unforum

[Svengoolie]

[Halo 2] Most overrated game ever

[thunderclap8]

I play Halo 2 online more for the community than anything else. If I didn't have the beekeeper and evade people to play with, I'd be on maybe 5% of the time that I currently am. The general public people on there are morons, to make a blanket generalization. Why do other people play it? It's fun. A game doesn't have to be the be all end all of fps games to be worth playing.

And you know, the MS marketing juggernaut can't be ignored.

As for why I don't play other FPS games? I've never had a PC capable of it. That narrows the field significantly.

[ubercado]

I play for the same reason that I come here. The Community. I mostly (read: almost always) play with the people from here and here alone. I enjoy their company, their attitudes, their humor, and they don't really care how good or bad you do in a game as long as you are having a good time.

I could care less about other FPS games out there. They do not have this community to back them up in the online arena as this one does.

The next game in question, whatever it maybe, can have the neatest graphics, interesting storyline, memorable characters and so on...I might buy it and play it for the single player but, not for the multiplayer aspect. Halo 2 has a great backstory (ILB) the story in the game is not what I expected to play and doesn't hold much too me. But, the multiplayer, as an advantage over the single here because it is the medium in which has allowed me to "make the people real" whom I have conversed with for the months leading upto and including the release of the game.

Talking with someone here and talking with someone over live are two different things. Here you could mostly imagine what each person sounds like when they make their comments/laughter/humor and so forth but it is lacking the inflection of a human voice to back it up.

On live, you get a piece of the missing puzzle of the person. You get to hear what they sound like, hear how they interject their comments with their personal inflections, hear how they laugh when they shoot you in the back with a shotgun (looks at Krystyn), and so on. It just adds that much more the the person you know from reading what they say....it turns it into hearing what they say...it just makes a difference to me.

In my opinion anyway...

[baseball3190]

to add to all of the above, halo 2 is a great game! it blows alot of other fps's out of the water. Its not overrated, it can back up all the fame and spotlight it gets

[Anton P. Nym]

Innovation is nice, but what people need to remember is that the primary function of a game is to let people have fun. When innovation interferes with fun, it's innovation that should get the heave-ho. That's not to say that games shouldn't be both whenever possible, but novelty should not be sought for its own sake in game design. (Of course there are innovations in Halo 2, but much of it is in how it interacts with Live and handles all the content and how the AI works... all behind-the-scenes stuff, whereas Katamari Damacy's innovation is gob-smackingly obvious. (And fun.))

Halo 2 is a darned fun game for a lot of people. If I could concisely say why I'd have a far better job than I do now, but I'll leave it to the quantifiable; it's the most-played game on Xbox Live to date. Vox populii is all I can manage. Sorry.

The reason it's enshrined here is because of the ARG that launched it, which had innovation and fun in SPADES... the community that ARG built has endured, in part because of continued ability to play together via Live. That explains the soft spot for Halo 2 on the board.

Now, I'm a die-hard Bungie fan and would be playing Halo 2 even without the community here. (Possibly a null item, though, as I'd be playing with the HBO community in any case.)

Hmm... it just occurs to me; maybe it's that Halo 2 encourages its players to build communities via Live Friends lists and online fora and LAN parties. (Halo 2 LANs are unutterably fun, even when you're getting your gleuteus handed to you on a silver salver.) It's Fun to Play Together. (tm)

-- Steve is not brainwashed. Bungie is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful game company he's ever known in his life. (Honest.)

[krystyn]

You all glow so pretty when I stick you ...

But, yes. It's the community. The ability to form clans in online play, the replayability of the campaign (I cite the difficulty levels, the glitching one can do, the skulls that spawn), the versatility & customizability of the game types ...

Ubercado, I am sure I don't have any idea what you're talking about, bro. I um, haven't held a shottie in aaaaaaaaaages.

Mmm, brute shot.

Plus, Halo 2's graphics are pleasing and not too stressful on the XBox itself (unless you're talking about some cutscene rendering, in which case, you're on your own), so I get smooth gameplay and richly-pigmented scenery that feels pretty fricking immersive, when you get right down to it. I need to make some quiet time soon to hang out in Turf and Sanctuary, just to get the ambient elements without the gunfight. The rain on Warlock is lovely. Some of air noise on Containment makes the whole map feel chilly and a bit desolate.

Good stuff. Not really surprising to me why it's doing so well.

