- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
Posted by: ThisDayIsMine
GFW gave it a 6.0 and I think that's a pretty damn poor assesment.
I disagree. I think it should be that, if not lower.
Here are somethings that come to mind.
Transported to PC in 2007, however, Bungie's shooter loosk downright primitive- espefcially when landmark games like Half Life 2 and Battlefield 2 have bla bla bla.....
Who are they kidding. Half Life 2 probably does have better graphics, but BF2 is just ugly. The game has no sense of aesthetic style (the halo series has always been a alandmark as far as aesthetics are concerened) and BF2 has no shaders at all. Halo 2, on the other hand has a bunch of nifty effects. The shiny glint on the elites loks great and all the weapon effects look hands down awesome.
You have to take into account that Halo 2's graphics should be able to run fine on computers with double hardware strength compared to that of the Xbox, but that's not the case due to the crappy way the graphics were ported. On top of that, not being able to disable certain graphics options is just ridiculous. So yeah, the game looks good, if you have a 1,500$ system. But it can never look great, like HL2 or similar games with even lower system requirements than Halo 2.
Okay, so then they say that switching between an elite and the chief is a "narrative distaster." The thing is that Halo 2's sotry is just more complex than the average game's. You've go the coventant vs the humans, the whooe role of halo in the coventants religion, humans vs. the coventnat, development of key characters, etc.. Unlike Doom, it's just "you in deep ****, go get er' done." And the simple fact is that all these things could never be conveyed if we restricted the point of view to a traditional narrative model.. I mean, if we only played as the chief, how the heck wouldwe know what's goin down with the covenant? We couldn't. Playing as the covenent provides some insight into the problems that they face. It's a narrative strength.
That's one part of the story that bothered me, though. Too biased. When you play as a human, you kill covenant. When you play as covenant, you kill... covenant.
OK, so they claim that the gameplay is simplistic? Again, GFW are making themselves loo like sellouts. You've got dual wielding, melee, 2 kinds of grenades, and some failry big levels, and some pretty dynamic AI. Although it's fast paced, Halo 2 also manages to be pretty deep. Some levels like the beach level and Halo levels give you an impressive degree of freedom.
It's simplistic in the way the gameplay is handled. It's basically the same with Halo 1; You have the same gameplay style all the way through the game. There's not much variety. Go in, shoot, cutscene. Wash, rinse, repeat. In other games, the action can quickly change and when it does, it varies greatly.
And now they say that the controls are bad. Uh, honestly, before, I played I thought "dual wielding with a mouse.. Uh oh,.. That won't work." But then I plyed and I realzied that it works fine. Very responsive.
Seriosuly, they just don't give the game any credit for how great the combat looks and feels.
The controls for Halo 2 aren't as fluid as Halo 1. Everything feels like too much of a separate action. In Halo 1, I could blast away 2 guys with the pistol, , start firing at the third, switch to an empty weapon, swap it out for a full one nearby, and use it against my enemy or switch back. Fluidly. In Halo 2, things just move in too much of a cluttered and slow fashion for that to happen.