Halo 2 is not a game that should need any kind of introduction. To be honest, if you’re unfamiliar with what this game is supposed to be, you should probably consider a new hobby. The sequel to Microsoft’s “system seller” for the Xbox, deemed important enough to be the source of huge amounts of hype (and even resulted in a Microsoft rep showing off a tattoo he had made of the game’s November 9th release date at E3 2004) and numerous crazy marketing campaigns has finally arrived. November 9th was effectively the day for console gamers around the globe, as it was a sure bet that if you owned an Xbox, you’d be impulsively going out to buy this game. It’s just a given. But after a good week spent playing and glancing over a large amount of first impressions and speculation regarding the gameplay and storyline, it’s finally time for me to deliver the verdict. Is Halo 2 truly the awesome experience we’re all expecting it to be? Let’s dig in and find out.

The premise of the game is a basic follow-up to the events of the original. With Halo destroyed following the destruction of The Pillar of Autumn, and most of the Covenant forces in the area obliterated, our mighty hero (the cybernetically-enhanced “Master Chief”) has returned home to Earth. How is not explained, but after getting set up with a fresh armored suit, he saddles up with good old Sgt. Johnson (who also managed to somehow survive) and heads off for an award ceremony for his acts of alien ass-kicking in the field. Of course, then the alarms start blaring, as the Covenant have finally managed to locate Earth and are vectoring in an attack fleet to test Earth’s new planetary defense grid. After running off to find a weapon, the Master Chief and his buddies in the Marine corps get set up to repel the alien boarding teams. That’s a really basic version of the introduction sequence, but there’s actually a hell of a lot more to the storyline that I won’t reveal here. Bungie has worked tirelessly to keep the secrets from Halo 2’s storyline from leaking out, and with damn good reason; the game has one of the most detailed and interesting storylines out of any modern FPS title I’ve seen.

Thanks to the staggeringly excellent cutscenes and quality writing, a huge amount of information on the background of not only Earth, but also the Covenant race (and even the ancient gods called the “Forerunners”) is revealed over the course of the game, and there was so much fascinating insight to be gleaned that I felt compelled to run through the game twice in a row, just to make sure I caught all the details. Some people actually feel that the new focus on Covenant affairs (and there is quite a bit of focus) is a bad thing, but personally I appreciated this new perspective on the otherwise faceless enemies of the original that did little shoot at me and yell “Wort Wort Wort”. But although the presentation of Halo 2’s storyline definitely gives the game a cool, epic feel, the game’s storyline sadly delivers a thorough punch to the beanbag (to borrow a phrase) just as it’s getting warmed up. I don’t think there is any comfortable way I could describe the ending in a non-spoiling manner, other than to say it literally feels like Bungie shipped the game with the final mission accidentally left out. When the final scene faded out, I was all set to grasp the controls and go kick some more Covenant ass, but was utterly shocked when the credits started rolling instead. The rest of the game was great, but damn Bungie, what the hell happened?

But excellent though the story may be, it’s the gameplay that really makes Halo 2 a special game. I’ll say immediately that if you’re one of those crazy people who hated the original Halo with a passion (or just didn’t find it “all that great”), then you’ll probably feel mostly the same about Halo 2, at least as far as singleplayer goes (multiplayer is a vastly different affair that I will discuss later). However, if you fall into the majority that loved Halo, then the sequel is a sure-purchase. The overall feel of the gameplay is the same; you’re still a (relatively) slow-moving super-soldier fighting against hordes of enemies – sometimes single-handedly, sometimes with friendly support – you can still only hold two weapons at a time (with a slight exception that I’ll go into soon), you still rely on a recharging energy shield to keep you alive between fights, and there are still a number of familiar vehicles offered throughout the various missions to aid your progress. However, everything has been refined, improved, or just plain overhauled to make for a much more streamlined and ultimately better experience, making Halo 2 a game that keeps the best (and worst, sadly) parts of the original, while also adding enough new goodness to make it well worth experiencing.

