybody that thinks Halo CE is bad on legendary, no. Fuck no. Halo CE on legendary is like a walk in the park. Halo 3 Legendary and onward is like playing modern triple A games on easy by comparison. What the fuck were they thinking. Here is one of the most influential shooters since Doom, also we are about to tear your ass up like confetti.

I was going to write an actual review, like for the other games, but I have tunnel vision on this one. No joke, legendary turns Halo 2 into a puzzle game, in which you need to solve every encounter with the correct mix of strategy and luck. Sometimes this can be really fun and rewarding. Then there's Gravemind.

I don't want to complain too much. This game was barely crunched out the door, knowing this it's almost insane how good the game is. These building blocks would later form the greatest highest difficulty setting in video gaming, next to Dante Must Die.

Give it a go, I can wholeheartedly recommend the anniversary edition. It looks and plays great, some visual clarity is lost, but overall I'd call it an upgrade.

Halo 2 takes everything that made CE good then dials it all up. it's hard to deny how much this feels like a playable action movie straight out of the Bush era. although the pacing is still inconsistent in some areas, with the introduction of multiplayer through xbox live, this was a foundational part of gaming history and what started it all for a lot of people. the remaster includes full CGI cutscenes and features the ability to hot-swap between new and original graphics so you can really see how rose-tinted those glasses are

[11/17/2023]

Dude.

This game.

Where Halo 1 created a franchise, Halo 2 created a world. Two, actually. Where we saw Master Chief's accomplishment and commendation from the previous game, we saw Thel 'Vadam's failure and punishment. The UNSC's duty to prevent total galactic destruction, the Covenant's dogmatic pursuit of the Great Journey. Doubling the size of the world and its stories by expanding upon the Covenant to be more than just genocidal aliens, evolving the story and conflict to become more than a simple "humans vs. aliens war" story, helped elevate this game and the Halo series to legend status.

This and Halo 3 are constantly fighting for the position of my absolute favorite FPS of all time. Halo 2 wins by the slightest margin by virtue of the worldbuilding. Perfect sequel, and sets up an incredible finale with Halo 3.

Also, unlike CE Anniversary, this game's remaster actually looks good!

Halo 2 took everything that CE did well, and made it even better. It's an improvement in basically every way; better gameplay, better story, better environments, better ambiance, better weapons, more and better characters, and they're more fleshed out (even cannon fodder like enemies and marines have more character to them), etc. The difficulty is amped a bit, it's just hard enough at times that reaching the end of a mission that killed you a dozen times over is more gratifying than anything. Overall, the Halo 2 campaign (also) holds up very well, and it's a fun ride the whole way through. I'm glad I managed to stay spoiler free of it for so long.

(Played through MCC; New Graphics)
I love this game. Loved it back when I first played it many years back, and love it even more playing it now (partially because I don't suck at this game as much anymore). It's got some annoying parts at points (namely the escort part at the end from how many enemies you have to fight and I feel some of the levels being a bit too easy to get lost in), but otherwise it's great, and improves on Halo 1 in many many ways.
The story is better and deeper (also introduced best boi Thel/Arbiter)
The gameplay is improved, adding things like two playable protagonists, dual wielding, stealing and attacking enemy vehicles directly, and teammates being able to drive vehicles (though they're not very good at it), and removing stuff like the health system (in favor of just a faster recharging shield) and fall damage.
The music is great (not to say 1's is bad, though (little unmemorable to me but I digress))
The graphics (both OG and Anniversary) look great (though the latter does still kinda suffer from some levels being made too bright, ruining the point of the flashlight, and weird changes like Arbiter's last two levels not being as cloudy)

This is a great one, definite recommendation (just not on Legendary because I hear this game is like unfun hard on that difficulty)

Tomando como referencia lo dicho anteriormente respecto a la primera versión, esta segunda versión tiene puntos que mejora al primero, pero otros que lo empeoran bastante más, teniendo estos más relación con lo que supongo que es la optimización del remaster.

Empezaré con los puntos negativos, y es que venir de un juego donde está todo perfectamente doblado a un buen español, pasar a un juego que está todo en completo inglés excepto algunos subtítulos en español, es toda una bajona. Cuando estás en misión, las conversaciones están únicamente en inglés, ni si quiera subtitulado (aún poniendo dicha opción, no hay subtítulos ni en inglés). Por otro lado, tiene caídas de FPS. No entiendo el porqué, pero no es un juego exigente como para que ocurra. Al punto que me llegó a crashear en una ocasión.