[vortech]

I'd say Madden wins that title.

[Anton P. Nym]

Oh, and don't forget the cooperative play for replay value too. A big complaint from folks who went from Xbox Halo 1 to HaloPC was the omission of cooperative play.

And yes, Krystyn, the new maps are worth exploring for their own sake too... Sanctuary and Containment can be curiously relaxing to "stroll" around when just listening to the ambient noise and looking at the scenery. (I'm guessing it's the bright sunlight and babbling brook/blowing breeze audio.) Turf almost feels like an extension of the campaign with its audio loop, and Warlock is mysterious and eerie and cool.

-- Steve's no trixter, but exploring the Halo maps is a pleasant diversion even without warthog jumps and sword flights.

[VMVash]

I like halo2 because of the story line. I like it. I had been waitting for Halo sence 1999 when it still was on pc. It was every thing a tps should have. Then I forgot about it till I saw it at my friends house. Then I bought a xbox.

What I will say is that Half-life2 is my favorit fps. It is halo2 times 100 it's that good...but not a really good community like halo2 has, and no co-op but i think someone is working on that. Idk ....Its still a fun game.

[water10]

Well, I've gotta say that the community here brings me back almost every time. But I've also gotta say that I'd still play it with people I know in real life, just not nearly as much.

The game itself if pretty darn good! While I agree you can say it's a generic FPS because it doesn't bring anything revolutionary to the table, it succeeds on the details.

Let's start with campaign:

For starters, it has VERY good balance of weapons. When you play on easy or normal, you can pretty much go through the whole thing using 1 or 2 weapons. But when you play legendary, you'll find that plasma pistol is invaluable! Battle rifle (or pistol in H1) is awesome to pick the grunts (which are dangerous on legendary!) with a scope! Needlers are awesome to take elites when you don't have plasma pistol with you. Shotguns for the flood!

The AI is pretty darn good! You can say other games have this. But I say they mix AI with scripted sequences VERY well on both games. There are situations that I just love to play again and again, just because it's very fun! Truth and Reconciliation is one of the best levels I ever played in a single player game ...

Now, let's go to Multiplayer. Again, weapons balance is one of the best you'll see. Specially with the Update, single wielding is very balanced with dual wielding. Every weapon is dangerous if you know how to use it.

The Aim Assist (NOT auto-aim!) is pretty well implemented! It's a console afterall and you don't have the same accuracy you have with the mouse/kb! But it's so well implemented that some people thought it was never there! You don't have thousand's of headshots as you can get on a PC game, but you have enough to satisfy you (or piss off your oponent, if you're Twisted or Vash).


Ok, that's what I have for now. You can agree or disagree. But the thing is people will play if they find the game fun. Sure, marketing will sell games, but it doesn't make you come back to the game again and again. Yes, believe it or not, people play it because they find it fun. Even though you don't think it's fun, you should be able to understand why people like it. If you don't, well, I guess it's ok to find it overrated ...

[Ranger D]

I love to chime in on discussions like this and give my opinion.


I would have to agree that Halo 2 is pretty damn overrated. This is because I bough Halo 2 for the singleplayer storyline. And in my opinion, it fell complete on it's face. Rather than rehash what I've said before, You should just read it, in the context it was presented.

The day before Halo 2 is released, I post this.
Then this after finishing the game on Nov. 10th.
Then my much more organized opinions here. Just keep reading that thread.

My point is that not everyone here likes Halo 2. I feel it is overrated. Even if you don't count all the techincal glitches with texture load times, etc., the core story of the game sucked. You got nothing done. You had no feeling of accomplishment. When the game even BEGINS to start turning up the volume, it ends pre-maturely. As a fan of Evangelion, I know that a good story can ask more questions then it answers, but this was not the case here.

The only major success I will give to Halo 2 is it's multiplayer on Live. (if you were horribly cinical, you could say that MS engineered Halo 2 just to sell live subscriptions, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt ) It has the ability to build communites and have fun with friends. Due to my living situation and numerous network errors on Live (not being able to group with certain friends) I lost interest in Halo 2 very quickly. however, there are a group of really cool people here in this community that still play together and I think that is awesome. Keep having fun.

[DreamOfTheRood]

[Nova]

Innovational. That's my new favourite word of the day.

[poorsod]

[krystyn]

The cheating and glitching has almost become a non-issue since the updates and resets.