Right. Judge for yourself, but if you want, you can take into consideration the information provided about the game. Makes sense to me. If I'd not expected Halo 2 to be as good as they made it out to be, I wouldn't have been so disappointed. Oh well.
To clarify many things, and to make life simpler, I've compiled everything into a nice list. Potential minor spoilers. Read at your own risk.
Facts:
• There are no bots in multiplayer
• You can enter multiplayer levels alone, without needing to insert a 2nd dummy controller into a slot
• The Flamethrower does not exist in Halo 2
• Up to 16 players on up to 16 Xboxes
• You now have the option of turning on/off Active Camouflauge and Overshield (which is now bright yellow) in multiplayer
• You can unlock things by playing Campaign
• Grenades aren't as "rare" and "hard to find" as popular rumor says they are
• Blood Gultch (Coagulation) and Battle Creek (Beaver Creek) were redone and included in multiplayer
• There are 12 known multiplayer levels so far: Lockout, Ascension, Midship, Ivory Tower, Beaver Creek, Burial Mounds, Colossus, Zanzibar, Coagulation, Headlong, Waterworks, and Foundation
• The gametype “Race” was removed
• There are seven multiplayer gametypes: Slayer, King of the Hill, Oddball, Juggernaut, Capture the Flag, Assault, and Territories
• Weapon lineup:
Battle Rifle
Magnum
SMG
Rocket Launcher
Shotgun
Sniper Rifle
Frag Grenade
Needler
Plasma Pistol
Plasma Rifle
Brute Plasma Rifle
Brute Shot
Energy Sword
Beam Rifle
Fuel Rod Gun
Carbine
Plasma Grenade
• *POSSIBLE SPOILER* There are 15 Campaign levels: The Heretic, Armory, Cairo Station, Outskirts, Metropolis, The Arbiter, Oracle, Delta Halo, Regret, Sacred Icon, Quarantine Zone, Gravemind, Uprising, High Charity, and The Great Journey
• The Fuel Rod Gun is in Halo 2, but only in Campaign
• Character appearance in multiplayer is customizable. You can choose between Spartan and Elite and choose a primary and secondary color. Black is not an option anymore (everyone always chose black anyway, since it was... "stealthy" and/or "cool"), the closest to black is “Steel” which is just gray. You can also choose from an assortment of logos, which go on your arms and back. You can choose a primary and secondary color for your logo, as well as a background pattern for it.
• You lose your secondary weapon during dual-wielding if you attempt to enter a vehicle, do a melee attack, switch weapons, or man a stationary turret.
• The Banshee can now to StarFoxesque maneuvers. Hold left or right (left control stick) and push A to roll left or right, hold down and push A to do a backwards loop. It can also just plain strafe left or right (left control stick).
• The Rocket Launcher fires homing rockets, but only on vehicles, not individual players.
• The Covenant Dropship from Halo 1 was replaced, and is not in Halo 2.
• Subtitles are available as “Automatic,” On, or Off
• In foreign versions, like the French for example, have all text is in English (everywhere). The only part where the language is changed is in Campaign, and it's only the dialogue. Subs will cover everything except dialogue happening while you're playing, such as when Cortana is talking to you.
• LIVE voice masking is possible, but in only one type of voice masking
• Voice output on multiplayer games (like for team chat) can be “Mixed,” TV Speakers only, Xbox Communicator only, or Disabled
• You can choose to appear Online or Offline on LIVE
• Control options are unchanged from Halo 1
This is where it gets bad...
• There is no health meter
• There is no damage meter on vehicles
• The Sniper Rifle’s night vision feature has been removed
• There is no option to turn off destructable vehicles in multiplayer
• The entire scene from E3 2003 doesn't exist, except for the first cutscene where MC doesn’t even play yet
• The watered-down pistol ("Magnum") is hard to find (and extremely weak), runs out of ammo very fast, and takes much longer to reload. The fact that it fires much faster does not make up for the many other downgrades to it.
• **SPOILER WARNING** The Flood return, and just show up out of nowhere, and seemingly for no reason.
