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Dom Robinson reviews
Bungie
Halo 2: 
Halo 2 SE:
Halo 1:
- Price: £39.99
- Players: 1-online
- Widescreen: Yes
- 60Hz: No
- Dolby Digital 5.1 sound: Yes
- Xbox Live-enabled: Yes
Halo 2 is the sequel to the first ever game I played on the Xbox, back in April 2002, and compared to the graphics that your average PS2 game could muster, it was a revolution.
In short, for this second outing, which takes place right at the end of the first game, the Covenant return to attack Earth and kill off the human race, there’s another Halo ring which could do plenty of damage if it was ever to realise its potential and you take control as Master Chief, ready to kick alien butt back to where they came from.
So, the most important thing is – what’s it like? Well, it’s good fun, but in the time that’s passed since the first game, I was far more impressed with the recent The Chronicles of Riddick game, in terms of combining a first-person-shooter with a general action/adventure ambience.
However, while you get a bonus with the ability to flaunt dual weapons John Woo-style, on the downside your character doesn’t say much, if anything, and I miss that after experiencing it in games such as Riddick and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. As a plus, you get more friendly troops to back you up and help out, but that just means you can let them take the strain on a fair few occasions.
Overall, it’s nice and it’s a bit of fun, with some nice CGI mixed in, but it’s not an earth-shatteringly “gotta have” game.
Maybe I’m missing something or I was too dazzled by the first game since, with the top-notch graphics and Dolby Digital 5.1 sound – once I’d got the necessary cable – seeming unsurpassable, 2½ years on things in general have also moved on and this new release seems a bit stuck in the past by comparison, and it may be big and flashy but there just doesn’t seem as much substance to this game as I was expecting.
You can also play online (as well as linking up your machine to others if you prefer to do this kind of thing in person), man fixed gun emplacements and steal vehicles, but I can do these in many other games too, so I think other titles, such as the Grand Theft Auto series have stolen Halo 2‘s thunder.
The graphics are very good indeed, and they’ve apparently been enhanced for this sequel – it wouldn’t make sense NOT to, since that’s the mode with games – but there’s so much blam-blam-blam going on at the same time that it doesn’t seem to matter and you can’t take it all in anyway, but then things don’t seem massively too different from what I can see anyway. Plus, with the gameplay behaving so samey too often all you’re thinking about is just getting to the next stage to see if it’s different. And on a noticeable down-point, graphically, during the FMV sequences, some characters appear before they’re fully-rendered so look a bit ’empty’ for a split-second.
Gameplay-wise, it’s a plus that if you’re running out of energy, just retreat for a few seconds and you can hear your shields recharging, quicker than in the previous game. However, can anyone explain why you become part of the Covenant part-way through the game? It can only be to eek the playing time out further due to the fact that it’s a very short game overall – I’ve only been playing for a few hours and I’m already halfway through!
It’s said that the AI is better, which you’d expect that from the current batch of games, but it’s easy to creep up on the big guys if you approach them from the rear (oo-er, missus!), and on a few occasions I threw grenades at their feet and they just stood there and waited for the inevitable(!) And whereas in the previous game, shooting your colleagues would have them all turn on you permanently, here, killing the occasional one is just the way to get a new gun when you’ve got the bullets spare and just need the weapon itself. In addition, playing part of one level in the dark doesn’t add atmosphere, it’s just bloody annoying because I can’t see much with a limited flashlight.
As others have said in reviews I’ve come across, with the original Halo you felt like you were there. With this sequel, it’s far from the same feeling, even with all the speakers blaring and lapping it up on a 32″ WS TV.
Hollywood lends its talents to this game, such as Licence To Kill Bond baddie Robert Davi, Chronicles of Riddick star Keith David, Robocop‘s Miguel Ferrer, Hollywood hard-man Ron Perlman, Along Came a Spider‘s Michael Wincott and English Gent John Hurt in an uncredited role as The Prophet.
As stated earlier, this time there’s online content, and the following Xbox Live games are available. I haven’t had much time to check them out yet but will do so more over Xmas, since the one thing Xbox Live guarantees is that you lose all perspective of time, only realising you should stop playing when you’re either hungry or you look out the window and realise, “Oh, it’s morning!”… but I digress:
- Slayer: Kill the most opponents. The person with the highest score wins.
- Capture the Flag: A familiar one to online gamers, where you steal the flag from your opponent’s base and have to bring it all the way home.
- Assault: Similar to ‘Capture’ but different in that you make your way to their base and drop a bomb, primed to go off in their base.
- King of the Hill: A domination game, where you have to keep control of the hill for the longest time.
- Oddball: Find the ball and be the one who holds onto it for the longest time.
- Juggernaut: A sort-of ‘Chase the Rabbit’ game where only the Juggernaut can win and if you steal it from someone else, they’ll all come after you.
- Territories: Earn the most time by finding and controlling territories on the map.
The Limited Edition tin box contains a bonus DVD featuring a selection of extras:
- Behind the scenes: The Making of Halo 2 (53 mins): An extensive look at the creation of this sequel, shot in 4:3 with plenty of gameclips, plus scores of interview snippets. You’re warned before watching these extras that you’ll come across spoilers so on your head be it.
It’s a shame that for such a long piece it isn’t split up into chapters.
- Developing the Game (16 mins): Three smaller featurettes here, looking at the storyline, the level design and playing against other human beings, the latter showing how there’s many new multiplayer maps and they don’t always conform to the usual symmetry.
- Bonus Materials: First up, the Cutting Room Floor (12 mins) takes us through the cinematics, weapons, vehicles and characters that didn’t make it into Halo 2 so perhaps they’ll appear in the next game; There’s brief Commentaries (8 mins) about Halo’s origins and a look at the second game; Gameographies give us a brief bit of text about what most of the production team have done before now; and there’s 30 pictures in the Art Gallery showing characters and conceptual art.
- Set-up and credits: Subtitles on/off, credits and a nifty and humourous speaker test.
SOUND EFFECTS AND MUSIC
PLAYABILITY
ENJOYMENT
OVERALL 
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.