Respecto a los aspectos positivos, resulta que mejora en todo a la primera parte. Aquí tenemos una historia mucho más rica, controlando a dos personajes y viendo como sus tramas se intercalan. Se expande mucho más el mundo y la información que obtenemos del entorno. Los secundarios también tienen más carisma, siendo más relevantes que los dos contados que hay en el primer Halo. Yo que vine por esto, me quedé bastante más satisfecho. Además, el final se queda bastante sabrosón, típico de telenovela que te deja ahí con el la miel en los labios justo en el final.

Del gameplay está también bastante más mejorado: más armas, más enemigos, maneras de afrontar cada situación con mejoras y nuevas habilidades, repite muuucho menos el tema de ir-venir por los sitios o escenarios reciclados... En conclusión, es una mejora en todos los aspectos jugables.

Como experiencia me parece más completa esta segunda parte, me ha dejado con mejor sabor de boca si no fuera por los problemas técnicos que en mi opinión, empañan demasiado el producto final. Este juego con su merecido doblaje (o como mínimo subtítulos en las conversaciones en misiones y no únicamente en las escenas) y sin caídas de frames, habría estado un puntito por encima del primero. Aún así le cascaría un 7 también.

Platform: Xbox Series X
Date Started: September 16th, 2023
Date Finished: December 16th, 2023
Time Played: Unknown

"A monument to all your sin."

An absolutely terrific sequel that builds upon the strong foundations of the original but with a budget the allowed the team to craft more variety and much better designed levels (for the most part), Halo 2, specifically the Anniversary Edition, is a complete captivating joy, offering a gripping story from two perspectives with two outstanding leads.

Thanks to this newer edition levels are also book-ended by some of the best produced cut-scenes I have seen in video games, and it's a real shame that they never made their way into Halo 3 or any other mainline entry into the series. They help humanise the characters on a much deeper level, and I got actively excited every time one popped up.

The Arbiters story offers a completely new dynamic to the world, and offers a background to the enemy force which gives you huge context to their motives. It's a great idea executed wonderfully, and when the story eventually merges with Master Chief's it feels like a huge deal finally seeing these two forces come together.

Halo 2 is a wonderful time, with an engaging story and tight, fun gun-play that rarely gets old. There are a couple of stages that feel a little bit of a drag, but ultimately these don't bring down the experience.

Immediately after finishing the previous title, I start on Halo 2. This one I knew I had never played before, as I never owned it as a kid. I was pretty excited to get into this entry as I've heard nothing but positive feedback for it and now I can finally understand where the Arbiter comes from since I've played Halo 3 multiple times (more on that eventually).

Halo 2 is a vast improvement over the first Halo with minor exceptions. There's more guns, cutscenes and gameplay went another step-up in graphic fidelity, and the story is extremely more intriguing and well-written. What really took me back was how phenomenal the cutscenes looked! I had no clue that Halo 2 also received a remaster, basically. The cutscenes were remade from scratch and you can easily tell, being comparable to modern-day releases and their pre-rendered cutscenes. However, you're still able to switch between original graphics and remastered graphics for the gameplay and cutscenes and, once again, I still preferred some areas with the older graphics. This is usually due to how dark the new areas can be, but some instances, I feel the new graphics fumbled the atmosphere the original was going for.

Unsurprisingly, I also recommend anyone interested to play through this as well. It's easy to get into, nice to look at, and you can finish it relatively fast. I also played this on solo heroic and found some parts infuriating, but others extremely easy (as the Arbiter cloak for a few seconds and just straight-up skip sections). I'm ecstatic to finish Halo 3 now that I have all the previous knowledge on the story I was missing when I played through as a kid.

This was my first time playing Halo 2 Anniversary. Original Halo 2 was a big part of my childhood but I have not played the campaign as many times as any of the other Bungie era Halos. Replaying now I understand why. It's a very mixed bag. Equal parts "this is bigger and better than Combat Evolved" and "this is a tedious slog with bad checkpoints." In terms of how everything controls and the combat loop It's a total improvement to the first so I did have fun playing it mostly. The Flood are a bit more annoying this time around and I'm a Flood apologist usually. It's a weird situation where Arbiter has the way more interesting stuff going storywise but his missions have boring as hell Gameplay. Master Chief and Humanity in general on the other hand really doesn't have jackshit storywise but have the much better designed missions. Gravemind being my favorite. If Halo one's biggest flaw was repetitiveness, Halo 2's is stopping the momentum dead to have you fight waves of guys.

