ust in time for Christmas, the Xbox's most iconic character, the Master Chief, returns with the release of Halo 2. The game begins with the MC just back on Earth following his saving of the galaxy in the first Halo. He barely has time to collect his medal before the forces of the Covenant, the union of alien races that believed the Halo to be a sacred construct, attack
Earth itself. The MC, guided by the player, leaps right into battle, and the new game is on. For Halo 2, however, the MC is not the only death commando players will control. They also guide a Covenant hero, called the Arbiter, whose creation (shown in a series of cutscenes) introduces players to the Covenant politics that drive the story of the game.
Players fight human, Covenant and Brood enemies with a variety of human and alien weapons, including some new ones, and with several different human and alien vehicles, including the Covenant Banshee, a single-person fighter that brings dogfighting into the game. The new human weapon is the submachine gun, which gives players their first chance to double-wield, John Woo style. Each gun is fired by its own trigger on the Xbox controller. Most of the game's single-handed weapons can be double-wielded, although the character has to drop one to throw grenades or fight hand to hand.
Besides the introduction of the Arbiter, the biggest change in Halo 2 is the introduction of online multiplayer combat. The cooperative play mode, which allows two players to work through the campaign together, is still present, as is multiplayer death-matching, with up to eight players if they link two Xboxes, but now players can go onto Xbox Live and play with up to 15 other players. In fact, up to four players can use the same Xbox to log in to the Live network, allowing friends to gather in one place to then play online against others.
Two-gun first-person shooting
Without doubt, the weirdest part of the campaign mode in Halo 2 are the Arbiter sequences. Players learn a lot about the divisions and dissensions within the Covenant during the Arbiter parts, and this is a very mixed blessing. On the plus side, it definitely deepens the game world. On the downside, first-person shooters are all about who the player is shooting.
It takes some of the joy out of killing Covenant elites when the player spends half the game with them as allies. It also makes for confusion when Covenant battle Covenant; the player loses track of which troops are helping him and which aren't. Both of these facts make the inclusion of the Flood, who were (after their frightening initial introduction sequence) mostly an annoyance in Halo, a welcome addition here. At least there is one enemy players can blast, laze and slice without regret.
The new dual-wield, two-gun action is a kick. Having two triggers gives it a real verisimilitude, and it gives some real punch to the softer-hitting weapons in the game, like the submachine guns and the needlers. Several of the new weapons have their charms, but the best is the energy sword, which is devastating if the player can get the character close enough to use it. Cutting down a Flood zombie with a single blow is even more fun than sniping Covenant Brutes. There is still a lot of repetition in the scenery and layouts, but Halo 2 is much, much better about this than Halo. If only Bungie had added a compass to the motion radar and allowed the characters to actual ask the AI the MC is carrying around some questions (like: "Where is the bleeping door out of this bleeping room?"), then the game would be pretty perfect.
Video games have a good record of producing sequels that are better than the originals. Sometimes it is the better technology that allows the improvement, sometimes it is simply cleaning up glitches in the first game. In the case of Halo 2, it is both. The launch and establishment of the Xbox Live Network allows for gameplay that wasn't available for the first Halo, and Bungie eliminated the most annoying warts that marred the first game. The story that drives Halo 2 is less satisfying than the story of the first game, and one or two warts remain, but overall Halo 2 is all a player could ask of a console first-person shooter, and more.
By and large, the AI that controls both the enemies and the allies in Halo 2 is very good, and it was very handy to be able to hand allies the guns I wanted them to use. Still, there were times when I longed for a way to issue even some simple commands to my allies, if only to save them from their all-too-frequent deaths.
— Eric
Back to the top.