Take the weapon handling, for example. As I just said, players can still only carry two weapons at a time, and can get new tools of destruction by swapping one weapon with another. While many of the original Halo weapons make a return, some have been replaced with new toys of destruction, and even more have simply been added. For starters, the (in)famous assault rifle is now gone, replaced with a basic SMG that makes for a really excellent mid-range combat weapon if you’re one of those people who loves to lay on the trigger. Other human weapons like the shotgun, rocket launcher, and pistol are still in the game, but the pistol especially has been toned down, renamed the “Magnum”, and had its scope removed. Instead, the new middle-road scoped weapon is an assault rifle that fires three-round bursts and kicks quite a punch. All the other human weapons have seen a general range of tweaks; the shotgun feels like it has a slightly tighter firing cone and requires more finesse for effective use, the sniper rifle has increased recoil, and the rocket launcher has a neato new lock-on function to launch guided missiles (at vehicles and turrets anyways). The Covenant weapons work mostly the same, but there is now a gamut of new alien weapons that can be captured and used, like the fuel rod gun (which works a little differently from the usable version presented in Halo PC), a Covenant “Carbine” rifle with a limited zoom capacity, a dedicated Covenant sniper rifle, and, coolest of all, the beloved plasma sword. I got a real kick out of dishing out payback against the enemy soldiers that had slapped me around with that damned blade so often in the original, though the overwhelming joy of using the weapon isn’t unlimited – at least, not in singleplayer. First, it’s purely a melee weapon, and while a powerful lunge attack can cover a small distance to the target by pulling the right trigger (hitting B just does a general swipe) it is mainly a disadvantage for ranged combat, and secondly, the sword loses integrity with each swipe in campaign mode, until it eventually switches off and you’re left with nothing but a near-useless hilt. In multiplayer however, the sword lasts forever, making it an incredibly devastating weapon in the right hands.

One of the most interesting weapon-related features Halo 2 brings to the table in excellent form is dual-wielding. This is the exception I mentioned to the two-weapons rule that allows certain weapons to be paired off with others. Provided the weapon in question does not require two hands to operate (like SMGs, plasma rifles, and, best of all, needlers – sorry, no akimbo shotguns or rocket launchers), it can be paired off with another one-handed weapon for extra slaughtering action. Holding two weapons at once is simple – just walk over the object in question and hold down Y to pick it up in your left hand. While both weapons are paired, you can also still have a third weapon in storage, so it’s technically possible to actually hold three weapons at a time, but you can only physically use two at once, as the moment you hit the Y button to switch over to the reserve gun, the second weapon you’re holding akimbo is tossed away. The secondary gun must also be dropped for melee attacks, so there are a few downsides, but the satisfaction from sticking someone full of sharp, shiny, pink objects with a pair of needlers and watching them explode is pure bliss. The implementation of dual-wielding works really well for the singleplayer campaign and offers some fun possibilities for co-op mode, although it seems to have had a potentially infuriating balancing effect on multiplayer, as I basically felt doomed in the event of an attack unless I was running around with weapons akimbo at all times. But I’ll comment more on that later. One other really cool weapons-related detail Bungie finally added is the ability to trade weapons with the friendly NPCs encountered throughout the game, meaning that not only do you no longer have to smack them over the back of the head for an extra clip of ammo, but you can outfit them with any equipment you desire to make them more effective in combat. Just be careful giving those cocky marines a rocket launcher.

Which brings me on to AI. The original Halo was well-known for spicing up what could have been a somewhat generic (albeit well-narrated) FPS experience with a sophisticated AI system that kept combat interesting and the player on his toes. High-ranking enemy soldiers used cover, tossed grenades, and did everything they could to ruin the player’s day, while lower-ranking grunts reacted in a realistic and pathetic manner by actually running away from battles to regroup once things started to go downhill, wailing about how screwed they were. Adding more interest to the game was how the player was commonly (in the early levels, at least) accompanied by friendly marines who helped out by shooting randomly at the enemy, chucking grenades, and spouting hilarious commentary about their situation. But while they were neat to have around, the AI controlling these guys was far from perfect, and they seemed very limited in what they were able to do to help the player – for example, they were almost totally incapable of driving vehicles (occasionally you’d see them puttering around in a Covenant Ghost they found lying around, but this was rare), got stuck easily, and rarely followed the player through complicated mission areas unless specifically scripted to do so.

