So, you've heard about Halo 2? Really? That's hard to believe, I mean it's only been on the news section of every gaming site for the last few years. This, by far, is the most hyped game I have seen before. Although this game didn't live up to 100% of the hype, it sure came pretty dang close.
Now, what do you think of when you say "first person shooter"? Yes, you think, "quake", "unreal", or even "doom". But, console shooters were so far out of the spectrum until bungie found something that worked on an xbox controller. That game was Halo: Combat Evolved. From Halo to Halo 2, the controls were basically unchanged, except for a ome important thing: Dual-Weilding. Which, in short, is when you hold two weapons at once. Yeah, two. TWO! Holy crap! What the!? Uh, huh, two. It's very well done, every weapon works well together, but my personal favorite is the sub-machine gun and the pistol. If you get headshots with the pistol and lay waste to them with rapid bullets with the machine gun, they'll be gone within seconds.
Enough about the controls, this is where the real meat and potatoes is. The campaign. While it doesn't offer "everything" "anyone", could "ever" want. It sure is enough fun and complexity to last you quite some time. And by all means, it lives up to the last halo tri-fold. I couldn't, personally, have wanted more. Even the super-secret cliffhanger ending was more satisfying than the "this is the end, OR IS IT!?!?!" ending from the first halo, I mean, it may have not solved any parts of the storyline, but really, it's too enticing during the game to even care at all about the menial complaints with the ending.
From the transition in graphics in halo to halo 2, many noticeable improvements have taken place. Such as....wait...I don't know any of the names for the mumbo jumbo. All I do know, is that Halo 2 looks absolutely spectacular. By no means does it ever have any occasional slowdown, even if there's 50 enemies throwing 50 plasma grenades at the same precise time....yes, it's that well tuned. The only minor, tiny, insignificant complaint is that in certain cutscenes, the game forgets to load all the textures for what it's showing. For example: in a scene you are looking at a human fighting some covenant or something, and from that angle everything looks absolutely peachy, but you're being deceived. From every other angle, the textures are blurry and very ugly, so when the scene switches to another angle, sometimes the ugly unseen textures take about a second to realize that they're being shown at that point in time. So, you might be like "ahhh, my xbox is dying, halo 2 is ugly", but no, it's just bungie's fault. ALL THEIR FAULT! But once again, this campaign's cutscene are so engaging that most of the time you won't even be paying attention to what the people in them look like, rather than what they are saying and what it overall means compared to the rest of the game.
Well, in most first person shooters, it's most generally a given to have some sort of multiplayer to hook up with your friends a play a deathmatch or capture the flag, and Halo 2's no exception. The multiplayer now is so incredibly fun, that it in itself should get a perfect score, but hey, you would want some sort of story/background behind those characters that you're inflicting hatred upon, wouldn't you? Yeah, thought so. Well, where to begin, where to begin, ah, ONLINE. Yes, online. Xbox Live. with up to 16 players pitted against each other in a match. There's CTF(capture the flag), where you capture the flag of the opponent(wow, I bet you never guessed). But, I don't really care for the steal flag, kill flag stealer concept. Never have. Never will. Luckily there's so much more, that you'll never even need to touch this mode of gameplay. My personal favorite game mode is "slayer", which is deathmath, plain and simple. You run, shoot, and kill, at will. No catches whatsoever. There's juggernaut, which is the converse of your favorite playground kiddie game: "tag". In this game, you are actually "trying" to get "it". Why? Because it makes you all 'roided up and ready to kill. You become super strong, and it takes basically the rest of the players to take you down at some points. FUN, FUN, FUN, at least for the person that gets to kill, kill, kill *cough*.
So, yeah, Halo 2 has everything could ever want, a perfect killing simulator....wait, no...
Scratch that, it's the perfect game to either play alone, or play with friends, on or offline
Game Score: 9.9/10
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