RKMBs Forums .::Robegories::. Games and Tech FRAK! #8 – A brief look at Halo 2 (minor spoilers)

FRAK! #8 – A brief look at Halo 2 (minor spoilers)


A few months ago I managed to gain temporary possession of an XBOX. My immediate priority was to play through Halo: Combat Evolved – the first person shooter that has come to be regarded as one of the defining games for the console.

Considering that Halo is basically a series of firefights, it’s amazing how immersive and enjoyable it is. Right from the off, it pulls you into the action and although the path through the game is linear, the battles, which frequently take place on an epic scale, are not. The pace is well judged, pitching between the claustrophobic, back to the wall with all guns blazing, confrontations with ‘The Flood’ and the freeform outdoor firefights, in which you and your soldiers face-off against Covenant infantry and vehicles.

Last night I got my first look at the highly anticipated sequel, simply titled Halo 2. I watched my friends play it for several hours and also played solo for about half an hour.







PLOT


Halo 2 begins with a lengthy opening movie that shifts awkwardly, back and forth, between the Master Chief’s triumphant return to Earth and the trial of the disgraced Covenant commander, who failed to prevent the Master Chief from destroying Halo.

The Covenant scenes are beautiful and, for the first time, you get a sense of what the various alien races actually look like. By comparison, the human scenes look underdone, as if less care has been put into the graphics and the dialogue, although it is amusing to see that the holographic A.I. – Cortana - has grown her hair.

As the game progresses, the suspicion grows that, this time around, the developers were more interested in The Covenant and slightly bored with having to tell the story of The Master Chief and his human allies. Regrettably, this decision to flesh-out the Covenant turns out to be one of the game’s great failings, resulting in an unsatisfying and over-complicated narrative, which lacks momentum. It must be one of the few titles where what happens in the cut-scenes is difficult to ignore and actually drags down the in-game sequences.







GRAPHICS


The first evidence that all is not quite up to scratch in Halo 2 comes early on in the game as The Master Chief and an Officer prepare to board a train. The officer turns to speak to a soldier, waiting on the platform, and it becomes clear that, while he is capable of walking forward in a more or less natural fashion, he hasn’t been animated to change his facing naturally. He can only change his orientation with a succession of sudden jerks, while his body remains completely static. It’s a small fault, but, at this point, before a shot has even been fired, it leaves the nasty impression, that something so obvious and easily fixable can only have been left in place, if the game has been released before it was completely polished. Perhaps the threat posed by software pirates was too much for Microsoft to risk anymore time in development or maybe the pressure to tap into the Pre-Christmas market proved too much of a temptation.

All of the characters and vehicles from the original Halo have been over-hauled and re-rendered. The first impression is that they look great, however this level of detail is actually a disadvantage in the game where, as they race towards you, your enemies seem less distinct than in the original title. The detail that has gone into the characters also contrasts badly with the extremely basic, featureless environments in which you fight. Part of the reason for this probably lies in a desire not to over-tax the XBOX processor. However, there are occasions where the absence of detail works to the detriment of the game. During a battle on an orbital defence platform, the sound suddenly went funny causing a moment of worry before we realised that The Master Chief had just walked through an airlock and was now in deep space. The mundane background and the completely normal gravity didn’t really do a good job of getting this across.

Occasionally the basic outdoor architecture is enhanced with some quite beautiful backdrops, however these are so graphically superior to the environments that you interact with, that they feel superimposed and lack the unearthly beauty of the Halo world.







GAMEPLAY


Halo 2 looks similar to its predecessor but it doesn’t play like the original. In Halo you always felt like you were right in the thick of the action. The firefights in Halo 2 are curiously uninvolving. They’re every bit as frenetic as before, with plasma bolts and grenades flying all over the place and yet it feels like a veil has come down, preventing you from becoming completely immersed in the gameplay. The weapons are still as destructive, some more so, but when you fire them, they lack punch. Even the grenades seem to explode with less force. ‘The Flood’ are still able to leap incredible distances and are capable of dispatching you with a couple of swipes of their talons but their attacks feel less savage than before. It seems like the violence, or rather the aggressiveness, of the first game has been watered down in the sequel. Consequently the fights suffer from a lack of urgency that was a hallmark of some of the more intense battles in Combat Evolved.

The AI of troops on your own side has vastly improved. The soldiers have evolved beyond being a simple distraction to draw fire, while you take out the enemy. They are now more than capable of tactically dealing with Covenant forces, with or without your assistance. They are also able to drive vehicles, giving you the opportunity to man the gun of a Warthog while someone else steers it around the battlefield. Abandoning a Warthog, with soldiers in it, can often result in one of your men shifting into the driver’s seat and leaving without you.

The enemy AI is frustratingly patchy. Frequently I saw Covenant soldiers standing motionless behind walls while, right around the corner, or even behind a simple obstruction, such as a crate, all hell was breaking loose. They weren’t hiding or taking cover – they just hadn’t activated. At one point, a Covenant Elite got caught on a wall, much to everyone’s amusement, however, when that part of the game was replayed, exactly the same thing happened.

One marked improvement is in the handling of some of the vehicles. The new improved Warthog is much easier to drive. With this new-found manoeuvrability, you could easily clear the final stage of Halo with minutes to spare. The Covenant Ghost also steers much better than the original.

