Print

[Sentient]

 like Armored Core style
BUT i'm sure someone will figure out how to hack that... or bungie might release some more emblems or an emblem editor.  BC there is supposed to be quite a bit of downloadable content for this game... cant wait to play on live, getting it friday

and hey, dont talk shit about the fanboy(s). Are people not allowed to get excited about anything anymore... or is that a "lame noob" thing too.

I waited in line to get halo at midnight and was on my way home to play a little 3vs3 by 12:06.  Yes it was worth the wait, and yes it fucking rocks.


and eric, just bc you cant make the easter egg work doesnt mean no one can

Edit: 4 player Co-Op woulda been the shit too

[darkslider802]

QUOTE

my only complaint is: WHERES MY BLOWJOB!!!! I thaught HALO 2 WAS SUPPOSED TO COME WITH A BLOWJOB FROM A SUPERMODEL!!! Damnit, Fuck Bungie.

hahhaahhahhah me to

[Crypty]

Let people have their opinions. I think it blows hard compared to halo 1, and I'll be damned if some internet kid is gonna change my mind for me.If you dont like complaints, what makes you think I do? You realize that's what you're doing right?

[Crypty]

Read>>>>Comprehend>>>>Post

You are not funny. Next time make your post useful.

[RustAngel]

)
So:

1) No NAV points mean you never know where you're supposed to be going. Cortana usually tells you your goal in general terms, but she usually chooses to do this in the middle of a pitched battle when you're too busy fighting to listen. This means that usually you don't know what you're doing, or how to do it, and you just spend ages wandering around until you stumble onto a path or a door - this is just bad design - the NAV points worked so well in Halo 1, why remove them in Halo 2 (apart from as a cheap way to make the game last longer)?

2) Why repeat so much content from the first game? I understand if you're going to save the big battle for Halo 3 (although it might have been nice not to imply otherwise beforehand), but why not take us somewhere new instead of back to another halo, another library...just doing these missions over again as an elite is not originality, it's a cheap way out.

3) Three years of development time is not enough to justify a couple of new enemies, one new vehicle, dual wielding and a 10-hour SP mode. There is a new physics engine, but its just the Havoc engine from Max Payne 2, it's not like Bungie wrote a whole new engine for this. Granted there are a lot of new MP maps, but I still don't really feel that such a long lead up is justified for what we got in the end.

4) There is no "smart" way to kill the brutes, you just have to wait until they finish smashing you, then empty clips until they die...they are not a well-designed enemy like the Elites, just frustrating...again, with this amount of dev time, I think they really could have been given more polished AI.

5) The repetitive level design thing again, Bungie specifically stated that they were going to take care of this in Halo 2 - I didn't really have a problem with it the first time around because after all, Halo was a machine...using the same excuse again in Halo 2, however, is just lazy - it just feels like they are doing the same thing over again because they couldn't be bothered putting real effort into the level design. The first level of H2 on Earth was awesome, why couldn't they put a similar amount of care into the rest of it?

6) The plot is really badly explained - granted I should maybe have read the books, but building that much assumed knowledge into a game is bad design - if you're going to do that, is it too much to ask to have a quick prologue to explain facts so everyone has an equal chance of enjoying the game? Both myself and my flatmate were left completely confused at the end of this game, it's badly written, pure and simple - I still don't quite know why the Redeemer needed to team up with the humans, which covenant leader betrayed which other one and why, and what relevance that big flood hivemind thing has to anything.

7) If the Halos were activated to wipe out the flood, supposedly extinguishing all life within several galaxies in the process, then why are the halos infested with them? Pretty crappy weapons of last resort...it's kinda like building an anti-termite gun out of wood

Overall there's a lot of cool things in H2 - enemies sniping, no more pistol whores (although I think they should have kept the pistol scope but just reduced its power - the game without it now is a bit less based on aiming and a bit more about autofire), beautiful graphics and music...but the lacking elements make it fatally flawed to me. You could tell a lot of time and effort went into the first Halo...I just don't feel this the second time around.

Thoughts anyone?

[chefelf]

[IheartHuckabees]

QUOTE (Thraxen @ Nov 12 2004, 02:15 AM)

Why have them in the first place?  Halo 1 had them but they were only truly helpful on Two Betrayals (that's the level where you disrupt the beams, right?  I forget).   Other than that the levels are fairly linear.   Do you complain about lack of nav points in games like Mario 64 too?   The game is called "Halo" and the first game revealed that there were many such installations.  It makes sense that you would wind up at another one.  The Library?  This one was like the first one in name only.  The level design was totally different.  They have about as much in common with one another as they do with the "Library" in Goldeneye (N64).  The Library is also key to the functioning of the Halo installations so, again, it made sense in the story to wind up there again.  That complain makes no sense. This complaint may be more justified.  But you are still asking quite a bit in terms of the story to ask for a whole bunch of new enemies.  How would they explain it in terms of the story if a dozen new enemies popped up?  I suppose the could have added more, but with as much whining about what I think is a good story you guys have been doing already I would imagine you would just be b!tching about the lack of explanation for all the new foes.... kind of like the way some of you have been whining about the lack of explanation for the big venus fly-trap looking creature.  But I do agree that more vehicles would have been nice.  As for the 10 hour game time... not many FPS games last any longer than that and, really, not many games in general do.  Seems people have forgotten days past (or are gaming n00bs) when you had games like Mario that could be beaten in mere minutes.   Huh?  The smart way is to whack them with a sword.   I agree here.  Though I did find this game to be less repetitive than Halo 1. I totally disagree here.  I found the story very coherent and interesting.  When you say "Redemeer" do you mean the "Arbiter" (Covenant Elite you play as)?  Arbiter joined up with the humans because the prophet ordered the Brutes to kill him after he completed his mission and he had come to realize that the Heretic was telling the truth about Halo's function which meant that he and humans had the same goal in stopping the activation of the Halo (the Great Journey as the Prophets called it).  Plus he was in need of some revenge against his former allies.  This all made perfect sense to me and I really found it easy to follow.  Play again and pay attention to everything that is said. This was explained in the first game.  The rings had research facilites on them where the Flood were studied so many were kept there.   Guilty Spark mentioned that the Convenant accidently released them on the first Halo.  I don't think it was explained why they were out on the second ring.  Someone must have released them or they had escaped.  Afterall, these rings have apparently been abandoned for a while.