• "Halo Humping" is no longer possible. Yeah, you can crouch on dead bodies but the animation for crouching is too long to be funny or offensive to your victim, so it’s just lame now. It just makes you kneel on one knee and looks awkward. It’s just not comical, or even worth doing.
• All vehicles' speeds are reduced by 25-40% (yes, you can use the boosts to go faster though, but that also means restricted maneuverability and no shooting)
• Vehicles get destroyed fairly easy. One rocket or two grenades will take out any non-tank vehicle, except the Ghost which gets destroyed in one grenade
• The Shade turret was removed (and replaced with a different one which you rarely see)
• You don’t get hurt even a tiny bit from falling great distances, even if you jump out of a Banshee (obvious exception: instant death falls, like off a cliff). This makes you wonder why they were talking about how crouching while falling is still going to be a useful tactic for reducing damage taken.
• Models may literally just dissapear in the game when they are killed or destroyed. Enemies, vehicles, it does not matter.
• SMGs have a ton of recoil while every other gun has zero recoil for some reason
• The Warthog has a horn now, accessed by the R button. (It sounds lame and doesn't fit the vehicle.)
• You can no longer use the flashlight in multiplayer. (Idiots would always put it on in dark areas like Rat Race and you could easily see them and kill them. It was fun.)
• You cannot hover with the Banshee. Holding back on the control stick just cuts off your engines and makes you fall straight down. If you’re used to the old Banshee, this will be annoying and hard to get used to.
• The Banshee's Fuel Rod Gun has been renamed to “Banshee Bomb”
• The Banshee Bomb can only be used in Campaign (B button)
• The Banshee will fly exactly the same when it's new as when both of the wings are broken off. This applies to basically all vehicles. They run the same regardless of damage.
• There is no LIVE or system-link co-op
• There is no 3/4 player co-op
• Melee combos were cut from the final game
• Sprinting was cut from the final game
• Peeking was cut from the final game
• Grenades explode much faster. The Frag Grenades explode after the first bounce (which I think is bad), instead of exploding after they stop moving like in Halo 1. The Plasma Grenades are unchanged, except the fuse is a bit shorter (which is good).
• The Energy Sword can kill people in one hit and is extremely (too) effective, even at medium range, since repeated lunges will get you close to your target quite quickly.
• The Wraith tank can shoot those hugeass explosives FAST--like one per second, and can do boosts (unbalanced?)
• In Campaign, when the Covenant drive the Wraith, they have a secondary firing mode which quickly shoots small lasers. You cannot of use this secondary firing when you are driving it however.
• The Battle Rifle only fires in bursts of three bullets, regardless of whether you’re zoomed or not.
• Heavy Vehicle Weapons (Tank Round, Banshee Bomb) do not have round charge indicators. In the original, after firing a blast, a series of dots would tell you exactly when the next round was ready to fire.
• There is no blood when you melee attack the corpses of your enemies.
• You can see your legs when you look down. (They look girly and ugly and can get in the way, especially the Elites'. Plus, they tend to not be consistant with the actual movement of your character. Try looking down and rotating some time.)
• The flashlight turns itself off automatically except for designated areas.
• When you beat a level on, say, Legendary, you don't get an icon or anything in the level select screen saying you've beaten it on Legendary (like in Halo 1), or any other difficulty for that matter. So it makes you feel like you're wasting time when you can just do it on easy since the game won't remember or care which difficulty you were on when the level's over. The only exception is in one menu it tells you what difficulty you beat the last level on. So beat the whole game on easy but the last level on Legendary and to the game it's exactly the same as going through the whole thing on Legendary.
Opinions (Good):
• Multiplayer is still worth playing, and potentially fun, despite the many let-downs and cut features. Given the choice I'd still prefer a Halo 1 LAN however.
• The music is extremely well done. Props to Marty O'Donnel. Buy the soundtrack.
• The menus and loading screens all run very smoothly, and look good visually.
• The graphics, overall, are improved, but not quite to the caliber shown in the 2003 trailers.
