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[geoff]

I dunno what happened, but everything's gone.

Thus I get to start up another Halo 2 thread.

Um Um Um Um Um... I dig it.
The ending sucks.
XBL is fun.
The sword is awesome.
Boarding vehicles is sweet.


Go from there.

[Simon]

In my opinion, it hugely overrated. The thing was hyped like the second coming of Christ. Xbox Live is brilliant, and I love playing it, but the storyline added little to what was in the books, neither did it solve anything in them; the campaign wasn't paticuarly imaginative and the ending was terrible.

[geoff]

Just because it's overhyped doesn't mean the game is bad.

[Wysiwyg]

I don´t like the level designs. It´s... boring. So boring that made me give up from playing it. Anyway, XBL must be cool but i haven´t tried it yet.

[3Z3VH]

The Battlefield series of games are far superior in every way.  Period.

[Wysiwyg]

The Battlefield series of games are far superior in every way.  Period.

Battlefield rules. Battlefield 2 will rock.

[3Z3VH]

The Battlefield series of games are far superior in every way.  Period.

Battlefield rules. Battlefield 2 will rock.

Judging by how long they have had that announced as "Coming Soon" I am not holding my breath.  I will enjoy it when it comes out, but I won't be chomping at the bit anticipating it's release.  Sometimes I wonder why game companies hype up their next releases so early... they did it with HalfLife2, Doom3, and so many others... problem is they announce it so early that the hype peaks, and even declines long before the game gets released, so they get lackluster opening sales.  The only recent game that did it right by announcing their new game not too far out was Blizzard with WoW... They announced it with enough lead time to get the people seriously hyped right as the game was released, instead of announcing it years ahead of time... and what did it get them ?  They broke all records for release day, and release week sales for any game, ever.  For how excited I was for Doom 3 you would have thought it would have had the same thing happen... unfortunately the hype had so much time to die down that most people lost interest in the idea and didn't buy it till weeks, or even months after it's release, or just didn't buy it at all and just played their friend's copy after their friend beat it.

[happybirthdaygelatin]

i like it.  my longest reply on the form ever was about halo 2 yesterday, on the other forum.

basicaly:

-vehicles could have better (not bad and certainly improved over the first) [and i can't exactly put my thoughts on how to improve them]
-levels too large and bad pacing on the action due to level size/design, lack of map (what with the fact that the whatever mark 123 armor supposdly being damn good armor with high tech goodies and recharging shields couldn't they have come up with a HUD map acessable somehow?  grr)
-i don't know about how bad the ending is yet but maybe they pull the shit they do in old school games where you get the best ending on the hardest difficulty.

and oh, i said yesterday i couldn't decide on my favorite fps yesterday because there is so many damn good ones.  well, partialy the fault of too many fun fps i forgot one that is now my favorite fps, the other part of the fault is the fact that it's a game that up till relatively recently was not a fps.

metroid prime.  not only does it not have the details or lack there of that make halo not live up to it's full potential but retro (responsible for making it) somehow still manage to make samus aran more human the master chief.  (the death screen in the first M prime still haunts me)

[Kuroumou]

I'm completely new to xbox, and it was my first time playing a Halo game when I picked up my cousins xbox live and tried it.

It was fun, but it was hard to get a hang of. I was always getting shot from behind and having no idea who was killing me, and that got a little annoying after a while.

Also, I'm only a thirteen year old girl so all the people I was playing with thuought I had voice masking on because my voice is so high. When I explained that I did not have voice masking and that I was a girl, I got invited to at least 5 party games. It was like getting hit on over the internet, and it was creepy.

[Mr Pink]

In my opinion, it hugely overrated. The thing was hyped like the second coming of Christ.

So says the man with the M.C. avatar.

The joy I recieve from locking on with a rocketlauncher is beyond words.

[geoff]

The joy I recieve from locking on with a rocketlauncher is beyond words.

Oh man yes!

Zanzibar CTF is always the best for that because people always come barrelin in with the Warthog or Ghost right away, and it's just so great blasting them as they come in.

[Simon]

In my opinion, it hugely overrated. The thing was hyped like the second coming of Christ.

So says the man with the M.C. avatar.

Heh, good point. The avatar was taken from a Halo cartoon which I liked. I wasn't saying I dislike the Halo games, I just thought Halo 2 was hyped up too much.

[Ozymandias]

When the Halo series does something well, it does it REALLY well. Vehicles, dual wielding, adapting an FPS to a controller, juicing every bit of graphical capability out of the XBox.

But, then, you sit back and realize that, overall, it's pretty damn mediocre. The levels designs are awful, the story is alright when it's actually there(the books, however, are good reads), the AI isn't so terribly impressive except in Legendary(which is a major pet peeve I have with all FPSes) and, all in all, it's not worth a tenth of the hype it gets.

It's biggest strength that made it so popular is the same reason the original Mario was so popular. No, Super Mario Bros. is not a very good game. It's the fact that it was the flagship title for a new wave of gaming that made it so popular and accepted. Of course, there are plenty of really good SMB games, but the original? Eh.