As far as the Anniversary updates themselves I felt they did a much better job with 2 than Combat Evolved. I very much enjoyed that the goal was to make Halo 2 look like a shinier newer Halo 2 instead of making Combat Evolved look like Reach. Though I will say going from the gorgeous new cutscenes to the actual gameplay was always a bit jarring.

Played Halo 1 with a friend of mine around the middle of last year and then our lack of ability to make the time or just be bothered to start Halo 2 became a bit between us, so I was fully ready to never have seen the day come to fruition.

That said, ayyy, it's pretty great for the most part! It's still Halo's inherently fun shooter gameplay at its core, now with the bonus of dual-wielding shit, and still handicapped by me sucking at shooters, but them's just the breaks, I guess.

Bigger, bolder, Halo 2 aims to be another in that long list of sequels that beat out the original in most every way possible. From the previously mentioned dual-wielding, to the doubling of playable characters with both Master Chief and the Arbiter, there's a sense of progression here that you don't see in many derivative sequels of nowadays. It doesn't always hit the mark, with Arbiter's levels generally being among the weaker of the game's lineup; the first level's ending setpiece was absolutely stellar, backed by the fantastic Follow In Flight, but a lot of them just aren't of the same calibur as Chief's, and I think the choice to end on a stage as him is definitely an interesting way to go about things. Makes sense thematically, but I have to wonder if there was an MGS2 level of fan discourse about if it was a better choice than to have the final stage be Chief's. Still, few moments were really outright bad, though, so that's something.

Visually, since I was playing the Anniversary release, damn does this hold up well. Even the original version is still a damn good looker, really showing the ehavy lifting the OG Xbox did back in the day, but Anniversary looks stellar. This version's soundtrack's specifically let down a bit by the lack of Breaking Benjamin, but there were plenty of points throughout the game where I, out loud on a Discord call, said, "Holy shit, this music!", or words to that effect, which is how you know a game's OST has sold me. Solid stuff all around.

That said, I got forced at gunpoint to go in on Heroic for the first playthrough, so thanks for that one, Ian. Really enjoyed respawning and getting brought to death's door by the fucking jackal snipers and grunts at the end of the game. Halo 2's difficulty balancing is kind of a nightmare at points on Heroic, and this is coming from the perspective of a guy who's already not the best at shooters. I know, skill issue and shit, but some of the late game got pretty ridiculous. Maybe I'll bump down to Normal for my own sanity when I double back on a singleplayer run.

But overall, damn Halo 2 was a great time. Not sure how I'd rank it compared to the first; again, think a replay might be due prior to any attempts at definitively ranking the games compared to one another, but all that matters is that I had a blast for the most part. Definitely excited for blasting through the Halo 3 campaign with 4 players!

A magnificently frustrating experience on Legendary, Halo 2 was and still is a landmark achievement in both first person shooters and in science fiction.

While being one shot off-screen by Jackals with beam rifles was eternally frustrating, I had a blast getting giddy everytime Master Chiefs one-liners were soon to appear on screen. Each playthrough of Halo 2 feels like I'm transferred back to myself nearly twenty years ago when I experienced it for the first time.

The HD Touchups with the anniversary edition bring out the intricate lore and rich intrigue that the Halo universe holds. Cutscenes get a massive lift with the new graphics, though they feel now like they did to me way back when. I played in constant awe of the way familiar faces like Miranda Keys, Sergeant Johnson, and the Arbiter looked like with a fresh coat of paint. This game is beautiful, and even though its now nine years old in the anniversary iteration, fits like a glove in the current gamesphere. Another anniversary touchup that I greatly appreciated was the soundtracking. While Marty O'Donnell's initial flight was superb at the time, the updated soundfront and songs breathe a new life into the game that the annivesary desperately needed.

My qualms with H2A really just rest in issues I had with the main game (co-op deaths reset you to checkpoint on legendary for example) thus I cannot detract the anniversary for this per se. Overall I had an amazing time taking that trip through my childhood once more and had the right person to play with. I had a blast setting up cheese strats to hit checkpoints or avoid entire encounters because we were overwhelmed by enemy forces or low on ammunition, its occurrences like this that make the older school FPS' as fun as they are.

I'm glad I got to "Finish the Fight" once more.