I beat halo 2 and have one complaint (no spoilers)

Other Games
1

my complaint is about this new and disappointing trend in trilogies.

it seems too often that the 1st part of a trilogy could be a stand alone story, but then they create a 2nd with a 3rd in mind and in the end it stops seeming like 1 has anything to do with 2 or 3.

what’s the deal?

other than that halo 2 is a very pretty game with much more variety than the first. i’m leaving now because i have been cordially invited to attend a LAN soiree…

it seems you can’t make a bunch of guys getting together to virtually run around and shoot eachother sound classy :anjou_disappointment:

2

What’s the deal?The deal is different in each case but as far as Halo is concerned I know it was pretty profitable :stuck_out_tongue:

Anyways, with most blockbusters developers only realize the potential of a game when they make the second episod and having realized that potential they make themselves further explore it with a third game.

Since the 2nd and 3rd games were made after that realization they tend to connect with each other much more than the 1st one with any of them.

That’s my idea anyways…

3

My only complaint is that I haven’t been able to beat it yet due to a pesky thing called school. Bah.

4

right, and i don’t think that is a very good way to do it.

it’s like making 1 story, then making a second story and just splitting it into 2 sections. if halo 1 were to lead into halo 2 directly, then i would be ok with halo 2 leading in halo 3 directly, but halo 1 felt very self-contained and therefore halo 2 should have been it’s own story and halo 3 should have been separate as well.

halo 1 was centered around a mysterious ring world, finding marines, killing covenant, and killing the flood. halo 2 is very much centered around covenant politics and religion and i expect halo 3 to be as well. though i think halo 2 should have completed that idea and halo 3 should have been something entirely new.

the matrix is another trilogy with these ailments… truly, it is uncanny. :anjou_sad:

5

[quote=“Megatherium”]
it seems you can’t make a bunch of guys getting together to virtually run around and shoot eachother sound classy :anjou_disappointment:[/quote]

Yes, you can. You can call it a LAN Tournament of Extreme Honour. Or something.

6

The main reason the story differed so much from H1 and H2 was that in between, THREE novels were released. The first dealt with the war between the Covenant and Humans. The second was like a slightly extended version of the game, a Halo 1.5 so to speak. The third I haven’t read but I’ve heard it’s got very much to do with setting up Halo 2.

In other words, it’s not a really big surprise that a lot of elements not present in H1 showed up in H2 very suddenly for those who haven’t read the books.

7

The only dissapointments I had with the game were. . .

The style of the campaign, the game was supposed to be legendary on its own, it was supposed to be a fresh experience mixed with Halo 1’s style, and you know what? It wasn’t; it was more of the same. Of course, that isn’t to say that the campaign is bad; because it isn’t, it was more cinematic, it was bigger, more dramatic and had a heavier atmosphere in comparison to Halo 1, but it had the same crap that plagued Halo 1, it just had bigger levels, and less repitition in the environments, but at the same time, had alot of it.

The level design is pretty much the same as Halo 1’s, what happened to varied environments? I thought the repetition in narrow corridors would be taken out.

The LOD issue, I know this eliminates load times in-between levels, but it’s no excuse for the immediate pop-in of the textures, of course, you get used to this, so it isn’t THAT bad.

The textures have taken a MAJOR downgrade from Halo 1, there’s no more of that microscopic detail in Halo, instead of seeing the pores in a rock and the grainy texture on worn metal, you get bland textures, but on some levels, the game does look better than Halo 1’s graphics, but not fully.

Remember the X02 announcement trailer? Yeah, the true vision that Bungie had in mind for Halo 2? It actually looks better than the game it self, but in the documentary it’s explained as to why that happened; Bungie had a very unorganized plan for Halo 2, they didn’t even fathom at the time how much the Xbox hardware could take altogether, and as they progressed, they downgraded ALOT because they ran into so many problems. In the documentary, you can clearly see and hear that they released the game on November 9th BECAUSE the fans were raging like stupid monkeys, why the hell did they do that? Do you see Valve doing that with Half Life 2? HELL NO! Valve is simply releasing the game when THEY FEEL the game is done, not because the fans want it. I’m sure if Bungie was allowed a bit more time, the game could have been ALOT better, but like I said, the game is fine as it is.

One of the major issues with people seems to be the ending, I didn’t take it as hard as some people, perhaps it’s because I’m used to that, hell, I was screwed over numerous times by the Legacy of Kain series, considering EVERY game ended with a cliffhanger. . . Though, I can’t say much about Defiance, considering I haven’t even played it yet.

I hope Halo 3 fixes all of my complaints, what I want most of all is to be grabbed by the story, I hope Bungie takes a good look at Half-Life 2, because that game does just about EVERYTHING right in a first-person-shooter, I don’t want Halo 3 to be a direct copy of HL2, I just want to be grabbed, I want the game to be a full and fulfilling experience.

