Wake Me When You Need Me: Halo 2

What is there to say about Halo 2? Possibly the greatest FPS of all time challenged only by CoD: Modern Warfare. It had a campaign that really dug deep into the lore of the universe. The introduction of the Brutes, a new playable character in the Arbiter and dual-wielding are just a few things that come to mind. I just got finished playing through the campaign again and I’m as blown away now as I was in 2004. So let’s jump right in.

Campaign/Story:

The way the story is told is second to none. With numerous cut scenes, fantastic voice acting and awesome one-liners, Halo 2 sets a stage that’s hard not to get lost in. The story starts with us seeing Thel 'Vadamee, the Elite that gave chase to the Pillar of Autumn when it blind jumped away from Reach as it was being glassed, being taken to trial in front of ‘The Council’. This introduces us to both the Prophets and the Brutes who make up a large chunk of the covenant forces that we didn’t encounter in the previous game.

As Thel 'Vadamee is labelled a heretic for his failure to stop Halo from being destroyed, the covenant brand him and sentence him to death. Death is not what he gets however as he is assigned to the position of Arbiter. This used to be a position of great honour for the greatest of Elites, but the position has since been used to get rid of unwanted Elites by giving them near suicidal missions.

At the same time, we’re shown Chief receiving new armour on Cairo station - a planetary defence platform set up to protect Earth from an invading fleet. As this is going on a Covenant fleet warps in and attacks several of the platforms including the Cairo. Chief stops them and decides to give the Covenant their bomb back. This gives us the iconic Halo scene of Chief  jumping out of an airlock with the bomb and placing it inside a Covenant cruiser himself, before falling back to earth and landing directly on the UNSC ship he needed to.

This sets up a romp across Earth, a new Halo ring and the mobile Covenant city of High Charity. With some hilarious one-liners from Johnson throughout, it’s an action sci-fi adventure that is second-to-none. It’s most probably my favourite story of all the Halo games because it manages to use political and religious themes in very adult ways, without forgetting that it’s a video game about shooting aliens in the face.

Gameplay:

I was surprised in the ease with which I picked up the controls again and how smooth this game plays, even ten years down the road. The shooting is as solid as it ever was - not overshadowed by any modern example of the genre. Every encounter with an enemy is an engaging experience due to the fantastic AI the series is known for.

The ability to dual-wield weapons makes you feel like a real badass super-soldier and something I never really realised how much I missed. Once I got hold of two SMG’s and laid the law down on some brutes, I fell in love with this game all over again. The vehicles all handle with that signature Halo feel, that ‘floaty-yet-precise’ feel you always want other games to have.

Graphics:

For the time, Halo 2 was mind blowing visually. It was the pinnacle of what could be achieved with the original Xbox and I was pleasantly surprised at how amazing it still looks 10 years on. It’s by no means of today’s standards but it looks better than many of the original launch titles on the 360 did, in my opinion.

The biggest thing I realised is just how awful audio sync up must be with older character models with only a moving gap in the face texture. I like how they managed to step away from that by making a lot of the dialogue from aliens with funny looking mouths so it didn’t look stupid. The small things are what matter.

The guns still look cool, all the animations are of top quality and the enemies have a glossy, leathery type look to them that makes them seem even more alien. I was genuinely expecting a blurry mess, but instead I was surprised by how well it holds up - considering how bad some PS2 and GameCube games look from the same period.

Best Bits:

Unfortunately Halo 2 has far too many good bits for me to throw them all in here. The one-liners from Sgt Johnson are always a hilarious moment regardless of how many times I play this game. I think my favourite from Halo 2 is “For a brick, he flew pretty good!” Other mentions most certainly go out to “If god is love, you can call me cupid” and “Dear humanity, we regret being alien bastards, we regret coming to Earth, and we most definitely regret that the Corps just blew up our raggedy ass fleet!”

Obviously, the Arbiter missions are a great part of the game. Just being able to play Halo from a different perspective is a fantastic idea considering the richness of the story and lore on show. Seeing the universe from multiple points-of-view is something that really shows off Bungie’s storytelling prowess .

I really cannot exaggerate just how great the story makes this game, the iconic scenes and phrases from this game that prevailed throughout the series lifetime are fantastic. The bomb scene I’ve already talked about and “Don’t make a girl a promise, if you know you can’t keep it.” are two major examples of how the whole series is still trying to chase the tail of Halo 2. Attempting to capture lightning in a bottle a second time.

WOW, WOW, WOW, WOW, WOW. WHERE’S THE MULTIPLAYER PART:

Okay, so unfortunately, like Halo: Combat Evolved, this is going to have to be all on memory and mostly I played this game on co-op but I’ll give you my opinion on what I can remember and what I did play.

So when it comes to co-op this game was the best. I have played this game through on co-op on legendary countless time with my friend. It was a challenge that needed us to coordinate heavily to beat every level. Not only working together but skill was needed to overcome legendary on co-op - something we only gained through extended playtime.

I remember a certain level towards the end of the game where you’re traversing the new Halo when everything is going to hell. The Brutes are fighting the elites, the humans are fighting both of them and the flood are all in there killing everything that moves. This level had some very difficult parts and is one of my fondest co-op gaming memories.

Of course I played some multiplayer. I fondly remember games on containment and coagulation, two maps that show how to design multiplayer games that flow so extremely well. I’m looking forward to replaying those maps more than anything with the new package.

Personal Opinion:

This is my favourite Halo and I started to believe maybe my opinion had been skewed by time and the internet’s nostalgia for it but it seems that I was genuinely remembering what was a fantastic experience. That’s an awesome realisation to have and not one that you can have every day. So, thank you Halo 2 for being as great as I remembered.

In the next article we’ll look at Halo 3: a game that broke sales records but didn’t exactly win every Halo fan over.