Although technically it was released at midnight today (November 9th), I wandered down to my local Electronics Boutique and picked up a copy of Halo 2 (non-collector's edition).
After a couple hours of gameplay I have to say that I'm pretty impressed. In a lot of aspects it feels a LOT more like Halo 1.5 rather than Halo 2, but there are a lot of minor (and not so minor) improvements throughout the game. The first thing I did after putting the disc in was to start a single-player campaign game. I don't have Xbox Live [yet] as I haven't found many games that I'd care to play online [yet], but this game may be the one.
I'm not too far into the game, but overall I'm really impressed. I have to say that this version seems to have a lot more "cinematic moments" than the first version (not necessarily good or bad, but seems to interrupt the "flow" of the game a lot of the time). Also I have to say that the story, although amusing so far, isn't the best and I'm still a bit confused as to what is going on. The AI (at lease my teammates') seems to be greatly improved over the first Halo, but I have yet to be blown away by the enemy AI. Perhaps you have to really crank up the difficulty level.
I was also pleasantly surprised by the new vehicles in the game. The new warthogs (those that I've seen) can be devastating, and it is thrilling to jump in a Scorpion tank and go against 10 vehicles.
So overall I'd say that Halo 2 easily rates a 9/10 (I'd probably give the original Halo 8/10 -- based on its rediculous level repetition). Is Halo 2 the best looking game on the Xbox? No, not at all. Is Halo 2 the best game on the Xbox, probably not, but if you liked the original you'll love the sequel.
Posted by peter on November 09, 2004 at 05:37 PMOne thing that I didn't know they added in Halo 2 and was plesantly surprised about was destructable environments. It is nice to be able to shoot our a barrel or vehicle and have the explosion knock out a few enemies. I was even shooting parts of wall down in my big uber tank.
Although the destructable environments are few and far between. So it isn't a completely volatile world where you can shoot down a building and crush the occupants.
Posted by: peter at November 9, 2004 06:26 PM