Out of all of the halo games halo 2 was the most balanced and delivered a great campaign and multiplayer experience and this in my opinion is why:
1.The large open environments: Halo is famous for its large play space which halo 2 has plenty of. An example is the mission where you follow the heretic leader in a banshee across an massive station
2.Interesting and fluctuating story: The story in Halo 2 was told/played through the 2 main characters chief and arby. By changing between the characters the game kept your attention
3.Halo 2 was ambitious to the point that it nearly collapsed: Ambition is important in any game and it helps developers to aspire to do great things and push the limits of a gameplay experience
4.Incredible soundtrack: The soundtrack of a game brings atmosphere and helps covey the emotions of the character your playing as. Halo 4 needs a good soundtrack which will live up to Marty’s legendary scores
5.Fun and inventive multiplayer maps: The maps in Halo 2 were individual to the campaign and many became the base of some of Halo 3s classic maps.
6.Finally and most importantly, It broke the conventions of any other halo games: new characters, experiences, weapons, enemies; all made this halo be independent from halo CE which is exactly what Halo 4 needs to be to draw a new crowd
> Out of all of the halo games halo 2 was the most balanced and delivered a great campaign and multiplayer experience and this in my opinion is why:
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> 1.The large open environments: Halo is famous for its large play space which halo 2 has plenty of. An example is the mission where you follow the heretic leader in a banshee across an massive station
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> 2.Interesting and fluctuating story: The story in Halo 2 was told/played through the 2 main characters chief and arby. By changing between the characters the game kept your attention
>
> 3.Halo 2 was ambitious to the point that it nearly collapsed: Ambition is important in any game and it helps developers to aspire to do great things and push the limits of a gameplay experience
>
> 4.Incredible soundtrack: The soundtrack of a game brings atmosphere and helps covey the emotions of the character your playing as. Halo 4 needs a good soundtrack which will live up to Marty’s legendary scores
>
> 5.Fun and inventive multiplayer maps: The maps in Halo 2 were individual to the campaign and many became the base of some of Halo 3s classic maps.
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> 6.Finally and most importantly, It broke the conventions of any other halo games: new characters, experiences, weapons, enemies; all made this halo be independent from halo CE which is exactly what Halo 4 needs to be to draw a new crowd
halo 2 was my favorite halo. But dont forget a lot of ppl hated it as well
> Out of all of the halo games halo 2 was the most balanced
I’m going to have to disagree that the entirety of H2 was balanced. The Brutes and Jackal snipers certainly weren’t. The Jackal snipers were made balanced in H3 and even more in ODST. Brutes got a slight improvement in H3, but sadly, higher rank meant more health, which doesn’t make sense and doesn’t make them tough at all. They were still damage sponges and personally, I hated them even more than I did in H2.
> and delivered a great campaign and multiplayer experience and this in my opinion is why:
Agreed.
Was kinda confusing at first but it was pretty interesting.
I liked that a lot. The less polished a game is, the more fun it seems to be.
> The less polished a game is, the more fun it seems to be
This is an interesting idea and is defiantly true in the horror/indie genre. The grittiness of the graphics and the lack of polish can help set a tone for the story and enhance the experience
> > Out of all of the halo games halo 2 was the most balanced
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> I’m going to have to disagree that the entirety of H2 was balanced. The Brutes and Jackal snipers certainly weren’t. The Jackal snipers were made balanced in H3 and even more in ODST. Brutes got a slight improvement in H3, but sadly, higher rank meant more health, which doesn’t make sense and doesn’t make them tough at all. They were still damage sponges and personally, I hated them even more than I did in H2.
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> > and delivered a great campaign and multiplayer experience and this in my opinion is why:
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> 1. Agreed.
> 2. Was kinda confusing at first but it was pretty interesting.
> 3. I liked that a lot. The less polished a game is, the more fun it seems to be.
> 4. Agreed.
> 6. Yep.
I think he meant balanced multiplayer… which it had better than every other Halo game.
