I finished Halo 2 a couple of a weeks ago, first time I’d gone through it since it first came out in 2004. I remember before that I had thought the graphics weren’t that good (higher level of graphic detail “pops” in, you can really see this during cut-scenes) compared to the original and that the game was short. On the first point, Halo 2 does look better than Halo 1. It was pretty obvious to me since I had finished playing Halo 1 right before starting 2. Also, the single player campaign for H2 isn’t really that short- it just isn’t that fun. Thinking about both games makes me wonder though, if my initial impressions of both sway my opinion too much on the replays. For example, when I played Halo 1, I thought it was the best thing ever. I still do, but in all my repeat plays, I don’t really pay attention to the story line and other details of why it was so good, I just play and get through stuff, almost like I’m trying to remind myself of 2001 rather than playing it truly fresh and seeing if stacks up the way it used to.
Then again, can anyone truly start fresh when you’re replaying a game? But it does make me wonder, do I not like Halo 2 because of the reasons I think (which will be listed below) or did my first play bias my opinion beyond recovery?
So anyway, Halo 2 does look a bit sharper than Halo 1. The framerate is solid, the visual design is still there, though I think the sense of mood is not created as well as it was Halo 1 in terms of the landscapes and level design. In terms of the music, I wasn’t a big a fan of the Breaking Benjamin/Incubus/rock-inspired stuff in the game, though everything else is fine. When you look at the gameplay, this is where the big difference for me comes. Halo 2 feels a lot faster than Halo 1- while I felt Halo 1 was more about patience, waiting for your turn to strike, and seizing opportunities, it doesn’t feel quite this way for the sequel. In the original, it felt like you were part of a bigger landscape, just 1 dude on this huge planet roaming around, and I think the scale is greatly reduced in Halo 2. Maybe I can describe this as a sense of openness in the game world. In Halo 2, I feel much more pushed on a focused path, smaller levels, whether this is actually true or not, I don’t know. Gunplay is much faster in the sequel, bullets come out a lot faster, and to me, I feel like this set up the gameplay to be more aggressive, less about taking your time and seeing what was going on.
The Flood are around (sorry, doesn’t seem like a big spoiler to me) again, but I just never cared about them (they seem like plot filler to me), while in Halo 1, I felt like I was in the movie Aliens trying to fight them off, running scared all the time whenever you’d hear that big pop, and then a bunch of other pops- popcorn of death. There are new races, characters, and creatures, and you actually don’t play as Master Chief the whole way through the game, but I don’t think that any of these additions are that noteworthy.
Shooting control feels solid, but the gameplay mechanics between gun/melee attack/grenade, it all doesn’t work quite the same way. It doesn’t have the same sense of balance and power and timing. I know this could sound like me basically wanting Halo 1 to be exactly like Halo 2, and in a sense you would be right. I do think Halo 1 is the best game of all time after all. Dual wielding is available in the sequel, but it was never something I really enjoyed in single player or back when I used to play multiplayer with Kyle years ago. Dual wielding is something I had to do to stay competitive or be effective. This lack of comfort comes from not having the same smooth feel of control when I was dual wielding compared to 1 gun. With 2 guns, I always felt I was guessing on the controls, but with 1, I knew I could be the bad ass I thought I was- I always knew exactly what I was doing, and the controller was an extension of my mind.
Story can be a nice motivator to any game, although I get the feeling I really don’t remember the details of any story in any game I play. Still, I think when I play, I can tell when I’m interested in what’s going on, and I think the difference between Halo 1 and 2 if I were to sum up everything is that Halo 2 is like the best version of all the other FPS games you’ve played. It looks pretty good, controls pretty well, there’s nothing so much wrong with it. The story and the pacing of the game can easily match that of every other FPS out there. Halo 1, however, is more than a FPS, it’s a different time of gaming experience. It’s a movie in which your point of view comes from the FPS mechanic rather than a FPS game that is trying to make you feel like you’re playing a movie. Normally, I’d say the former is bad, so I think I just don’t have the words to describe it.
This is noteworthy though; a lot of the story in Halo 2 is told through cutscenes. In Halo 1, rarely were there cutscenes; instead, you played the story out in gameplay. This is an example of what I mean above. For every other FPS, Halo 2 is just like them. Halo 1 is a different thing entirely.
That probably doesn’t make any sense, but maybe if you’re also someone who sees the big differences between the original and sequel, maybe you feel the same.
I guess the good news is that with Halo 3, what I’ve been reading is that it’s much closer to Halo 1 than Halo 2. Just reading the gaming news this week, it’s all Halo 3. Excellent reviews have been making me think about a XBox 360, despite the high investment I’d have to put in. I guess it’d be no different for me as with the original XBox. I lined up for launch and bought the XBox just for Halo, no other reason. If there were no Halo, I would not have an XBox.
Tags:
fps,
halo,
xbox
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