Well, that’s all changed with Halo 2, as Bungie’s AI and mission designers have worked overtime to make those helpful marines suck a whole bunch less. Not only is friendly backup a lot more commonplace in Halo 2 (in fact, I rarely found myself in a situation where I didn’t have friendly support – provided I had gone to the effort to ensure they hadn’t encountered a grisly death somehow), but friendly entities now use their weapons a hell of a lot more effectively, are much less helpless in close-combat situations, and use their grenades a lot more effectively. But best of all, the AI now seems a hell of a lot more aware of their surroundings and will try to use it to their full advantage, so if a mountable gun turret is between them and an enemy position, an AI unit will automatically make use of it to gun the bad guys down, and will even dismount if the target goes out of his range or if he’s threatened from another direction that his gun won’t reach. My most favorite improvement is how the friendly units will use vehicles on their own more reliably now and will do whatever it takes to try and keep up with what the player wants. This means that if you’re in a fully-stocked Warthog and a stray marine tries to fall into formation, he’ll go looking for a vehicle of his own to use. This also means that you can now sit back and let the AI drive the Warthog while you man the turret or ride shotgun for a change – although the AI driving patterns might make you think twice about this. Hell, I even saw a Covenant Elite flip his own Ghost back over and get back into it after taking a spill, so the AI seems like it’s finally capable of taking care of itself without requiring the player’s constant supervision and support.

With so many cool new obvious features added to the AI’s capabilities, it only hurt more to take note of the deficiencies the game still has, and for all the improvements, the AI is still ultimately inferior and difficult to co-ordinate with. One big thing I kept wrangling my controller over through the course of the game was in the inability to actually get the friendly NPCs to do what I wanted them to do, rather than having them constantly run off to do their own thing (and commonly get killed). This could sometimes be a menial problem like watching all of your marines charge a Hunter head-on to get slaughtered after you dive for cover to let your shields recharge, but more commonly it was something more serious, like a soldier hopping into the driver’s seat of the Warthog you just dismounted and driving off because you wanted to go back and spend a couple of minutes figuring out if that rocket launcher you saw lying around really would be better than that sniper rifle you’re carrying, or friendlies just commonly making routinely poor tactical decisions. Following my experience with Star Wars: Battlefront, I quickly realized that if the game had bound certain AI commands to the controller D-Pad (like “don’t move you short-bus reject” or “get in the damn vehicle already”), a lot of these AI problems could have been cleared up. At least the pathfinding is really good, and I was impressed to see an AI-driven Warthog find its way around complicated terrain (the AI seems to know what it can simply bulldoze through and take advantage of the game’s physics engine, and what it can’t), but they still managed to get themselves stuck or drive around in useless patterns far too often for my liking. Ah well, they might not be perfect, but the AI in Halo 2 is definitely much, much better than that of other modern titles, and perhaps I’m setting my expectations a little too high. Then again, in a game where friendly units have the ability to spontaneously drive off with your favorite vehicle and get themselves utterly destroyed, can you really blame me for being picky?

Speaking of joyriding, the vehicle handling in Halo 2 has been considerably tightened up. Favorites like the bouncy Warthog, Ghost, and Banshee are all back and have seen their share of enhancements (both graphically and gameplay-wise), and they all feel easier to control. The Ghost is a little less “floaty” (I feel funny saying this, given how it’s supposed to be a hovercraft anyways), the Banshee is a bit more agile (and also has little “tricks” that can be pulled off, like a barrel roll or loop), and the Warthog is less prone to randomly flipping on it’s side around tight corners or just sliding out of control. There are also a number of new drivable vehicles, like the “Wraith” – the massive hovering tank the Covenant are fond of, and the Spectre, which is basically the Covenant equal to the human Warthog and offers space for a number of passengers, as well as a gunner. All vehicles can now be destroyed in both singleplayer and multiplayer (gradually, no less – pieces of a vehicle will fall apart as it takes damage, so the side fins on a Ghost can be blown off, or the windshield and hood on a Warthog broken), so a bit more caution is needed while driving them, but they’re still incredibly cool to motor around in.