There's a lot of great things about Halo 2's overall design. The world and overall visual design are top notch, there's some wonderful vistas and spectacle throughout (a lot of which still really holds up, thanks to the remastering job) and the plot does the right amount of upping the stakes and - thanks to the Arbiter - now has a playable character with actual personality. Where it grinds to a halt is the gameplay. The combat more often than not feels like a slog thanks to how most of the weapons feel and sound completely unresponsive, the two-weapon restriction never feels like it brings any genuine tactical choices given the majority of the time you're just using whatever you have in your hands until it's empty and then picking up the next thing on the ground that has some fuel in it, and the changes made to the regen health system (now relying solely on the shield, no base health) further accentuate the game's mad love for random one-hit kills coming out of nowhere. Things can be a little interesting at times when fighting against the Covenant where some actual tactics can sometimes be involved, but whenever the Flood appear Halo 2 becomes a chore to get through. The Flood is the great big bad enemy of the Halo series, purely because their emergence always heralds endless copy/paste corridors full of boringly mindless fights. I get the idea of them being an unstoppable force that keeps on coming even as you fire at them, but in execution they're just boring beige lumps running at you.

Halo 2's high-budget cinematic presentation is so at odds with its budget early-00s FPS level action that the overall experience is a mixed bag, with the occasional genuinely engaging moment serving as a reminder that there is some real potential here. It's a decent game in the same way that those old budget FPS games were enjoyable time-killers back in the day, but as I go through the Master Chief Collection game by game, time will tell if that potential hidden within is ever realised.

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.

Takes what Halo 1 did and brings it to a new level entirely. The story was interesting, combat a lot better, and cutscenes and graphics absolutely stunning.

Unfortunately still has that old halo feel for combat which isn’t really deep or interesting, making me opt to run past a lot of fights towards the end of the game. However the enemies are far more balanced and way less tedious.

The option to switch between the original graphics and new on the fly, even during cutscenes, is insanely cool and I found myself impressed every time I did it.

There were a lot of improvements made from the original, however the anniversary edition version seemed to detract from this as it was fairly buggy and made parts of the game feel 'off'. For example, epic cut scenes with a lot of sound design which then put you directly into gameplay with no correlating music/sound, sort of ruins the immersion.

The story of Halo 2 doesn't feel like it flows as well, which reflects in how clear it is with what you're meant to be doing. Where Halo: CE felt very clear and like you were always moving forward, Halo 2 sometimes has you confused about what the objective of the mission even is.

The main improvement on Halo: CE is the substance of the missions, especially the vehicle missions which are tons of fun, especially with co-op

This review is a rare instance of where I'd rate the game lower based on my experience, rather than how good I believe the game actually is.