Halo 2

aka: Halo 2 Vista
Moby ID: 15499
Xbox Specs
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Description official descriptions

In the sequel to Halo, Spartan-117, better known as the Master Chief, has returned to Earth, where he is promptly needed: despite all precautions taken, the Covenant have discovered the location of humanity's homeworld and are launching their attack. For some reason, however, their fleet is much smaller than expected. To solve this mystery, the Chief must return to the stars, learning more about the mysterious Halo rings and their constructors.

Meanwhile, the Covenant Elite who commanded the fleet at the Halo construct is blamed for the destruction of the ring and branded a heretic. The High Prophets grant him another chance, however: he is made the Arbiter, a special operative for the Prophets, ordered to carry out impossible missions. He will be dealing with dissent and rebellion among the Covenant - a conflict where he might find himself to be on the wrong side.

The player controls both the Chief and the Arbiter in Halo 2, a first-person shooter in the same style as the first game. Its main gameplay characteristics are the same: only two weapons can be carried at a time (leading to a tactical choice as to which are to be taken), instead of a standard health points system there is the recharging energy shield (leading to an emphasis on finding cover during firefights), AI-controlled teammates will fight along with the protagonist, and there are lots of sections involving vehicles.

New features include the ability to double-wield certain weapons, doubling the firing rate at the expense of accuracy, and the ability to execute melee attacks or throw grenades. Part of the weapon arsenal is unchanged from the first game, but there are also some additions. The human projectile weapons are mostly new and include a pistol, shotgun, SMG, and battle rifle. Returning are the sniper rifle and the rocket launcher. The Covenant energy-based weapons (still prone to overheating) from Halo all return, and new additions include several heavy hitters like the Brute Shot and Fuel Rod Gun along with the projectile-based Carbine and the Beam Rifle, both useful for sniping. The Energy Sword is a powerful melee weapon, able to kill most enemies with a single strike.

All vehicles from the original game also return: Warthog jeeps and Scorpion tanks for the Humans, Banshee fliers, Ghost gliders, and Wraith tanks for the Covenant. A new addition is the Covenant Spectre, which with its rear-mounted cannon wielded by a dedicated gunner is comparable to the Warthog. A new player ability concerning vehicles is to board them while in use and either kick off the driver and take over or in the case of heavy tanks, throw in a grenade.

The multiplayer component of the game has been greatly expanded. On the Xbox, Xbox Live is now supported in addition to split-screen and system link. The campaign can be played by two players on split-screen. Competitive game types include Slayer and Team Slayer (standard free-for-all deathmatch), Capture the Flag, Assault (planting a bomb in the enemy base), Territories (controlling sections of a map for a certain amount of time), Oddball (finding a skull on the map and then holding on to it as long as possible) and more. All types have several built-in variants and can also be customized further. Players can choose from Spartan and Covenant Elite skins. The PC version comes with a map editor.

Spellings

  • 光晕2 - Simplified Chinese spelling
  • 最後一戰 2 - Traditional Chinese spelling

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Credits (Xbox version)

182 People (172 developers, 10 thanks) · View all

Project Lead
Executive Producer
Engineering Leads
Design Leads
Art Director
Writer, Director of Cinematics
Composer, Audio Director
Multiplayer & User-Interface Lead
Producers
Test Manager, Producer Bungie.net
Engineering
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 89% (based on 120 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.5 out of 5 (based on 164 ratings with 7 reviews)

The "Halo" part is extremely good; the "2" part is badly designed

The Good
(Review for the single player campaign, normal difficulty.)

The best Gamepad support ever in a computer game. It feels just like a console game. If you just wanna play Halo, there's no need to buy an Xbox anymore. (But you will wanna get an Xbox 360 after this, because Halo 2 is so good, you will wanna play Halo 3 and Halo Wars.) The length is just right, not too long. The final level is challenging, with a memorable final boss fight. Overall, the normal difficulty is entirely reasonable, and never frustrates you, and you never get stuck at one point for very long. You NEVER need to read/watch any walkthroughs. The paths and what you should do next are entirely clear to you.