And instead of using the Havok physics engine, they should use the Meqon engine that’s being used for Duke Nukem Forever, because, believe it or not, it beats the crap out of Half-Life 2’s usage of the Havok engine.

Just see for yourself. . . http://www.meqon.com/downloadarea/meqon-demos-1.3.1.zip

8

[quote=“TheSharpEdge”]The main reason the story differed so much from H1 and H2 was that in between, THREE novels were released. The first dealt with the war between the Covenant and Humans. The second was like a slightly extended version of the game, a Halo 1.5 so to speak. The third I haven’t read but I’ve heard it’s got very much to do with setting up Halo 2.

In other words, it’s not a really big surprise that a lot of elements not present in H1 showed up in H2 very suddenly for those who haven’t read the books.[/quote]

Okay but here’s the thing, the timeline that takes place in between Halo 1, the books, and Halo 2, is NOT very far apart. The amount of time between First Strike and Halo 2, is a month, but who knows what happened during that time? I mean, the books (aside from history backstories) pretty much took place in a matter of days, and I’m sure an entire month would have alot of events in it.

At the end of First Strike, the date is September, where the Chief and the remaining Spartans are en route to Earth after the events that transpired on Reach, and after destroying the Unyielding Hierophant.

But here’s the thing. . . When you listen to I Love Bees it says that John-117 is congratulated for discovering Halo, almost as if the events in First Strike never even took place. At the intro of Halo 2, you can clearly see that it begins in October.

It’s almost as if Halo 2 completely disregards the books.

9

that’s not the problem. i LIKE the fact that halo 1 is a self-contained story, adding new things is expected and welcomed.

the problem is that halo 2 is not a self-contained story, nothing was resolved, and it leads so directly into halo 3 that i can with substantial suredness tell you what the first level is going to be.

the other part of this problem is that since no time elapses between halo 2 and 3, there is no window for brand new additions- sure there will be new events, but it is merely the continuation of the covenant religion/politics story arch that halo 2 started.

halo 1 story: mysterious ring world, rallying troops to fight covies, destroy flood.

halo 2 story: covenant politics and religion

halo 3 story (with substantial suredness): conclusion of halo 2 story

halo 3 story (what it SHOULD be IMO): whole new story

10

Yeah, the "ending’ is pretty…disapointing, to say the least. But the wierd thing is that Bungie has said that they wanted their next game to NOT be Halo 3, so it would seem odd that they made Halo 2’s ending just so they could make a Halo 3 when they weren’t even planning on doing it yet anyway. But there are rumors that something will happen that wraps up Halo 2’s singleplayer, although what it could be is a mystery (extra levels as downloadable content? Guess we’ll have to wait and see…).

I thought Breakdown had a great ending. It brought closure to the story and made you feel like you accomplished something, but left it wide open for a sequel, but not in the way that makes you roll your eyes and say “that’s it?”.

11

Halo 3 has the possibility of being AFTER the events developed from the cliffhanger.

Bungie could just have another book written covering that whole aspect, and Halo 3 could end up being after it. . . That’s how I’d like it anyway.

12

I finished Halo 2 earlier on today - it took about 12 hours to complete. I’m not sure if this is the same for most people or not.

Actually I lied… I didn’t finish the game. How could I when the game had no resolution? :anjou_sigh:

I’m not anti Halo 2 or anything, in fact, I greatly enjoyed the game. Although it did suffer from some of the problems of the original game (repetitive level design, being the main flaw), the game was spaced out in a way so that just when I was starting to get sick of a level, something new would happen. Most of the other problems were fixed, such as the floaty warthog controls, so it looks like Bungie listened to fan feedback there. Halo 2 is definitely one of the better FPSs out there. Although it ultimately added nothing overly new to the genre, it is without a doubt one of the best story based FPSs available. Hopefully Half-Life 2 will add more innovative elements to the genre, although I’m skeptical after reading Gamespot’s review.

If only Halo 2 had a proper conclusion. Unfortunately, Microsoft being Microsoft, felt the need to manipulate us into only playing a partial story, a mere chapter of what it could have been. It’s plainly obvious that this was done for no other reason but greed, pure greed, at least on Microsoft’s part (I wonder if that’s what Bungie originally had planned for the ending). The hard truth is those who want to play the other half of the story will have to pay the price of an Xbox 2 and a copy of Halo 3. Unless Microsoft releases a “patch” via Xbox Live which properly concludes the story (I wouldn’t put it past them).

