Oh, and did I mention the vehicle jacking? Right, we’ve all heard about this by now, but the process of actually being able to punt some cocky stunt driver out of his ride when he slows to turn around is immensely satisfying, and while it’s a little difficult to carry out at first, I soon found myself jacking vehicles in a manner sure to make the guys at Rockstar Games (Grand Theft Auto) proud – this is a really cool new feature and prevents determined players from whoring out a single vehicle for too long with absolute impunity. Hijacking a tank is a little more complicated (since you have to find a way to break into it first, mainly by jumping on and smashing the cockpit hatch open), but just as cool, especially given how you have to toss a grenade into the cockpit to force the pilot out. On the downside, I curiously noticed that it’s no longer possible to monitor the health levels of other occupants that may be in a vehicle, which is a design change I’m not sure if I entirely agree with. While this may make sense in multiplayer accounting for the focus over rechargeable shields versus health, trying to keep my fragile marine passengers alive in singleplayer was made a little more awkward. However, it’s hardly something that hurts gameplay. Final notes worth mentioning are that the Warthog now has a horn (for signaling team mates or just being a jackass), and that players and vehicles interact a little better, so softly nudging somebody with your bumper won’t result in an instant kill – in fact, it’s actually possible to ride on top of some fast-moving vehicles, Joint Ops-style. Thank god. Riding in the Warthog’s passenger seat will also present the player from a much-more-manageable third-person view, although for some reason I was unable to zoom in with my scoped weapons while sitting in this position.

As for the level structuring, things have both improved, and, sadly, also stayed about the same. On the up-and-up, Bungie has supplied quite a few more missions this time around, and the levels themselves are much larger and complex, making for a very satisfying exploration experience. There’s so much cool crap littered all over the place (correction: physics-enhanced crap) that my initial run through the first few levels took quite a lengthy amount of time, just because I kept detouring to go closely examine every shiny little object I found, or stare at the stunning backdrops. Unfortunately, some of the worst parts of Halo have returned in the sequel, and, annoyingly enough, Bungie has once again elected for the “copy/paste geometry” approach to the world. So while the individual rooms and segments look really cool and detailed, each level I played through seem to have it’s own theme that involved running through the same kind of rooms over and over again – I even had one embarrassing situation in co-op mode where both myself and my buddy had to run off in separate directions after getting turned around in a fight because both exiting rooms looked identical and we didn’t know which way to go. I really wish I was exaggerating. This isn’t a problem for the maps focusing on outdoor terrain (which is really nicely done), but since a good chunk of the game’s combat takes place indoors, I found this approach to map design got tiresome quickly. I hardly noticed it after a few hours of playing thanks to the immersive story and addictive gameplay, but I was still bothered, especially given how this was supposed to not be an issue in the sequel with all the complaints it received in the original.

The difficulty of these missions is, of course, dependant on the skill level chosen before the campaign is started, but “Normal” should be perfectly acceptable for most average gamers. I rarely encountered situations of insurmountable difficulty, but it bears mentioning that the game commonly placed me in situations where enemy snipers kept shooting my head off the moment I stuck it around a corner in an almost unrealistic manner, making for some occasional bouts of frustration. Then again, I guess there isn’t much “realistic” about space aliens with lasers shooting at you from the cover of an ancient floating structure, but it’s the still same annoyance even if it involves aimbot Nazi snipers hidden in bombed-out buildings. The most interesting design change here is that Bungie has done away with the player’s health indicator entirely, making combat revolve entirely around the shield bar. Because of this, the player character now feels a lot less durable than he was in the original game, but combat is a lot more intense – not knowing just how much more abuse you can take after your shields go down (hint: not much) makes seeking out cover to let them recharge all the more important. And is this change for the better as far as the game’s combat goes? To be honest, I’m still undecided, as while on one hand it simplifies the combat experience and has made the regenerating shield system more important than ever, but on the other hand, it seems to make the game a lot more challenging on certain occasions (especially given how some weapons can drop your shields in one hit), and it’s certainly made something of a difference in multiplayer. There is also no longer any falling damage, a change seems to have impressed some and annoyed others.