Unfortunately the same sense of detachment that has taken combat off the boil in Halo 2 also effects those parts of the game that involve driving vehicles. One particular stage has you piloting a Scorpion Tank along an abandoned stretch of motorway and is reminiscent of those old arcades where you get to steer a car or a fighter jet in a dead straight direction, while all your enemies appear on the horizon and confront you head-on. In some of the aerial combat sequences of the game, you get no sense of movement or speed from your vehicle at all.







OVERALL


No doubt about it, Halo was a tight game. It couldn’t really have been much better than it was. The script was simple and very dark. No character was inexpendable. The firefights were well paced and seldom outstayed their welcome. Admittedly, some of ‘The Flood’ levels dragged on, but with hindsight they provided some of the moments in the game where you really had to fight tooth and nail if you wanted to stay alive. You battled your way in and then you had to battle your way back out.

For reasons that will become apparent as you progress through the game, Halo 2 does not hang together as well as its predecessor. While the original was lean and finely tuned, this feels baggy and unfocused. The linear progression is more apparent this time and many parts of the game are more like set pieces where the over-riding impression is that you have less freedom than before.

A major disappointment is the absence of the haunting score from the first game, which did so much to build the atmosphere. In Halo 2 the music is either non-existent or quite poor. When it does rise above the noise of gunfire, it certainly adds very little to the experience.

Halo 2 seems to be a game searching for an identity. You get the sense that the coders at Bungie were watching other titles coming onto the market and were bored with working on their own game.

Early stages in the game, in which you defend Zanzibar from Covenant forces, who have landed on earth, look strangely contemporary, for a story set in the future, almost like Iraq, in some respects. Add to this, the new lines of dialogue spoken by the more senior Covenant soldiers who yell insults such as “Heretic!” and “Infidel!” at The Master Chief and you could have any of the innumerable Gulf War / Anti Terror titles that have been released over the past few years.

The Covenant society draws heavily on the pseudo religious Protos, from Star Craft while a giant Covenant tank is reminiscent of the huge spider creature that appeared in video footage of Half Life 2 over a year ago. Having created this monstrosity, the programmers seem unsure exactly what to do with it and do not use it for good effect.

The multi-player modes, in which you can go head to head with human opponents, look good but this will not satisfy the many Halo devotees who were expecting a game that built on the foundations of the original.

When I played Halo 2 the last thing that I expected to be was bored, but, when my time was up, I was more than happy to pass on the controller. It reminded me of the second Matrix film – everything a bit glossier and on a slightly larger scale than before, but ultimately an empty experience that distanced itself from what made the first installment so good.

I haven’t been this disappointed with a game since Quake 2 failed to live up to its hype. As far as solo gameplay is concerned, it’s definitely a step backward. They’ve lost some vital element that I can’t quite put my finger on.

The over-complicated story lacks conviction and drags the game down with it. The Covenant worked better as an enemy when their intentions were slightly mysterious.

Early reaction to Halo 2 has been good, but, once the dust settles, the snowstorm of hyperbole and acclaim which has marked the build up to its release is going to look unjustified by the end product.

Given the choice between replaying Halo: Combat Evolved or finishing Halo 2 I think that I would throw my lot in with the original. It’s not a bad game by any means. It’s just that a combination of more money, greater pressure and the difficulty of staying true to the spirit of the original, while at the same time moving it forward, have unbalanced what was winning formula the first time around.








Related Threads

Halo 2 is out today!

The ending was a little weak. Perhaps it'll have a better ending if you beat it on Legendary, but I doubt it.

I can see Halo 2 working best as an online game because of the increased scale of the battlefields and also the new weapons and vehicles.

The expanded Halo universe does nothing for me and I think that it works against the game. It's the Star Wars effect all over - where the new trilogy's efforts to explain everything undermined the mystique of the original three films.

I have a plea . . . and I hope you guys can help.


The boys (9 & 11) have been asking Pat to get them Halo 2. He's said "No" for obvious reasons and now, the boys are hounding me . . . asking if I'll get it for them for Christmas.


So, what I need, is every bad thing you can think of, no matter how small it is, about this game . . . and send it to me via PM.


Normally, I wouldn't go to this kind of trouble to convince them that something they want is so incredibly sucky, but well, Tyler got one "A" on his report card and C's and D's for the rest (not good). So, I'm hoping that by hearing how badly this game sucks, they'll forget all about it.


Thanks in advance for your help!

-Bianca

Tell them it's like watching their grandma do the Hokey Pokey... nekkid.

If that doesn't end their desire for the game, then, well, you've got a bigger problem on your hands.

I don't think they know what the Hokey Pokey is...so that might not work.

What kinda crapass schools do you have up there for them not to have the kids dance the Hokey Pokey?!

All I know is they don't go to the schools in my old district . . . and schools are different now so who knows what they do/don't teach them these days.

And people wonder why our youth are so despondent.

The game is rated mature so they are too young to play it. If they complain, tell them to mow the lawn.

Plus, it's really not that different from any other third person shooter.

Did Dave actually use a "LOL"?

Geez...

Yeah, he did...

damn!