Notice how in the credits it says something along the lines of “Thanks to all those who helped us on our path towards world domination”. One could take that more literally than it’s meant to be…

13

You should read other reviews as well, like IGN’s. Most agree that the story isn’t that great but the way it is presented IS great unlike what Gamespot thinks. Gamespot also doesn’t mention the physics almost at all, I’ve seen previews of the game with people playing a small part of it, not even the whole game, that mention the effect of the physics more.
Personally, from reading the Gamespot review I get the feeling that they were in a hurry to rush through the game and so did not try any different approaches at all. I have no idea why they mention the AI isn’t up to snuff when most other reviews praise that aspect of the game.
Lastly, I don’t know why none of the reviews takes in account the modability of the game… Sure it’s not “out of the box” things but after seeing the success of Half Life 1, the power of the engine, the new tools and the way the modding community has evolved over the past few years… The game is destined to have a ton of value after you are done with it wether you like Counter Strike or not (I don’t)… And there’s also the matter of the various packages that don’t just include CS:Source but also DOD: Source (And Half Life: Source but without multiplayer). And since you NEED to have an internet connection in order to be able to start up the game (Atleast the first time) there’s no issue of “some people may not have internet access to get the mods”.

Check out this Gamepro article on Halo/Halo2:
gamepro.com/microsoft/xbox/games … 9489.shtml
I pretty much agree with it except one thing. He complains that all Halo2 reviews mention a lot of problems but then give high grades and then goes on to give it a 4.5-4.0 out of 5 himself… erm, ok?

Has anyone seen any reviews of Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines btw? If yes, plz link.

14

Well, I finished the game a few days ago, and for me at least, the ending was not disappointing plot-wise. However, it WAS very disappointing gameplay-wise. That last battle just sucked, plain and simple. It had absolutely nothing on the Maw.

To Solo: The world domination thing is a running Bungie joke, dating from before their absorption from Microsoft (I think). I remember reading something pretty hilarious on their site awhile back about how they were going to devour microsoft from within and go on to take over the world.

Also, it seems a little bit overkill to just automatically assume that the game ends the way it does because Microsoft are a bunch of money-grubbing bastards (not that they aren’t, but you get my point). Maybe Bungie just ran out of time. Maybe they meant it to be this way, and were going for an Empire Strikes Back feel. Really, when you think about it, this game’s ending isn’t that much more of a cliffhanger than Halo 1’s, it just feels like it is because of the way it’s presented. At the end of Halo 1, the universe has been saved from destruction, but the earth is in immediate danger of an attack of overwhelming force and we don’t know what’s going to happen. At the end of Halo 2, we have pretty much the exact same situation, with a few more complexities thrown into the mix.

15

I also finished the game several days ago, and I have to agree the ending could have been better. It’s not like we’re going to see the rest of the story next week, it’s probably going to take several years before we’ll play Halo 3. I’m not disappointed though, it’s still a worthy successor to Halo imo. Better graphics, better gameplay, great story… Together with the original, Halo 2 is the best FPS I’ve ever played.

16

I suppose I was a tad harsh when I said that Halo 2’s “ending” was the way it is entirely because of Microsoft’s system-selling marketing techniques.

The problem is, Microsoft were too keen to rush the game out, and there are some aspects of Halo 2 - like the first game - where this shows. The ending in particular simply wasn’t concluded properly, in a Matrix Reloaded sort of way. However the Matrix didn’t require viewers to buy a whole new console in order to fully experience the movie. Same with the Empire Strikes Back, although that’s different again because even though it was unfinished, it did have a proper ending.

*** Spoilers ***

I watched one of the documentaries that came on the bonus DVD of Halo 2 and Bungie said that they really put a lot of thought and planning into the story. If this was the case, then I wonder how the ending turned out the way it did? The difference between Halo 1 and 2, is that Halo 1 tied up the events surrounding what happened on that Halo, whereas Halo 2 just stopped basically in the middle of a battle and there was no feeling that any of the actions of Master Chief up until that point actually mattered.

*** End Spoilers ***

Saying all this negative Halo 2 stuff probably makes me look like I hated the game, but I really enjoyed most of it, and the story was well presented and intriguing, especially the Covenant viewpoint on things.

Alex: I’ll be playing Half-Life 2 fairly soon, so I think I’ll just wait and play it for myself now rather than reading IGN’s review (I’d be playing it in a few hours most likely…). I read through that Gamepro article you posted on Halo 2, and I agree with him to a certain extent, although I’d have to say that I haven’t come across a better story-oriented FPS (although I haven’t played System Shock 2 or Deus Ex), but Halo/Halo 2’s storytelling is quite a step above that in all of the other FPSs he mentioned, from what I’ve played of them. The Halo series has some good characters in it IMO.

17

You know what sucks about having a laptop? What sucks about having a laptop is that it’s a real pain in the ass to upgrade, which means I probably won’t be able to play Half-Life 2 for quite some time. Bah.

Also, maybe we should start up a Halo 2 spoilers topic, as this one seems to be straying into spoilification territory (partly my fault).

18

Sounds like a good idea to me, I for one would like to talk/hear about the game’s story more.

19

you nailed my point of view precisely in your spolier segment, solo.