[Spike]

Ok, Halo 2 multiplayer is good, but that's just because dm in general is fun.  It's hard to screw it up.

This is what angered me: http://goty.gamespy.com/2004/overall/index10.html

Let me analyze this.

The first guy Will, well I don't agree with him on many points but he hasn't said anything that is too absurd.

Once again Bungie innovates in several ways -- new vehicles, dual-wielding, the deadly melee weapon -- that are sure to be poorly ripped off by lesser games for years to come.

No, dual wielding is not innovative, it has been around since Half life 1, a la Action Half Life.  The only improvement there is the fact that you can dual wield different kinds of weapons.  So I wouldn't say other games are going to be ripping off halo 2 specifically.

The actual combat is just awesome: unlike most developers, Bungie doesn't cheat with sneak attacks or enemies that appear out of nowhere; it's a fair fight from start to finish, and some of the smartest combat I've ever seen in an FPS.

The thing here is, I don't and I'm (safely) assuming that many gamers didn't consider things like that a cheat.  That's just been the way it is, you get ambushed, it gave that be prepared for anything feeling, so even if you were careful even if you moved slowly, you might just end up with a fight on your hands, an intense one at that.

Halo 2 is a good game, theres no denying that.   The problem with it is that people are sitting here hailing it as the king of games because it is "innovative"  crediting it with many things that well.. have been done before.  I am indeed a Half-Life 2 fanboy-ish person.

[Samari]

i guess when they say they're the first ones to do it, i guess they really mean the first ones to do it well and for a broad audience.  yeah dual weilding has been done before in mods to HL and Quake 3  but Halo 2 is the first game that makes it an integral part of the gameplay out of the box.  and when other companies add dual weilding to their games they will be ripping off Halo, because that's the hugely sucessful game that they'll be looking at for inspiration, not Action HalfLife.

As far as the AI goes, I've been pretty impressed with it for the most part even on normal.  I feel like they did a really good job balancing individual enemies.  the grunts (or whatever those little guys are) do dumb stuff a lot but it's like they're not supposed to be very bright in general.  Overall it feels like the smarter enemies know how to use cover and try to flush you into the open pretty well.

With the enemies coming out of nowhere thing that always kind of pisses me off when games do that, Halo does that a bit too but they make it seem at least plausible (ie flood coming out of grates from the ceiling) so that at least you might be able to see where they come from rather than have them spawn all around you.

I think that the game gets so much credit because they do a lot of things right.  yeah the level design is big and confusing at times but at least they're consistent with it.

[happybirthdaygelatin]

damn i was about to mention goldeneye on the 64.  

didn't the tribes game have vehicles, at least on the computer?  i've only played the playstation 2 version of tribes and at the time thought it was a lot fucking better then the first halo, and it had some vehicles plus all the different sized combat suits.

and the motherfucking jetpack.  oh man, nothing like flying through the air with just the jetpack and good ol' death from above.

also the next unreal tournement may make halo 2 look like spam.

[Simon]

also the next unreal tournement may make halo 2 look like spam.

Are you referring to this?

[happybirthdaygelatin]

nope, i actually was probably thinking of unreal championship 2. and that new engine at the same time.

[Ernest]

I was really disappointed with Halo 2.  It's just like the first one, which wasn't all that great.  And the multiplayer isn't even that great.  I'll just stick to Rome: Total War and Half-Life 2 right now (the two best games of the year, wait, and World of Warcraft).

[geoff]

I think Halo 2 and Half-Life 2 shouldn't be allowed to be compared to each other anymore. Half-Life 2 is for PC and I lack the necessary resources to play it thus fuck you guys. :p

[happybirthdaygelatin]

likewise.

[Jiperly]

Well, i finally finished the game.

Before you read the below, i'm gunnabe perfectly honest- I was not a fan of the oringial Halo. When i first got my Xbox, i could only afford one game. There are dozens of games i could have gotten, but i was told Halo was the best. It failed that. I have played many MANY games better than the oringial Halo. As my friend said when we beat the game in Co-op mode in one sitting, "Thats it?"

But I decided to buy Halo 2 anyways, hoping that they would improve the game. And as i went through, I found pitfalls and improvements. There were times when i didn't want to put down the controller. There are other times i wanted to watch Futurama, even though i have the entire DVD set and can watch them anytime. But near the end, it really caught me. Esspecially after Master Chief got aboard the Covenet Ship headed for Earth, i was thinking "sweet- get to fight on Earth again...."

But then i switched sides on the story, and was back on Halo. So i thought- eh- whatever- play this for a bit, then go to earth.

When i finally got past the (lame) boss, i found out that he was the END Boss. The level that took me twenty minutes to get through- the level that i spent more time in vehicles than on foot- was the last level?

And more importantly, It ends with MC(Master Chief) just about to kick some ass, but doesn't?

WHAT THE FUCK??

I mean, did Jarassic Park end with the survivors staring down the Trex?? So why the Hell did Bungie end the game with MC just about to kick some ass??!!

I mean, is it too much to ask that a game have an ENDING??