Dual weapon wielding creates some frantic battles. The firepower is doubled, and enemies die so much faster. As a result, they throw more enemies at you, expecting you to use the dual wielding ability to fight them off. The dual-Needler is the most useful combination. The action is so intense and fun. When you are wielding two weapons, you can still reload your guns with just one button, and it's a lot of fun watching your character do that, even though it makes no sense at all. (You only have two hands, so how are you able to reload without dropping a weapon first?)

Halo 2 is actually shown on the HBO series The Wire (I think it was season 4). There's some poor black kid playing the game at the end of an episode. It's not such a bad neighborhood after all huh?

Two best moments: - Driving a tank across a bridge, with your team launching an epic attack on this giant, futuristic-looking building. After playing this, I won't need to travel anymore. I got the best view in the world right here on my computer screen. It felt like the end of the world.

  • Walking through a long tunnel. I walked for about two minutes with no enemies at all. It was a quiet, minimal, and mesmerizing experience. It's two minutes of peace during times of war. It changes you. I think everyone should experience two minutes of spiritual serenity everyday, as demonstrated in this particular level of Halo 2.

    The Bad
    Halo 1 didn't have any faults, and Halo 2 managed to introduce quite a few.

When you play as the Arbiter, some of the enemies (Covenant) in Halo 1 will become your allies. But it's not really easy/possible to tell which monsters are your allies. You'll end up shooting your own teammates a lot. This is the biggest problem in Halo 2. It feels horrible. I already killed a lot of those monsters in Halo 1, and now that they've become the good guys, I still keep shooting them. I can't forgive myself for this.

Too many weapons. The new weapons are mostly awkward to use. The balance is gone. In Halo 1 every weapon was necessary and useful. In Halo 2, some weapons are never useful. The best weapon from Halo 1 (Pistol) is gone, and replaced with a much inferior model. It's like your girlfriend who is a 9 is gone, and your current girlfriend is a 5. I want my 9 back. The fuel rod gun is the only new weapon that's good. It's a huge gun with a lot of destructive power.

The "health" bar is gone. You only have a shield bar. No more exciting moments when you discover "oh my god there's a med kit here! I can replenish my health!" Now, you can replenish your health at any time, as long as you're not being attacked. This really takes the thrill and anticipation away.

The "stealth" element is a bit lame and unbalanced. The Arbiter has the ability to cloak. Very cool and useful. During some levels, you can choose to kill all enemies, or you can just walk right past them and still able to get to the next checkpoint. Why put those enemies there at all then? Since first-person shooters are all about shooting, killing, explosions, I wanna kill my enemies. I don't wanna skip them and still be allowed to proceed. Halo 2 sometimes encourages you to skip the enemies, which is against the nature of FPS lovers.

The Bottom Line
If any game developer was wondering why their game didn't sell as many copies as Halo 2 did, I'll tell you why. It's almost certainly because Halo 2 was more fun to play.

Windows · by Pagen HD (146) · 2013

O.k, I lied, I love this game.

The Good
O.K., if you're not keeping up with current events here is what is going on. UnicornLynx hates Halo, I love Halo. I wanted to impress him, so I wrote a scathing review of Halo and Halo 2 after he posted his. It was silly, sycophantic nonsense and a complete denial of my philosophy of playing what you like, not what others like.

Halo 2 is an excellent follow up to the original classic released in 2001. The idea behind the game is that Master Chief made it back to Cairo Station, which is basically a big gun orbiting Earth, after the destruction of the Halo ring and the decimation of the Covenant forces who tried to cleanse the human (and flood) infestation on it. Unfortunately, they find Earth, destroy the gun platforms and begin invading...one place. No one knows why, they just are. As Master Chief, it is up to you to defend Earth, after all, she's all we've got. But it's not just humanity that is fighting tooth and nail in this instalment you have the added benefit of seeing the events of the game also unfolding from the perspective of the Covenant through the eyes of a scapegoat Elite dubbed the "Arbiter." The Arbiter levels are some of the best in the game and include the plasma sword for the first time as a usable weapon.