Speaking of multiplayer, the single largest and most-hyped improvement Halo 2 offers over its predecessor is the multiplayer functionality. A common complaint involving the original was that there was no direct online support – sure, there was a way to play online by faking a system link connection through various matchmaking services, but ultimately the game’s lack of Xbox Live integration once the service went online proved to be something of a problem. Naturally this exclusion was understandable, given how the game was released long before XBL ever went into service, but fortunately for Halo 2, Xbox Live integration has not been a problem for Bungie. In fact, it was not a problem to such a degree that they went above and beyond all normal effort to integrate a totally new and unique matchmaking system that really takes an inventive approach to how online gaming should be done. Unlike typical games where you hop online and browse a server list until you find a satisfactory game, Halo 2 now resolves around a more generalized and less-specific form of matchmaking. The first step is to form a “party”, which can either be yourself, or a group of friends you invite. Your party will always stay together between games, so playing multiple matches with your buddies is very easy. Next, all you have to do is tell the game to search for a match falling under the category you specify, like “big team battle”, “rumble pit”, or “head to head”. Once you’ve assembled a party and have decided what kind of match you want to play, all you have to do is start the match and the game will automatically seek out other players and parties that are also looking for the same kind of match you are. When a suitable number of gamers have been assembled, the game randomly selects a map and chooses the game settings, and then the match begins.

Because there is absolutely no conventional server browser available, I was initially a little fearful that this system would make it difficult to get matches going on the exact settings I desired. Fortunately once I got the game, I learned this wasn’t a problem thanks to an ability to create custom matches of any type for other players to join. This makes the only other significant concern of mine one of actually getting a match going, because the party system is totally dependant upon finding a sufficient number of other players also opening themselves up for the same kind of session at the same general time you are. Fortunately, Halo 2’s huge online playerbase (which is getting larger by the day, thanks to Microsoft’s push on Xbox Live marketing and free trial deals around the game’s release) also makes this a non-issue, and I never had to wait more than a minute to get a proper game going. But what about the online performance? Does Microsoft’s leading online title actually make proper use of their broadband-only service in a way that most gamers can actually enjoy, unlike certain other examples ? I’m very happy to report that yes, Halo 2 does indeed hold up very well under most online conditions, and I had absolutely no significant latency-related issues in the majority of matches I played. The game also automatically determines who will be the core “host” of the game based on their Xbox connection at the time (the process is totally transparent), so the game takes every possible step to ensure a smooth and decent experience. Sadly, a few bandwidth-impaired players still wandered into the occasional match and caused all kinds of curious problems to occur (like vehicles and other physics objects jumping around like I was so used to seeing in Halo PC), and there have been more than a few reported issues of nasty teleportation occurring under high-lag conditions, but so long as your ISP doesn’t suck total balls and you find a good group of friends to consistently play with, you should have a wonderful time.

And there’s plenty to have a wonderful time with, thanks to a decent selection of maps to choose from and the ridiculous amount of reconfigurable options we’ve all come to expect from the Halo series. A few popular maps like Blood Gulch (now named “Coagulation”) have made a return in a slightly modified manner, but there are also a number of impressively done new levels that really ramp up the gameplay. My personal favorite so far is the much-hyped “Zanzibar Island” we all heard about (and played, for some of us at least) at E3, but there are a number of other maps I have yet to try that I’m sure I’ll really enjoy too. My only major beef with the map design is that even the open-ended vehicular levels still felt really, really small (I guess I’ve been spoiled by Battlefield 1942 and Unreal Tournament 2004), and given the sizable maps available in campaign mode, I was a little surprised at how scaled-down a lot of the multiplayer levels felt. There is still a lot of breathing room, but I get the impression Bungie really wanted to keep the action intense and so kept the maps small on purpose. It seems novel, until you find yourself constantly getting sniped in the head (or worse, shelled) from across the map every time you spawn. But most surprising (and disappointing) of all is the lack of online co-op play. Rumors flew abound right before the game’s release that it would include this highly demanded feature (y’know, the one that nearly caused Gearbox Software to get lynched when they didn’t include it in Halo PC), and there is even a curious menu option in the Xbox Live game customization screen for switching to co-op mode while you have a party assembled, but sadly this remains a splitscreen-exclusive feature. The fact that they included co-op play at all is unquestionably awesome and offers a huge reason to play through the campaign over again, but I’ll openly admit that I’m more than a little annoyed it wasn’t at least enabled for system link mode, and having to share my screen with a second player is a concept I’m rapidly getting tired of.

