Halo 2

[NFG]

So I bought Half Life 2 'cause my Halo 2 was half a week late.  Fun, but it loads agonizingly slow, and alarmingly often.  Every segment goes on too long, by the time I'd finished the first vehicular segment I was thinking it was about three times longer than it should have been.

Then Halo 2 finally arrived.  I played a half dozen rounds multiplayer, and it's like, meh.  UT2004 kicks its ass all over the map.

But single player...  fucking WOW.  This is why I was excited for Halo 2.  This is awesome fun.  Superbly well paced, and the chatter - oh man, the chatter.  HalfLife 2 seems to take the coward's way out, making up for their lack of ability by coming up with all sorts of reasons to leave your character alone in the game.  Every time you meet an NPC (non player character) they're torn away from you a few minutes later, and then you spend twenty minutes alone.  Perhaps it's by design, making the player feel hopeless and frightened.  It works, but more often I feel bored.

Not so with Halo 2.  Wow.  I can't get over how it makes me feel like the events unfolding around me are really happening.  Squads chatter and hoot and congratulate me on particularly good kills.  I genuinely feel like I'm playing with a few dozen comrades and repelling alien invaders.  This is wild fun, where HalfLife 2 is slow and irritating, with its long periods of zero contact and relentless puzzles.  

Halo 2 initially irritated me with the pad controller over the mouse + kb I'm used to, but now - an hour or so into the game - I'm kicking ass with skill and no shortage of abandon.  

Woo yay, props to Bungie, and a meh to Valve.  You lose boys, Bungie 0wned you this time around.

[corpsicle]

Reverse everything in the above post for my review.

[atom]

That was harsh, did you just register that account to diss him? Anyways, yes I have been waiting just as long as everyone else for half life 2 to come out. Ive played it at my friends house, and meh.  The magic that Half-Life had is far gone. No multiplayer? Wtf. It's not a terrible game, it just feels more like tomb raider or resident evil or something else thats not what i was expecting. Counter-Strike source also looks very rushed and incomplete, much like Condition Zero.

Halo 2? I am VERY shocked. It came out surprisingly well, I thought for sure it was going to be the exact same game with different levels. Boy was I wrong. The multiplayer feels like it was going more towards UT2k4 and I don't know if I really like the results. I think the the new maps I've played were poorly designed for a good multiplayer experience. Anyways, thumbs up to Bungie.

This game is in a completley different category then the other two, well actually I guess they all dont fit in the same category. But I also give a thumbs up to Metroid Prime 2. The game started out rocky for me but picked up and I think its a real winner. The only thing I would have changed is having a little more change, its a little too much like the original. The multiplayer is cool but the maps are boring and there is no lan or online play. Shocked? Hell no.

So, out of the recent array of good games that have come out, I put in this order.

1) Halo 2
2) Metroid Prime 2
3) Half-Life 2

[Guest_Martin]

Yes Yes!

Halo 2 0wn3z! ^_____^
Those fools at the SEGA of America forums are like "OMG HALO 2 IS AN AMERICAN DEVELOPED P.O.S., SONIC HEROEZ IZ WAAYYB ETRER!!!11"

Despite, that Sonic Heroes is American... :rolleyes:  

[dhau]

I finished Halo 2 fairly quick, and somehow I didn't like it all that much. Probably it's just my expectations where high, but the game wasn't better then first part. Story is overdone, too much stuff for one game, so it's not fun anymore. Halo vs Halo 2 is kind of like Pitch Black vs Chronicles of Riddick. Overdone. And the worst part - the mistery is gone, it's more of some cheap pulp fiction. I enjoyed it while I played it, but I have much more fun with Final Fantasy on NES right now.

[benzaldehyde]

I enjoyed it while I played it, but I have much more fun with Final Fantasy on NES right now.

I'm sorry.

I'm suprised some people believed that this wasn't going to be fantastic. Then again, I'm also suprised some people didn't like the first.

The narrative was the main draw for me. I was expecting good things, but I was so bawled-over by the story I just sat and played through it in 2 sittings. Halo no longer has a story; it has a mythos. It's even more suprising to look through the special edition DVD and see some of the amazing plot points that had to be dropped.

Live play is feh. I was expecting to be playing a bunch of half-retarded middle-American assholes, and alas they were fulfilled. Fun if you can stand your fellow players. :lol:

I refuse to purchase Half-Life 2 because of Valve's authoritarian registration policy/selling crippled software. That, and I already know that it won't be better than Halo 2. And, I can't play it on my old machine.