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.
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.