Opinions (Bad):
• The storyline was ok at first, but gets progressively more terrible as you go along, and is inconsistent with the books. The ending was just lame.
• The new "Ragdoll" effect on dead corpses looks very unnatural and is a big downgrade from Halo 1's normal corpse motions.
• Physics on all vehicles are changed. In my opinion, they were changed for the worse—especially the Warthog (no more drifting/fishtailing around corners or that fun stuff).
• Repeating environments are not rare, although they try to hide them behind better visuals
• Level borders are very confined (i.e. no going miles out to sea like in Silent
Cartogropher)
• The Energy Sword in multiplayer is always easy to get (except maybe the first time you get it in Zanzibar)
• The difficulty levels weren’t well made. Between Easy, Normal, and Heroic, there is only slight changes in difficulty. None provide too much of a challenge. However, Legendary is ten times harder than anything else and I believe maybe Bungie overcompensated for the easiness of Halo 1.
• The reason people say the AI is really good on Legendary is because 2-3 hits of almost anything will kill you. So it seems like the enemies are using good strategy when really all that's happening is they're shooting you really fast with incredibly accurate death plasma. People get "Good AI" confused with "Their guns are 30x more powerful."
• Destructable environments are very selective and inconsistent. Glass looks the same in most places. Some breaks, some doesn't. Random bits of concrete are destructable. Some barrels explode when you shoot, others only respond to running into them, which just makes them roll around. In Zanzibar, you can walk through these glass walls and they'll shatter, but if you throw grenades at it, they just bounce off. Everything you break in a level is permanent, and there's never really that much to break, so it seems kind of pointless. Even in GoldenEye 007, you could shoot lights and they'd go out. Not here.
• As far as balance goes, the Rocket Launcher, unfortunately, will still be the top choice for free, easy kills. The Battle Rifle will become the successor of the M6D Pistol, and will be the top choice for most skilled players. The shotgun, able to kill people in one blast, will be the top choice for close-ranged combat (excluding the Noob Stick Enery Sword). Dual SMGs will be prime choice for people who just like to hold their finger on R, shoot messily and hope to get kills. I predict the term "BR Sniping" will replace the term "Pistol Sniping."
• Some background images prove to be of low quality. For instance, look at the Covenant Ship painted on in the background in Mombasa. Even the E3 2003 demo had a model for that.
• Decal effects, such as plasma scarring on walls, are less impressive.
• The Plasma Sword looks as if it is made out of plastic, and lacks the radiating glow that could be seen in the original and the versions from E3 2003.
• Zanzibar is probably the best multiplayer level, it's no wonder that was basically the only one Bungie ever showed at Halo 2 exhibitions. Still, none of the multiplayer levels quite meet the good design of Halo 1's levels, since Halo 2 made most of them too complex and spent more time on looking visually good than making it play good. Hang 'em High beats any Halo 2 level.
• The audio for multiplayer things like "Double Kill," "Game Over," etc. have been redone. Most don't sound half as cool as the originals. Listen to him say "Killing spree" and you'll know what I'm talking about.
• There are new animations for all melee attacks. All of them are downgraded from Halo 1. To put it simply, they look retarded. Some melee attacks have 2 different possible animations, which just occur randomly. This is what people are referring to when they falsely claim there are melee combos in Halo 2.
• I felt the game was too short. Going through on normal took me 3-5 hours. Most people will probably take longer since I just ran through. Many of the battles are ones where you can never kill ALL of the enemies, since more always keep coming. This made me feel like I was wasting my time to stop and fight. Since it was possible to just skip most fighting and run straight to the objectives, I did.
• To me, there is far less replay value in Campaign as compared to Halo 1. Specifically, there is none. I was glad to be done so I’d never have to do it again. To this day though, I like to start up repeat games of (Halo 1) Attack on the Control room, and The Silent Cartogropher.
• Halo 2 is better than Fable. I can give it that much credit but none more.
en post? You really screwed me sorta, even though I have no clue what it's really about and I won't read it, either.
Duh.