The first thing you notice upon beginning the Halo 2 campaign is how much Bungie overhauled the engine in anticipation of the game's release. The texture resolution has improved, the general scale of everything is three times what is was in the original Halo and the combat has been super refined. Your jumping is less floaty, your melee attacks are quicker and more precise and you can dual wield certain weapons to form devastating combinations.

The flow of the game is a lot different to the original Halo. You begin on Cairo station, moving to Earth and finally to the Delta Halo ring that you end up travelling to along with a Covenant Battle cruiser. There is great variation in the level design of Halo 2, the meandering through identical corridors has been eliminated and back tracking is non-existent. It's a constant push forward through the Covenant forces.

There is a lot to like about Halo 2, like the increased vehicle presence, the ability to hijack vehicles and the additional weapons like the SMG's (two of these things become handheld lawnmowers) while the pistol has been replaced by a more balanced "Magnum" which is more of a sidearm than anything. Vehicles play a bigger role in the game, so to does finding alternate routes through levels (such as jumping across rooftops in New Mombasa.) Basically the way you travel through levels has had a lot more thought put into it, making the trips far more interesting than the original Halo.

Graphically a lot of new things can be found in Halo. Sun glare was present in Halo but it is far more pronounced in Halo 2, the resolution of textures is vastly increased and bump mapping has been incorporated to great effect in the engine. Building architecture is far more complicated and interested and while it provides some great eye candy it also provides players with lots of tactical options when it comes to approaching combat situations.

The soundtrack is as fantastic as ever. Martin O'Donnell knows how to produce some amazingly cinematic pieces, blending them with electronic beats and the occasional roar of a guitar to mix things up. It's great stuff. Additionally the actual characterisation of the Covenant and the inclusion of spoken lines for them means some excellent voice actors join the mix and lend credibility to their race beyond a bunch of moving targets.

The Bad
While I appreciate the lengths Bungie went to creating more complicated, interesting levels it is easy to lose track of where you are supposed to be going and occasionally get turned around. It doesn't happen very often but it's irritating when it does.

When using AI team mates on your mounted guns they tend to never hit anything, meaning you have to trust them to drive your vehicle, which is an even more hazardous prospect.

The story peters out in the end to a sort of whimpered finale that leads into a sequel. It's not a definite ending, not a huge deal, but if you don't have an Xbox 360 being able to see the conclusion is not an option for you.

The Bottom Line
Halo 2 is a fantastic game that will take you around 12-15 hours (depending on your skill level) to finish. Honest refinements to the formula such as dual wielding, the ability to hijack vehicles, the refinement of combat specifics like melee attacks, the addition of weapons like the SMG's and Plasma Sword lend to some variation in your technique and emphasis on multiple routes and exploration is refreshing.

There are few things to fault in this game and the things that I do fault are minor and niggling.

Halo 2 isn't perfect, nor is it the best game ever made. I wouldn't even class it amongst the best games ever made. It is however a good, honest sequel with great refinements to an already engaging formula.

Xbox · by AkibaTechno (238) · 2010

Overblown follow up

The Good
Many of the things that were great about Halo are featured here again and some welcome new additions: Dual wielding is cool with lots of new strategic options, lots of new Covenent weapons, new vehicles, new baddies, some great set pieces (like the scarab assault) - and of course the amazing Xbox live multiplayer option

The Bad
I'm a big, big fan of the original and along with many was eagerly anticipating this release and I must overall I found it a disappointing experience. Many of the levels are too long and repetitive , and just don't have the replay factor and the weapons have been unnecessarily tinkered with. But really for me the games main problem is the single player story which was so great in the original has become an overblown and confusing "epic" that for me just ends up cliched and boring. For me this has kind of ruined the mystique the original game built up and dare I say it... it's become a bit nerdy!



