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It's good but short.

Dempsey wrote:It's good but short.

I guess your review reflects this quite well then.

Very in depth and full of details...
I particularily liked where you outlined all the good points of the game and all the bad points of the game.
Also your comparisons to the first one for reference were ahsolutely fabulous!

As the great and mighty Ghost demands: depth

Halo 2 is a great game. It has a twin story line that follows both the Master Chief and and Elite. The game is an improvement over the original in nearly everyway. I really enjoyed the Elite campaign. The Arbiter is such a cool character. New weapons rock. There's a better machine gun with a scope. Dual weilding is the shit! I love it. Dual plasma rifles rocks. The energy sword is super. I love slicing and dicing through a crowd of Flood. The needler has been improved from the original with better tracking and more damage. The sniper shotgun has been turned down. The rocket launcher has a lock on feature now. The covenant have a sniper rifle and a really cool weapon called the Covenant Carbine.

The vehicle department has also been improved. When Warthog is shot in the tire, you don't take damage like in the original, it does. Chunks fall off and the vehicles start smokin and everything. I know Nik was annoyed by the vehicle damage thing in the original. There is also the new guass cannon warthog. In Halo 2 you can also ride covenant wraits which really kicks ass. You can also kick riders out of their vehicles either by butting them out or tossing a grenade down the hatch. The Banshee now has some ariel manuvers along the lines of Crimson skies though the setup for these could be a bit better. All covenant vehicles have this boost which provides a sudden burst of speed for crushing enemies.

Enemy AI has also been boosted. Enemies no longer run around stupidly. They take cover alot more, dodge alot more, and cover each other. I witnessed this the other day. I was watching Ivan play. Several elites were attacking a temple he was holed up in. One of the elite fired up at him (he was on the second story) to keep him pinned down whilst the others cloaked, ran inside the temple and up around behind him, where they proceded to slice Ivan to death with their energy swords. It was cool. The Flood are back and more annoying then ever. They hyjack vehicles more than Tommy Vercetti does. Such a pain in the ass. They are also tougher than in the first game and do not run stupidly towards you. They are no longer eliminated if you blow off their arms. They simply smash into you with they're chests. They're are now gold sentinels with stronger beam weapons. After a sentinel is destroyed you can pick up its body and fire it's laser. Funky. New to the game is the Brute, which are Chewbacca, gorrilla combos that could probably be hit by a train and still be ok. They're huge, they charge and they carry a new weapon called the Brute Shot, which is just another name for a fucking grenade launcher. It hurts.

Other game enhancing enhancements include rag doll physics, less repetitive environments and less snow levels. I hate snow levels. Live multiplayer(which Andrew and Ivan are playing as we speak) rocks. It is much fun. Slicing other people with the sword is fun. But sticking plasma grenades to people is still the best. Two player coop is still there which is fun. I played with Gray for like 8 hours on the day Halo came out.

Now, da bad stuff. First, too short. Felt like half a movie. I've read that the game clocks in at 12 hours. Twelve hours of goodness, but still just twelve hours. Cliffhanger ending. I finished the coop with Andrew and there was a cut scene and it faded to black and i said to Andrew i said AND IT'S OVER. And then it hesitated and the credits started and i was like SHIT! DAM YOU BUNGIE! DAM YOU! Levels. I said they were less repetitive. Less. They do not make you go one way through 50 rooms that look the same and then go back, but there are several parts that are copy-paste of each other. Banshees get damaged too easy. The Flood are too hard at times. I've heard that people with newer XBOX's couldn't even run the game because they have different DVD drives. I have to wait 3- 4 years and probably buy XBOX 2 inorder to play Halo 3.

Better?

Far better than I ever dreamed Dempsey. Thank you

Are the graphics noticably improved? I dont count ragdoll physics. I mean stunning enhancements? Thats all that I hear people raving about and I dont see it in the trailers. It looks just like Halo to me.

I played Halo 1 a bit a halo 2 for like hours and though it looked the same.. in fact the movies more or less pissed me off becuase when they talk the lips dont even move half the time...

1.I liked the game but will never play it again
2.So get doom 3 of half life 2 and dont waist your time on halo 1 and or 2 (lets put it this way doom 3 out of 10 stars is like a 9, half life 2 is like a 8 and halo2 is like a 5.5 fun but only play it once and then find one of those game out there that is better)

Holy schtick. That must be Dempsey's largest post ever. Mad props dude.

Sarcasm
It gets results

The graphics were limited by the Xbox's hardware. What I really noticed was that the textures would switch from a simpler to a more complex form as you got closer, or if you zoomed in with a sniper rifle. Overall, it looks good, but I really noticed the sudden switch from simple to complex.

Well, it is running off of a Gefore 3.5 and very little RAM. It'll be interesting to see the specs on Ati's 520 vid card that they're plopping in the XBox 2.

Games do that on the PC as well. Its just its more notaceable on the X-Box because of its limited Texture memory.

Oh, "better graphics" on the Xbox is really bullshit because it's the same hardware. The one thing is is that the developers learn how to make better use of all that stuff. I mean, look at early games on the xcrate and ones now and you can see it. It just the skillz of the artists. And when my pc gets on the road, I think i shall write something up for every game i finish. It was fun and someones gotta give Jason a run for his money for most usless schtick posted.

It was fun and someones gotta give Jason a run for his money for most usless schtick posted.

Pffft, good luck there Mike.

So why isnt your Uber PC up and running yet?

Well, it's a long story, but the latest reason is a machine_check_exception error. Not sure what it is, but it only showed up after returning from a lan. Mr Hill is on route to check and hopefully repair so that i can get on with my life

Very odd...