> 1.The large open environments: Halo is famous for its large play space which halo 2 has plenty of. An example is the mission where you follow the heretic leader in a banshee across an massive station
Halo 2’s environments are really only all that open in a meaningful way if you break the maps.
You could also sound much more credible if you would call the levels of the game that you’re supposedly giving an intelligent analysis of by name. Try Arbiter/Oracle.
> 2.Interesting and fluctuating story: The story in Halo 2 was told/played through the 2 main characters chief and arby. By changing between the characters the game kept your attention
It must not be very good if it only mainly kept attention by changing between two characters.
(I’m really just criticizing your analysis with this statement, not the game itself; my big issues with Halo 2’s storytelling are the poor use of gameplay in relation with other stuff, the overall narrative flow being a bit clumsier than it could have been, and the in-game combat dialogue being rather awful to the point that the elites come off very poorly.)
> 6.Finally and most importantly, It broke the conventions of any other halo games
I’ll agree that Halo 2 totally ignored much of what Halo 1 did really well on a campaign gameplay design level, but you make it sound as though there were many other Halo games at the time.
You said that: Halo 2’s environments are really only all that open in a meaningful way if you break the maps. I agree and disagree to this. There are certain sections in Halo 2 where there size and scale of the campaign maps do astound you and do reach the player in a ‘meaningful’ way. But at other points in the campaign the player is funnelled along certain routes and map exploration is restricted. However you still get a sense of scale in halo 2 and this can be enough to engage the player and entertain them. In halo 4 I would like to see even bigger environments with lots of AI to get a true scale of war.
sorry about the name of the mission I forgot it
I don’t need to explain about the story of Halo 2 we all know it was the best story with the most plot twists.
When I said:Finally and most importantly, It broke the conventions of any other halo games I said it in this way because halo 2 remains a unique experience today and I don’t think that ‘Halo 2 ignored’ what Halo 1 did well. It would have been boring if Halo 2 had followed Halo 1s style and there would be no development. Series have to change to survive and this is important to remember.
> I don’t need to explain about the story of Halo 2 we all know it was the best story with the most plot twists.
No we don’t.
> When I said:Finally and most importantly, It broke the conventions of any other halo games I said it in this way because halo 2 remains a unique experience today and I don’t think that ‘Halo 2 ignored’ what Halo 1 did well. It would have been boring if Halo 2 had followed Halo 1s style and there would be no development. Series have to change to survive and this is important to remember.
But Halo 2’s change was, as much as anything, oriented towards a lazy design of making things difficult by beefing up the damage tables while making it manageable by beefing up the assist and offering regenerating health.
Which means you’re frequently shoehorned into noob-combo cover shooting and other contrived nonsense if you choose to play on a difficulty that offers any sort of challenge (legendary).
Halo 1, meanwhile, is vastly more fair in how it provides difficulty, and its methods allow for a lot of intense maneuvre combat in addition to the modern cover shooter, enabling but not overpowering a vast range of micro-scale tactics that can be very dynamic and exciting in execution. Resultantly, it offers vastly more “real” gameplay variety for standard high-difficulty playthroughs.
Halo 1’s gameplay variety also allows for much more smoothly-paced gameplay/narrative resonance. If you look at something like Halo 2, there’s really not much the game can do to provide connection between gameplay and narrative. But Halo 1 can pull things off like SC/AotCR starting boundless and vague and becoming a more and more focused act 2 until it climaxes in the epic linear push of AotCR.
It’s possible to mix things up without introducing a ton of frustrating silliness. Halo 2 fails in this regard.
right, this halo 2 story issue: halo 2 has the introduction of the prophets, graveminnd, arbiter & tartarus. Many of these characters become involved with the halo novels and without halo 2 they would not exist. Halo 2 also has plenty of plot twists from the betrayal of the brutes to guilty spark returning (which was partly hinted at in Halo CE I know) if you disagree then fine, you are entitled to your own opinion.
