Posted by: HaloKing343
Honestly, out of the entire trilogy, my personal favorite Halo game is Halo 2. Most people would argue that Halo 2 is the worste in the trilogy and that Halo: Combat Evolved is the best, but l beg to switch that around.
Here's what's up.
When Halo: Combat Evolved was made, it was the basic game. Bungie had never created a previous Halo game, so this layed the foundations for the franchise. Go figure people loved it and people wanted more.
So Bungie made Halo 2. What they wanted to do with this was make a more interesting and more expanded sequal to the game. So what they did was change things around... the enemies were weaker, there were new vehicles, dual weilding, boarding, a very extensive and more confusing campaign, more Covenant history...
I don't think people got too upset with the dual weilding and boarding. Infact, l think people liked those elements.
People who liked the Halo style of game play, which revolves around the interaction of melee, shooting and grenades, absolutely loathed the addition of dual wielding in Halo 2 because it dumbed the game down to essentially spray and pray at short to medium range, or battle rifle at any other time.
Bungie themselves have publicly stated that they screwed up by implementing dual wielding, that it broke the holy trinity of melee, shooting, grenades. Watering down the grenades and the massive aim assist only made things that much worse.
When Halo 2 was "over", people kept crying that the game wasn't like Halo: Combat Evolved. People begged for a more "classic" feel.
That's because it wasn't. It felt and played totally different. As a sequel, gameplay wise it was an Epic Failure. They might as well have titled it The Adventures of Arby the Arbiter.
Now you can argue the merits of Halo 2 as a game in itself, but as a sequel it failed.
So when Halo 3 was made, Bungie intentionally made it to be more like the original Halo game, combining those elements. The "thirty-seconds of fun" the more Human only oriented feel. And for the most part, the plot wasn't too extensive. Besides the last level the whole game basically took place on Earth and the Ark.
Which is exactly what they needed to do if they wanted to make it a Halo game. I don't get the Human only thing, if anything Halo 2 also watered down the Covenant experience by taking away stuff that made their weapons unique, like the plasma freeze. Instead it was "spray yellow tracers from SMG, spray blue tracers from Plasma rifle".
They also made the plasma grenade explosion look really, really, really cheesy. Then there is the jump height. Then there is the no fall damage. The list goes on and on and on and on, endless pointless change for the sake of change, and by the time they were done the only thing "Halo" about it was in the title.