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 Forum index » Archive » Archive: The Haunted Apiary (Let Op!) » The Haunted Apiary (Let Op!): General/Updates
[META] Halo 2
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Anton P. Nym
Unfettered


Joined: 25 Jul 2004
Posts: 550
Location: London, Canada

 		At last I can pop back into this thread, having finished the single player campaign almost totally unspoiled and having tried XBox Live out for a while.

Here's my non-spoiler review of the Halo 2 single player campain:

Wow. Just, wow.

And now, with more detail and spoiler tags:

Spoiler (Rollover to View):
Yes, the ending leaves us hanging in suspense but somehow it felt right to me. This has definitely been set up for another sequel... or maybe the Kill Bill example would be better, and to say that the second half of Halo 2 should be coming. In this case, this is the first time that Bungie has created the third in a trilogy: both Marathon and Myth had the third done by a third party.

The giant plant thing (I called it Queen Audrey III, in homage to Little Shop of Horrors, but is listed in the credits as Gravemind) is certainly a new Flood form. Likely the hive brain form mentioned on a bungie.net article I can no longer remember the address of. Sad

As far as general stuff, the game is breathtakingly beautiful in appearance and in sound, with the exception of the Ghost's powerplant going critical. It sounded more like a Moog effect than an overheat... I wonder why it didn't sound the same as it did in the live multiplayer demo this spring?

There were some graphical artifacts, pop-ins most notably, but they didn't detract from the gameplay.

Bloody dark levels drove me squirrelly... I'm a sniper guy, and I need to see.

Double wielding is an absolute blast! I have discovered, however, that I sux0rs with the SMG. Sniper rifle and shotgun, twin needles, twin plasma rifles, and SWORD and beam rifle were my favourite combos. Though meleeing with the Brute Shot is awesomely fun...

All in all, wow. I'm looking forward to seeing the bonus DVD with the "making of" documentary stuff.

-- Steve's also looking forward to soaking his poor, battered thumbs in nice warm water... this is his first marathon-run on an Xbox game, and the thumbsticks were killing him. Ow.
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PostPosted: Fri Nov 12, 2004 12:00 am
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weephun
Entrenched


Joined: 25 Aug 2004
Posts: 908
Location: Fuquay Varina, NC

 		I finally got some LIVE time and some campaign time in last night. .... Anton you are right ... wow. The visuals, the presentation, those darn drones.

Played LIVE until past when I should have been asleep, then proceeded to play campaign on heroic.
Spoiler (Rollover to View):
After the 10th time of getting squashed by the Hunter's, I decided it was time to get my 3 hrs of sleep in before work Wink


All in all. I love it. It was worth the wait and will now consume my life.

I'll be on LIVE some tonight, hope to see you there!
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PostPosted: Fri Nov 12, 2004 11:06 am
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thebruce
Dances With Wikis


Joined: 16 Aug 2004
Posts: 6899
Location: Kitchener, Ontario

 		first off, about the artifacting (hehe) - a lot of people tend to complain about the awful graphics, because textures appear after scenes are loaded... in particular, that 'bug' is one I'm willing to let slip... why? Have you seen how spectacular the graphics are? (ignoring the ugly overly bumped human faces of course Shocked)... if Bungie were to load every required element to each scene, the cinematics would either take longer to load, or there would be split seconds between each scene change, and such like that. Instead they chose the lesser of two weevils, and risked having textures load during a scene in order to have much more speedy, high quality, cinematic style -- cinematics... if the xbox was more powerful, I'm sure they would not have allowed such artifacting. As it is, they pushed xbox to its limits, quite obviously... at least, as much as they knew how at this time... I was kind of surprised at first as well, because we all know how much they were playing and tweaking, finding all the bugs and issues... why could they not have seen this? Well, because they already wrote it off as a necessary evil to accomplish their ultimate goal...

JasonShin wrote:
From what I hear, Halo 2 is not that much different. Halo 1 did not strike me as the best game of all time. I did like it. I liked it a lot because of the kind of work that went into the presentation and the fact that, despite all else, it felt like a labor of love.

If your impression of Halo 1 was the same as mine, let me ask if Halo 2 evokes a similar reaction. Strip all the hype from both games. Did you like the first, and would you have liked it if the exact same game had been published on the mac and not on the xbox and nobody had really heard of it? Sans hype and sans anti-hype, what do you really think of Halo 2?

I've said it before, and I'll say it again... Halo 1 was a very different type of story... it was human-centric, from an explore and discover style of telling. In Halo 2, the main plot has already been established, and now we find out more from the Covenant perspective, and the story is much more political... it's a very different feel with this plot, and I'd agree that it's a love it or hate it game... really, if you can grasp that the Halo 'universe' is more than just the games, then you can understand that Halo 1 and Halo 2 are the game-telling of short periods of time within the entire Haloverse... to understand the whole plot, you almost need to read all the novels, and know ilovebees... the video games are only small portions of the plot as a whole...
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PostPosted: Fri Nov 12, 2004 12:22 pm
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Atoner
Veteran

Joined: 28 Jul 2004
Posts: 136

 		I'll try to keep this in spoiler tags, because it concerns the story.

Spoiler (Rollover to View):


If Bungie really thought this ending was satisfactory, they are in dire need of a swift kick in the pants. This kind of ending would have been fine for a TV show's season finale, or a serial monthy-type game, or anything that would presumably get an update within a year or two.

As it stands now, Bungie has stated that they have no plans to work on Halo 3, and they are not currently interested in pursuing the story further. Go check the Bungie.Net "story of Bungie" for more info on that. So, we get half a story, an ending that doesn't even aspire to be conclusive, with no plans to fix it anytime soon.

This doesn't make me feel bad about the game; the campaign and multiplay are still awesome. That scene near the end when "Blow Me Away" plays and you're battling through that massive Brute/Elite/Hunter melee was just freaking incredible. The game is still fun, but the story was a real slap in the face, especially when compared to ILB, which was the better crafted narrative.



-Atoner-

PostPosted: Fri Nov 12, 2004 1:17 pm
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Phaedra
Lurker v2.0


Joined: 21 Sep 2004
Posts: 4033
Location: Here, obviously
Atoner wrote:
I'll try to keep this in spoiler tags, because it concerns the story.

Spoiler (Rollover to View):


If Bungie really thought this ending was satisfactory, they are in dire need of a swift kick in the pants. This kind of ending would have been fine for a TV show's season finale, or a serial monthy-type game, or anything that would presumably get an update within a year or two.

As it stands now, Bungie has stated that they have no plans to work on Halo 3, and they are not currently interested in pursuing the story further. Go check the Bungie.Net "story of Bungie" for more info on that. So, we get half a story, an ending that doesn't even aspire to be conclusive, with no plans to fix it anytime soon.

This doesn't make me feel bad about the game; the campaign and multiplay are still awesome. That scene near the end when "Blow Me Away" plays and you're battling through that massive Brute/Elite/Hunter melee was just freaking incredible. The game is still fun, but the story was a real slap in the face, especially when compared to ILB, which was the better crafted narrative.



-Atoner-


Spoiler (Rollover to View):
We should start a petition to have a Halo 3, first of all, and to have Sean & Co. write the story for Halo 3. I thought it was a good idea to let us play as an Elite; perhaps for Halo 3 we can play a level as an AI, battling our way past other programs into a Covenant ship's controls. Smile

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PostPosted: Fri Nov 12, 2004 1:22 pm
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