This review originally appeared in E144, Christmas 2004.
Speaking of Halo 2, Bungie’s Jason Jones said this: “It’s is a lot like Halo 1, only it’s Halo 1 on fire, going 130 miles per hour through a hospital zone, being chased by helicopters and ninjas… and the ninjas are all on fire, too.” It is a great quote, and it’s true, up to a point. That point is the first comma. Halo 2 is a lot like Halo 1. Anyone expecting more – expecting the hyperbole, expecting the spoilers – will be disappointed.
Tangible changes are few. There are no longer health points visible below your rechargeable shield; the player can take a few hits after the shield’s gone, but it’s wiser to seek cover. Until you realise that’s what’s going on, death can seem arbitrary. Afterwards, you can view the design change as a clever way of removing awkward health-packs from the game, albeit one that might benefit from clearer visual feedback. There are new enemies, new weapons and new vehicles. Treats you saw but couldn’t touch in the first game are no longer off-limits. There is the dual-wielding system, perhaps more eagerly anticipated than anything else. It works well, not least because the potential damage gain in training two streams of fire on an opponent comes at the price of hampering your access to grenades, melee attacks and gun emplacements. If you want the latter, you’ll have to abandon your double firepower.
Less tangible are the changes that have been brought to the familiar. Weapons you thought you knew reload slower and fire faster. Ghosts fly more deftly and fire more furiously. These are not changes that throw your rhythm off: it’s hard to point to a single one which isn’t a fundamental improvement on the first game. Players who mourn the evolution of old favourites will miss out on exploiting to the full a weapon set which has expanded without making any of its components redundant.
There is also the much-touted visual upgrade: the graphical tricks, improved lighting, realistic physics. Much of that will pass players by, because the combat itself is so involving; except for when there are cracks in the world that snap you back to reality. Halo was impeccably solid, perhaps because it actually attempted to do so little, and ended up doing it all so perfectly, absorbing you completely. Here, those richer environments, those more elaborate characters, that playful physics all add to the experience – it’s hard not to coo with delight when a hunter swipes a crate away with a furious sweep of his armour-plated forearm. But they also stress the game engine to the point where sometimes, just sometimes, it can’t quite cope. Models pop in and out of detail levels. Level scripting fails to kick in, or starts too early.
The combat continues to amaze.
Really. Two years after its release, Halo has yet to be surpassed as a standard for firstperson shooter combat. Halo 2, at the very least, builds on that fighting spirit and provides more of it for people who are finally tiring of The Silent Cartographer. It’s too early to assess whether this game has as many locations that will tirelessly generate stand-out battle moments as Halo; instinct says ‘no’, but time will often prove instinct wrong, and hopefully that will happen here. Regardless, all the compelling duck-and-dive strategy filters through to the multiplayer, which is as tremendous as expected.
That this game builds so squarely on the combat tactics of the first not only strengthens it, but changes how it should be played. If you have mastered Halo, then bypass Halo 2’s Normal skill setting. Again, instinct might incline you the other way, as Halo 2’s battles are so much more vast, so much more densely populated, the air so much thicker with lead and laser that your first reaction is that they must be harder. However, this isn’t the case: pitch your battles at the Heroic level instead, and you will enjoy them all the more. The gap from there to Legendary is a chasm to the original Halo’s fissure. Meeting the severity of that setting’s demands will take you some time, and not all of that time will be enjoyable. Heroic, though, is a joy until the finish.
Until the finish. Halo 2 finishes very abruptly. It finishes like a soap opera, like a movie brutally cleaved in two. The plot is structured in such a way as to make the game build towards a single point, but the game never actually gets there; it is likely that the one overriding emotion you’ll feel on completion is that of having been cheated. It doesn’t help that the plot itself is a confusing mess of fan-fiction sci-fi and bemusing Episode-II-style politics. Threads are begun, and left utterly unfinished. Presumably they will be tied up in Halo 3 – even if Bungie sticks to its guns and moves on to other projects before returning to the series for the inevitable sequel.
But if the plot is Halo 2’s worst aspect, then, perversely, the dialogue is the best. There are funny lines here, things that will make you laugh out loud, not just during the cut-scenes but during the game. Your fighting colleagues – who, incidentally, are far stronger than in the first game, but not to the point of doing everything for you – chat amongst themselves with wit and candour. Quips always hit their mark and rarely repeat. No game does that better.
For all the criticisms above, few games do much better than Halo 2. And it’s fitting that we’re able to steal a line from the script to sum everything up. No spoilers here, just an epitaph, from the moment when Cortana turns to Master Chief and says this: “It’s not a new plan. But we know it’ll work.” [9]