- mrtyman123
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- Exalted Member
What I think is that Halo 2 is where Bungie succeded and failed in so many ways. I personally liked it the MOST out of all the games.
Halo 2 was where Bungie took off with all its newfound manpower and money having just been a small-time independent developer, so of COURSE it wasn't anywhere near the perfect epic experience that everyone was expecting. Of COURSE Bungie failed in a lot of aspects.
But Bungie's biggest success in the game was scale. Everything was bigger. The environments became absolutely massive. No more of this cookie cutter room encounter that was so prominent in such levels as Assault on the Control Room. Nearly every room, every turn, every hallway was unique, and the outdoor battles were SO much bigger and better. Not even to mention the cinematics, which were so much grander in every respect. And the story arc was incredibly deep. For the first time we see why the humans are fighting the Covenant, and the religious deceptions and the internal conflict and eventually the Great Schism, which is a massive plot twist for the story. And the Arbiter, alien though he may be, is so incredibly hardcore. I think it was a good break for the gamers to finally have a protagonist who talked and had a face. Master Chief is fun and all, but sometimes you need a good character as well as a badass. And somehow Bungie took all this scope and scale and pulled it down to one person. In Halo 1, 3, and Reach, there's always a sense that there's a battle somewhere else that you're missing, like some crucial plot point could be going on without you. Somehow, even though it seems like it should, Halo 2 has never given me that.
Halo 2 did certainly have its downfalls. Grenades and melee being underpowered and the introduction of DWing meant that players were fairly restricted to their guns. The campaign swung wildly from simplistic to insane at some points. Legendary is im-blam!-ingpossible. The story arc was incredibly hard to follow, jumping from one point to another to another and never really resolving in the end, which was significantly less-than-climactic (The same can be said for Halo 3... Warthog run: been there, done that). And the flood levels result in more than one smashed controller. That's looking past the unsatisfactorily improved graphics that render while you're watching and the faces that don't move right. Sometimes the game really sucks, and I TOTALLY understand why y'all think this game is the worst out of the series.
But Halo 2 is still my favorite video game of all time because it's so raw. It's just a video game. Nothing more, nothing less. The other Halos are full on epic immersive experiences where the player is engaged to achieve maximum enjoyment. But Halo 2 is just a game, with bugs, glitches, exploits, and gameplay problems just like every other video game that came out at the time, and to about the same extent. You don't have that expectation in the game for every encounter to be perfectly tailored to the capabilites of the average player. It just plays. The best part IS the glitches, it IS the swinging story difficulty, it IS the cliffhanger ending. Without those, it would be a Halo 3, with a perfectly packaged and presented story that has a well-spaced beginning, climax, and end, with encounters in between that are specifically designed, tailored, tested, and overthought to provide a perfect playthrough for every player and a legendary difficulty that was meant to be beaten. But even though Halo 2 was so problematic, what made it my absolute favorite was that you could see exactly what Bungie was trying for, and achieved. You could see the epic space battle going on over Earth that couldn't quite be rendered properly. You can see that one point in Cairo Station where you're supposed to look out the window but probably didn't. You can feel that Bungie was trying to make the Scarab a walking, fearsome death machine, even though you know it's every step and shot were scripted. You can see that Bungie tried to stick the prophet holograms into your way so you can see the covenant motivation, even though you you're too busy to spare them a second glance. See, this is what I mean when I say the games is raw. One, it feels like an imperfect game, with massive room for improvement. And two, you can see the intent of the designers that wasn't quite realized in practice. But somehow that makes it all the more enjoyable to play. And that is why it's my favorite to play.
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe nobody else sees what I'm saying. Maybe I'm looking back at this one with rose-tinted glasses (beer goggles?). There's still a special place in my heart for this one, a game I'll have nostalgia for for years and years to come. But again, I see what you mean when you say the game sucked. I guess one man's glitch can be another man's glory.