Halo 2 is one of the biggest messes of a game that I enjoy. The singleplayer campaign is ridiculously imbalanced, inconsistent, and yet fun. The usual pillars of Halo combat are still there: great AI, great weapons, great enemies, great (albeit inconsistent) missions. The story is also extremely good, easily my second or third-favorite story in a shooter. Co-op play is also still really fun, as per usual in Halo. However the game's difficulty and encounter balancing is astonishingly bad, especially on the highest difficulty where the game is borderline unplayable at moments. Those are what hold the game back from anything higher.

What a step up from Halo 1 - this game took everything Halo did right, and amplified it, and improved upon most of the flaws. The story was much larger in scope, with the added worldbuilding elements attaching me to the world and the characters in a way the first game just couldn't quite get right. Not only this, but the missions felt much tighter in their design - not completely missing out on the choices of weapons and the different feel that choice would give the level - but refining it so that no matter the choice you made, you'd have an absolute blast along the way.

I loved the two separate stories converging into one, and the new weapon choices were a lot of fun to play with (energy swords are still one of my most nostalgic video game weapons.) The vehicle controls felt much better, and more enjoyable, and the variety of enemies was also much more fun.

The only reason this didn't quite get the 5stars from me was some slight level design issues towards the end, and the cliffhanger ending after quite a disappointing final level (the level was fun, it just didn't quite feel like an endgame encounter).

I can see myself replaying this again certainly, very glad I went back to explore this series properly after only playing around on multiplayer as a teenager. Much recommended!

Halo 2 improves a lot about what I liked about Combat Evolved while adding a lot more meat to areas that I thought needed it. The big improvement comes from the story. Combat Evolved had a story, though it wasn't what I was mainly looking forward to for the most part. I knew Halo had some good lore, and Combat Evolved had some interesting parts but that wasn't the highlight for me (though the Keyes mission was really good). In Halo 2, the story takes more importance, even going as far as to have a second playable character and that was a really cool perspective. The other elements of the game are also improved like the level design, music, and graphics, though I feel like some missions were a little weaker than in Combat Evolved (though that's a minority of missions). Still, I had a lot of fun playing this and it definitely was a step up from Combat Evolved, though I wouldn't say it's perfect, just really great. Overall, very great game with improved elements to its predecessor.

I was deep in Half-Life mods still, playing Firearms and DoD and stuff. This was the multiplayer shooter my brother and his friends played. I tried it a few times, and honestly, I don't understand how it took off other than being a Big Franchise. I don't know if a first person shooter's multiplayer experience has ever made me more actively miserable than spawning with the SMG, moving slow and turning slow and firing a peashooter. Cultural forces are the only explanation my young mind could accept for the success of such a bad time.

What do we look for in a sequel? Collectively I’m not sure we know. Sequels have been both criticised and praised for doing ‘more of the same’. Sequels have been criticised and praised for ‘moving too far from what worked’. Sequels have been criticised and praised for ‘lacking direction’. For every sequel the expectation is different, but fundamental to success is the self awareness to assess your own product. The team behind it has to understand it better than anyone. What works, what doesn’t. What can be flexed and pushed, what can’t. On paper it’s an easy task - these people made this product, who else could know it better? But as history has shown this isn’t often the case. Regardless of your thoughts on Halo 2 as a whole one thing is clear from the outset: Bungie understood their product. And they worked not only to refine, but to improve beyond expectation.

All of the core elements that made Halo: CE so distinctive remain but polished to an incredible level of shine. The presentation, the gunplay, the gameplay loop. All fat has been trimmed and here the focus is on improvement. Take what works and make it better - a seemingly simple task. There are mission sections that could only have been made through a deep understanding of the game engine. You’ll traverse through corridors and caves with the bullets of your gun lighting the way. You’ll hop between vehicle and foot combat as your manoeuvre levels at different heights. This level of game design may be all rudimentary now but it still feels so intuitive and smart here. Everything feels much more detailed and in turn much more mature too.

This maturity is echoed through the plot line and dialogue of Halo 2. If there’s one thing I bounced off in Combat Evolved it was the story. I knew the overarching plot but I couldn’t ever find a reason to really care, even less why I should hate these grunts and brutes as much as I seemed to aside from the fact they hated me too. There was lore if you searched for it, but it felt like a story in service of a game rather than a game in tandem with a story. Halo 2 takes a different turn, choosing to focus fairly heavily on lore and politics between factions, although not through a dissection of UNSC as fans might expect, but instead through a deep dive into the gears of the Covenant. While the choice to focus on the Arbiter may seem a bit baffling overall the results are nothing if not wildly entertaining. Finally we have personal motivations, a more introspective look at systems of power, a criticism of the power of faith and ability to manipulate individual’s belief in it. If CE hinted that Bungies achilles heel might be narrative storylines, 2 dispels those thoughts with immediacy and flair.

However, as much as I may have personally enjoyed Halo 2’s overarching story we have to acknowledge Bungie’s somewhat bizarre decision to bring the focus away from their fan favourite. As a player with no fandom skin in the game it’s still very intriguing that the Arbiter’s story and character should come across as more whole and complete than our actual leading man’s. We watch as Bungie very clearly demonstrate their writing capability and then somewhat fail their main character and franchise mascot. It’s a baffling decision but also one you could argue that allows the game to become what it is - a bold and exciting statement of intent from a company who recognised their shortcomings and defied expectations with the answers to them. Perhaps Halo 3 will become a homecoming and Chief focused closer to the series. If that was and is the plan then undoubtedly Halo 2 becomes something of an Empire Strikes Back, which we all know was the best one anyway, right?