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.