The Bottom Line
If we think of Halo as "The Matrix" then Halo 2 is "Matrix Reloaded"....... technically better yes - but it ain't half as cool ;-)

Xbox · by kieran kelly (2) · 2005

[ View all 7 player reviews ]

Trivia

1001 Video Games

Halo 2 appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Cheats

Since its release in November of 2004 Halo 2 has been plagued with many forms of cheating. It started with gamers discovering that if they pushed the "standby" button on their modem it would allow them to move about the game doing anything while everything else was frozen. Later on the "Dummy Glitch" was discovered where players could turn invisible and capture a flag without the opposing team even knowing. In April 2005 Bungie released a patch that completely got rid of the Dummy Glitch and made it so that using standby was much harder and only a small percentage of modems can still use it to manipulate the game. All seemed well but unfortunately in June 2005 people with Mod Chips in their Xbox found out that because the downloaded content maps were stored on the Xbox hard drive rather than the disc that it was possible to hack them and use special cheats in the game. Examples of these cheats are the "Super bounce", Super speed, Rapid fire, Needlers that act as rockets, auto aim snipers, and many others. Most of these issues were eventually dealt with through patches.

Development

  • The development team included 70 people.
  • Microsoft lawyers forced Bungie Studio to change the name of the alien antagonist because it carried Muslim overtones.
  • Contains 17,000 lines of combat dialog.
  • Just like in the first Halo, Halo 2 also has a weird enemy that's been hidden in the game's code. It's called the Juggernaut and it can only be found using a modchip. It looks much like the Engineers from the first Halo, except it looks more like a flood. It just floats around.

Leaked Copy

On Wednesday, 13 October 2004, a pirated copy of of the game leaked out to the public, and quickly spread on peer-to-peer networks and IRC.

References

  • The hippo heads that appeared on the shotgun shells in the first Halo are visible on the walls in the map "Headlong".
  • The Halo maps "Blood Gulch" and "Battle Creek" return in this game under the new names "Coagulation" and "Beaver Creek".

Sales

  • In the US and Canada alone, 2.4 million copies of the game were sold in the first 24 hours of its release. That averages out to roughly 27 copies a second.
  • Had 1.5 Million preorders before its release, making it an XBox "Platinum Hit" months before it was even released.

Soundtrack

The game's soundtrack includes contributions from legendary guitar legend and G3 member Steve Vai, who performs most guitar riffs in the game and did the main theme. You can find his work in the Halo 2 , Vol. 1 Soundtrack CD, which includes all of the orchestral and incidental music in the game.

Secrets

Right at the end of the game there's a grunt that doesn't do anything, its just like the grunt from the first game except it says: "I wish that food nipple was waiting for me at the starship, cos man have I worked up a big grunty thirst"

Trailer

The largest trailer for this game was released in movie theaters. Near the end of this trailer, the usual www.xbox.com URL is replaced with "www.ilovebees.com" for a moment. If someone goes to the website, they encountered a website which seemed to be under the control of a Halo-type artificial intelligence. This website continues to be changed, telling a multifaceted story which many believe explain how the Covenant find Earth in Halo 2.

Awards

  • 4Players
    • 2004 – Best Console Multiplayer Game of the Year
    • 2007 – #3 Biggest Disappointment of the Year
  • GameSpy
    • 2004 – Game of the Year
    • 2004 – Xbox Game of the Year
    • 2004 – Xbox Shooter of the Year
    • 2004 – Xbox Game of the Year (Readers' Vote)
    • 2004 - Best Use of Xbox Live of the Year
    • 2004 - Best and Worst Ending of the Year (Xbox)
  • Golden Joystick Awards
    • 2004 - Runner up to Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas as Most Wanted Game for Xmas
    • 2004 - Runner up to Sonig the Hedgehog as Ultimate Gaming Hero (for Master Chief)
    • 2005 - Xbox Game of the Year

Information also contributed by ~~, Tiago Jaques, MegaMegaMan, piltdown man and Zovni

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Related Sites +

  • Bungie.net
    Bungie website. Official home to Halo 2
  • Halo 2 Australia
    The official Australian based website for Halo 2
  • Halo 2 Stats
    Stats including how many games of Halo 2 have been played online and how many players.
  • Halopedia
    A wiki covering all Halo games

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 15499
  • [ Please login / register to view all identifiers ]

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Baza.

Windows added by Terok Nor.

Additional contributors: Kartanym, Unicorn Lynx, Jeanne, Kabushi, Paulus18950, Patrick Bregger, FatherJack.

Game added November 11, 2004. Last modified March 7, 2024.