The final multiplayer item I want to get into (and that no review of the game would be complete without) is how tightly Bungie has integrated the game with the community. Thanks to some clever code running under the hood and a total website redesign that occurred not too long ago, the official Bungie.net website offers the most thorough stat-tracking facilities I’ve ever seen for an online FPS title of this nature. Every match you play is recorded into the site’s online database, allowing users with an MSN Passport account linked to their Xbox Live gamertag to go online and view essential statistics. Everything from basic kill count to accuracy totals and special “medals” from a match is recorded, and users can even pull up a two-dimensional map screen in their browser to see exactly what kills/deaths they got, where they occurred, and how they happened via icon overlays on the map image. Combine all this with an integrated clan system and an incredibly easy way to arrange clan matches, and one can easily see how Halo 2 has set an amazing new standard for online gaming. I haven’t even gone into player customization (which allows gamers to not only choose between playing as a Spartan or a Covenant Elite, but also lets them change colors in two separate patterns, and even throw a pre-designed decal onto their armor – sadly, the facility for making custom decals was cut due to potential for abuse) yet, nor a number of other features, but I’ll just end this by saying that I’m really damn impressed with the initiative Bungie has taken in trying to push online multiplayer gaming in a new direction. Let’s hope it goes well.

Let’s close this up by delving into the graphics and sound departments. The engine used in Halo 2 does a surprisingly outstanding job, and definitely pushes the Xbox to its limits – unfortunately, it’s quite noticeable how it does this. Because the game has basically eliminated loading time (there’s a brief moment when you start playing campaign mode for the first time in a given session, with a complimentary cool loading screen to boot), there’s a lot more of the person playing, rather than sitting there twiddling his thumbs. The downside is that the game’s dynamic streaming technology is harshly limited by the speed of the Xbox’s disc drive, and during cutscenes or sudden environmental changes there is a brief, yet noticeable delay where horribly undetailed models are present as the game frantically shoves the relevant textures into memory. Given how huge of a game this is, I was surprised to see a blatant technical flaw like that sneak into the final release, but reportedly there wasn’t much Bungie could do given the circumstances. In any case, the problem isn’t really game-breaking (or even noticeable after some time), so perhaps I’m being nit-picky. Other than that, however, Halo 2 behaved admirably under all conditions. Framerates stayed pretty high (with the exception of some scenes in co-op mode – again, I’d have loved at least system link support), and the bump-mapping, pixel shader, and bloom effects all came into play constantly to render an excellent environment. Aside from the aforementioned copy/paste world geometry issues, Halo 2 looks pretty damn amazing for an Xbox title, and I really enjoyed the graphical splendor it had to offer.

No less impressive are Halo 2’s efforts in the audio department. All of the sound talent that made the original Halo great is back again in the sequel, and I was immensely satisfied to note that the quality of the sound effects, music, and even voice acting had not taken a hit in the new title. The marines still have hilarious dialogue that made me openly laugh on more than one occasion, the sound effects for just about everything in the game are immensely satisfying, and the music is really excellent stuff. One small issue I have is that it sometimes felt as if though old, re-mixed tunes were used more commonly than all-new content, but given that the sound tracks are so well-done and inspiring, I’m not about to complain loudly about it, and I’m already digging around for the game’s official soundtrack release. If anyone cares about my ongoing nit-picking, there were a couple of lines in the game that I noted were curiously voiced with a much lower level of enthusiasm and quality than the rest of the game (particularly in a couple of scenes that were actually borrowed from the E3 2003 demo that were voice differently and sounded really great back then), and I found this spontaneous drop in quality really strange. I doubt I’ll ever know what the reasoning was behind this, but there you have it.

Time to draw on the ultimate conclusion: is Halo 2 truly as awesome a game as it’s been hyped up to be? At the risk of being lynched, I’m going to have to respond “no”. I think I’ve made my thoughts on why rather clear through the many above paragraphs, but ultimately, the campaign is still fairly short (it only took a day of non-stop playing to blow through the entire thing on normal difficulty, even with my explorative obsession and the increase in level quantity), there’s still no support for anything beyond split-screen in the co-op department, the ending, while making me all hot and tingly for the next game in the series (if it ever comes out) was still a kick in the face, and both the enemy and friendly AI is still a little loopy, making for frustrating gameplay at the higher difficulty levels. But y’know what? Halo 2 is still an awesome game, and the problems I’ve been complaining about are only so obvious because the game’s greatness makes little issues like these easier to spot, accounting for the lack of any other significant game-trashing problems. Thanks to an otherwise awesome and gripping storyline, some incredibly addictive singleplayer action (while it lasts), and an Xbox Live setup that basically makes it the game to play if you own an Xbox and a broadband connection, Halo 2 is still the must-have for Xbox gamers people were hoping it to be. It isn’t perfect, but it makes such an excellent presentation compared to other titles that I’d feel stupid giving it anything less than a four-out-of-five, and if the tone of this article seems to somehow betray that remark, just bear in mind that I was expecting something akin to the second coming of Christ from the hype and secrecy this game received and was slightly disappointed at the way some aspects turned out. For the most part, Halo 2 is a thoroughly excellent title that you’d look stupid not being the owner of if you’re part of the Xbox community.