As for the Halo 1 and 2 gameplay I wouldn’t say that halo 2 was ‘lazy’. The core gameplay in both games is very similar with halo CE requiring more tactics but not necessary more skill. Halo 2 made up for this with more unique environments while halo CE repeats many areas.
Overall best to get off this topic and just say that each of us is entitled to our own opinion. After all this is not CE VS Halo2 but how can Halo 2 inspire halo4. However if you want to set up a thread around CE vs H2 then be my guest.
> right, this halo 2 story issue: halo 2 has the introduction of the prophets, graveminnd, arbiter & tartarus. Many of these characters become involved with the halo novels and without halo 2 they would not exist. Halo 2 also has plenty of plot twists from the betrayal of the brutes to guilty spark returning (which was partly hinted at in Halo CE I know) if you disagree then fine, you are entitled to your own opinion.
I don’t disagree on any of the facts you pointed out. What I’m not understanding is why you think that having all this stuff implies that the storytelling is better; I can have lots of hairs on my head even if I’m not the best at constructing up a stylish hairdoo.
I’ll even agree that Halo 2 has extremely good scripted writing and voice acting, and good overall use of aesthetic assets to go with. And I would never say that the storytelling isn’t quite good. But the narrative flow and gameplay flow and whatnot could certainly mesh far better than they do.
If there’s one thing that any game could learn from Halo 1, it’s that.
are you suggesting that we should avoid dual wield, the battle rifle, the whole multiplayer system and everything else which halo 2 showed us and just stick to halo CE?
The solution is in the original trilogy. Halo 4 is a sequel to Halo 3, so it should keep equipment but make them better and add more. It should take the best aspects of every Halo game up to date. (Halo 2 BR, Halo 3 Ranking System…etc)
> are you suggesting that we should avoid dual wield,
Not in my posts in this thread, but I certainly would if the question were to come up.
> the battle rifle
Not necessarily. I enjoy the aesthetics of the M6D as a precision weapon, but I do not mind the battle rifle; I have some concerns about its ease of finishing headshots, but it works and has its own nice aesthetics.
> the whole multiplayer system
I didn’t argue that utilizing an online multiplayer network was bad, nor would I, nor can I even begin to grasp why you might think I would.
That said, I would love a switch from the peer-to-peer approach in use since Halo 2 to dedicated servers. Especially community servers; those systems tend to work a million times better for everyone than matchmaking structures, result in vastly superior online performance, and continue to function very well even if a game drops to a very low population. Some games with small game lists continue to function surprisingly smoothly even when there are only five or ten people online at a given time in the entire world.
I thought the campaign was awful… Dunno why, it just wasn’t my favorite.
That said, Halo 2’s multiplayers poops on all the others. Yes there were a lot of butt hurt kids that lost the overpowered pistol. Yes swipe sniping, hitboxes, button combos, modders, and boosters were all bad (remember that was all 7 years ago). Even with all those things Halo 2 has been my favorite and i think the best out of all of them.
> I thought the campaign was awful… Dunno why, it just wasn’t my favorite.
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> That said, Halo 2’s multiplayers poops on all the others. Yes there were a lot of butt hurt kids that lost the overpowered pistol. Yes swipe sniping, hitboxes, button combos, modders, and boosters were all bad (remember that was all 7 years ago). Even with all those things Halo 2 has been my favorite and i think the best out of all of them.
You just named a bunch of things that are big deal (swipe sniping, hitboes, modders)! Button combos I thought actually saved Halo 2 multiplayer, as individuals could actually make a difference. Although it is sad that a game has to rely on unintentional glitches to make it competitive…
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> I think he meant balanced multiplayer… which it had better than every other Halo game.
But then again, that is incorrect. The weapon sandbox of Halo 2, while certainly better than the sandbox of Halo 3, was nowhere near the level of balance that the Halo CE weapon sandbox had. Halo CE was the most balanced Halo game out of them all, the only practically useless weapon was the Needler, for everything else you could find a use for even in a competitive environment.