FUCK YOU MICROSOFT, YOU FAT UGLY WHORE, AND FUCK YOU BUNGIE, THAT WHORES BITCH- YOU'RE MAKING ME WAIT FUCKING 2-3 MORE YEARS TO GET THAT EXTRA 2-3 HOURS OF GAMEPLAY!

/rant

[c1utch]

Yeaq the ending sucked but what can you do.

XBL is awesome, but I must say (same goes for halo) that the campaign conversion maps you can get (mod chip needed) are some of the most fun to play.  (have to play on xbconnect though, no xbl)

Best part is there is stuff like people have made different swords (weaker ones, ones that will lock on from 3x the distance etc) which are pretty fun.

In normal halo2 campaign, has anyone gotten the scarab plasma rifle?  Its hard, but its pretty fun to do, especially with a friend.
(plasma rifle shoots the ammo from the scarab, the big spider machine thing, never runs out, never over heats, no clip)

Best part is, its a dev tool, so its just sitting on one of the campaign levels (i'll tell you how to do it if anyone cares) and it can be gotten without the use of modification or anything

Oh, finding the skulls is quite fun and adventerous too.


edit:

-i don't know about how bad the ending is yet but maybe they pull the shit they do in old school games where you get the best ending on the hardest difficulty.

no the ending is the same on legendary.

[QHD]

You! C1utch! SPILL THE BEANS!

SPILL THEM!

Also, I like it and when I've done my exams I'll get XBL and like it even more. Campaign could've been better but to hell with it, I had fun. Some bits, like the warthog on the city level or killing the prophet or the banshee dog-fights, were awesome.

Brutes sucked. There didn't seem to be any "strategic" way to kill them, which made Hunters way cooler.

Best thing ever is having a sniper rifle with 2 shots VS 2 Hunters running around. That was a nifty little Halo-induced adrenaline rush. It's not the best thing ever though. I totally lied.

[happybirthdaygelatin]

just traded it in to get mech assult 2...

[Maverick]

Ok, yes, Half-life 2 and indeed the entire half-life series (perhaps excluding Blue Shift) is amazing...but i agree that it cannot be compared to halo 2 (apples and oranges?).  The AI and indeed the entired design of each game has advantages and pitfalls as compared to the other and the fact that they are two different types of FPS's makes them a bit too different for me to warrant a comparison.  The AI on the legendary difficulty of Halo2 continues to impress me, untill you reach a courtyard/valley full of jackles who auto head shot with sniper rifles --that really sucks the big one.  Everyone seems to be complaining about level design, is this the multiplayer maps or the single player campaign?  Xbox live is an awesome experience and has been known to sway even the most adamant halo2 hater.  However, if you live in australia like myself and are unlucky enough to have an American host, the lag is terrible.  That is my only complaint.  The variety of duals that can arise in Multiplayer is not only extensive, but intense and highly satisfying if you find some equally skilled gamers or even better players to play against.  Granted though, the hype surrounding teh halo series is a little too much, and to think that other awesome games are left unnoticed is a travesty.

[c1utch]

Alright: to get  the Scarab Gun

This is easiest done with two players in co-op, but can be done alone.

Start on the level Metropolis, When you start out, cross the bridge. Take out every enemy and even your marines. When you're near the end, Cortana will say something about a "Welcome Party". Three Banshees and a few ghosts will appear. Take them all out. Then 2 Wraiths and 2 Banshees will appear. Take out both Wraiths, and only one Banshee. Have Player 1 continue through the tunnel, but have Player 2 stay outside and distract the Banshee. Once Player 1 reaches the area with the circular opening (a Jackal with a Beam rifle is present), take out the Jackal and head back to where Player 2 is.

Here is the hard part. Get the Banshee to follow both players into the tunnel. Do not board it yet! The first few times it will come at you and fly back out, but stay where you are. It should come back after you. (If it doesn't, go back outside and try again). Eventually, you'll have to get it over two road blocks. Once it is past the second one, have both players stand near the entrance of the room where Player 1 took out the Jackal. It should fly at you and get stuck. Shoot off both of its wings so it can fit thru. Have Player 1 walk slowly in front of the Banshee, making it follow him. Player 2 should be behind it, gently pushing it. Take it to the left and get ready to board it. As soon as you hit the checkpoint, the Elite in the Banshee will disappear. You only have about a second to get in before the Banshee also disappears. Both players should press X quickly. If done right, one of the players will be driving the Banshee!

Take it outside and directly up. Very high in the sky are two skyscrapers with two bridges connecting them. In the middle of the bridge closest to you, there is something that looks like a plasma rifle. It's actually a Scarab gun! It has infinite ammo, so have fun. Just don't aim too close to yourself, and it will dissapear upon save & exit.  

Have Fun!

[Jiperly]

Oh Yea- have you people heard of I Love Bees?

[c1utch]

yup, but never really got anything out of it at all.

[needs_help]

I beat halo2 a week ago and it was by far the most disapointing thing to happen to me in a video game this year. The first halo had a great ending, what with the driving and the shooting and time limit to end it . But this one finished off with a mediocre battle and too much confusion over what the efff just happend. Leave it to me to find he bright side though- multi-player will beat that of any game on the market. i'd buy #3 just for that.