everything you said is true

and halo is the weapon to wipe out the flood, yes, but as stated above, they were kept to be researched (the only flood ones that are kept for research are the big ones with the little ones inside them, the ones that go POP, as the rest of the flood are mutated humans or covenant)
as the only way the flood would be a risk is if humans or other life forms got to them, having them kept on the halos wasnt a big risk, because during the forerunners time, no other lifeforms exsisted (if youve read the books, and followed alot of theories and other "fanboy" stuff, youd know that)

[JordanK]

I'd just like to back up the people that say Halo 2 IS NOT halo 1. It shouldn't have all the MP levels halo 1 have. Halo 2 shouldn't perform X like Halo 1 did.

ANYWAYS

The game is a great game, it's just that some people are to blind to see it. You are all caught up in the hype that was around before the game was released. Don't count your chickens before they hatch. People can't say "HALO 2 WILL BE THE BEST GAME OF ALL TIME" 1 year or even 5 months before its released. MOST of the problems people have been stating are personal preferences. IE sniping with pistol. Changed vehicle physics and speed, etc. Some people like the new vehicle changes and the pistol. Bungie or any game company in fact cannot please everyone. So they go with what THEY think is fair and will overall level out the game to be as releastic and balanced as possible.

The only thing that disapointed me was the ending and the graphic detail things in cutscenes and sometimes during play. I have accepted the fact that the ending is a cliffhanger and a bridge to the next Halo 3. (I hope) So i'm not disapointed anymore. And the graphic thing I can live with, itks not that bad.

Hype is not always a good thing for a video game. At first its good because of advertising, free! But once the game is in devolpment people spread rumors. Saying X will be in the game. The game company is pressured into adding X but may not have enough time, space, or it wont fit.
No matter what not everyone can be please.

LOL yeah I jumped around...a lot, which explains why i'm getting D's in English class. Well those are my opinions so have fun!

[RoninX7]

Am I the only one who got down on his knees and praised Allah that the pistol was nerfed? I'm sorry, but it's just not right for one weapon to be as good as the pistol was in HALO 1. I'll suspend disbelief pretty damn far for a good game, but I'll never buy that a handgun is a more effective weapon than an assault rifle, and in the first HALO that's exactly what we had. I think the more balanced weapons in HALO 2 make for much more variety and ingenuity in the game.

I honestly have my complaints about HALO 2, but they seem very different from the ones everyone else is chiming in with (except for the ending, that one came WAY out of left-field. It was like Soul Reaver all over agian. Or Matrix Reloaded).

[powercntrl]

QUOTE (RoninX7 @ Nov 12 2004, 02:49 AM)

I honestly have my complaints about HALO 2, but they seem very different from the ones everyone else is chiming in with (except for the ending, that one came WAY out of left-field. It was like Soul Reaver all over agian. Or Matrix Reloaded).

Yeah, I liked Halo 2.  The gameplay was a hell of a lot of fun and I felt it was a significant improvement over Halo 1.  My biggest complaint is just that it was too short and didn't really come to a conclusion at the end.  It was like playing 2/3s of a game.

The comparison to The Matrix is very accurate.  Halo 1 ended just like the original Matrix.  While the endings of both were still "open", the hero did everying he set out to do and you really didn't know exactly where things were going to go next.  Both heros "rode off into the sunset" (sci-fi style), as well.  Halo 2 AND Reloaded ended exactly the same way, right in the middle of a battle.  I wasn't disappointed with Reloaded though because I knew Revolutions was going to be released shortly.  Halo 3 could be years away.  Leaving the audience wanting more is a good thing, but what Bungie did was yank the plate away while I was still eating.

I still haven't gotten a chance to play some multi-player yet, so perhaps that will be one of the redeeming characteristics of the game.  I hated the damn pistol in Halo 1.  

[gcskate27]

[trentdadi]

Yeah, MP does kick ass and eliminates the need for bots.  Basically all them whines are bullshit coming from a bunch of bitching people who are slamming Halo 2 because its "not as good as the game they made up in their head."  I used to be one but the more I play it, the more I like it.  It's almost always the other way around for every other game I play especially if its on PS2.  Leave it alone and go have fun playing the game.  If it was more like the original like you whiners say it should be, than you would be bashing it because its not "unique."