Halo 2: It sucks ass

[NFG]

OK, I have something I'd like to get off my chest.  It may be unqualified ranting and raving from a lunatic, but if I wasn't having so much fun with the game I wouldn't be so passionate about it, right?  Here we go:

Halo 2 sucks ass.  

It makes me insane, and I know I'm not alone in this.  Compared to other futuristic FPS games (Let's ignore realistic games for now) Halo 2 has fewer maps, more restrictive matchmaking options, and crappier weapons.

Now I ask you, what the hell is wrong with Bungie?  Are they one-hit wonders?  The game itself was short and there's only twelve lousy multiplayer maps?   I've heard stories about Bungie trying to stay a small developer but I gots ta wonder why they didn't spend a few dollars for one lousy map guy who could crank out maybe one map ever two months in his spare time over the last three years to give the game some selection?  It's preposterous!  Even when a map might be suitable for a certain gametype (Say, Coagulation with vehicular CTF or Assault) the game is so broken (vehicles take minutes to respawn!) it's entirely un-fun playing it.  

So there's not enough maps.

Most of the maps suck, and the matchmaking won't let you choose what gametype you play nor which map to play it on.  Sure you can play a custom game and invite your friends, but what if we want to play CTF with strangers?  No go, says Bungie!  

So we can't play the way we want.

It's buggy and inconsistant in the UI.  Half the time someone dies it says "A killed B!" but the other half reports "B was killed by A!" so you can't tell at a glance who killed who.  And that's if it deigns to report at all who was killed.  It's not at all uncommon for the game to completely forget to tell you someone died.

So it's kinda buggy.

The weapons are hugely inconsistant.  Never mind half of them cover a quarter (or more!) of the screen, they suck.  There's not enough of them, unlike (say) UT where there's some ten weapons, each with an alternate firing mode (or two).

So there's not many weapons.

It's ugly.  It's very ugly.  Heaven forbid you check out the screenshots from Unreal Championship 2 (coming in Feb) and you realize Halo 2's disgustingly ugly!  The levels are all more or less monochromatic.

And yet we're still playing it every night, often for hours, but at the end of every session we're complaining more and louder than the night before.  No maps, unsuitable gametypes, ridiculous weapons (All sword-matches)  made unplayable 'cause of lag.  No choices, bugs, bad maps!  

It's a great game made irritating 'cause of mediocrity on all sides.  One guy - one stinkin' guy! - could have doubled the map count in a few months.  Grr, etc!

Bah to Bungie!  Bah, I say!!

[benzaldehyde]

Short version: matchmaking sucks.

Custom games are still a joy, though IMHO. Though now that we know there are at least two Live players here, we should form an anti-clan that only plays custom games like Rocket Oddball Sword Skullfuck or whatnot.

"Iron Chef Wang" = Me on Live.

[Martin]

It's because Halo 2 was rushed out to meet the deadline the producer allocated it.
According to rumours Bungie are working on a "Directors Cut" version for the new Xbox.

[NFG]

I played the original Halo yesterday after a two year gap.  It's faster, brighter, clearer, prettier.  Halo 2 did everything wrong except up the polygon count.  I'm really extra disgusted now.

[atom]

Really? I hated the first game!

I thought it had a poor overrated gameplay with terrible graphics and boring multiplayer. Yeah, there arent a lot of maps. Half of the maps are really really good, and the other half are downright awful. Battle Creek and Coagulation are good remakes, and the smaller maps in the game are the best.

DONT FRET! The game has only been out for what, a month? You forget that the XBOX has a hard drive and that you can download new maps from Xbox Live when they are made.

Yeah, the first halo had a lot more levels, but heres the catch... THEY ARE ALL THE SAME LEVEL. Halo was so monotonous I am so glad they fixed it with the sequel. Lawrence as you get further in the game I think you will see how bad Halo gets with huge levels with long tunnels, and the exact same texture for a mile. Its boring!

The bugs, I havent really noticed any of the bugs you have mentioned, but I have noticed getting numerous kills and they dont tally up. Xbox live isnt supported in Japan is it? I cant help but think that would be the cause of your lag and dropping of packets containing who was killed.



I think part of the reason you are raving so much on the "suckiness" of Halo 2 is the fact that these 2 games have been so GREATLY over hyped and over rated. While everyone was spending 200 bucks on xboxes, 70 for xbox live, and 50 for halo, I was greatly enjoying Counter-Strike. It only costed me 10 dollars to run on my old 1.15 ghz pc.

[Endymion]

According to rumours Bungie are working on a "Directors Cut" version for the new Xbox.

I wouldn't put a lot of stock in this rumour. The same rumour raged for two years about Halo 1, except that it was to be on the current/original Xbox of course.

[Chuplayer]

Whether Halo 2 sucks or not, I'm not going to be playing it because I have an early model bawks with the Thompson DVD drive. I read some stuff on various Halo boards, and they all said the earliest bawkses with the Thompson drive can't play Halo 2. I popped open my bawks last night and lo and behold, I've got the Thompson. Son of a bitch.

[NFG]

That's complete bullshit.  It works fine, I also have a thompson.  One or twice in every four hour session it will fail to load a map, so you either load a different map or reboot the machine.  It's hardly a problem.

FWIW the only other game I have trouble with is Halo 1.

[Chuplayer]

Maybe you're just lucky because I can find lots of complaints on message boards across the net about the Thompson drive. That, and in recent months my XBOX Magazine demo discs are becoming more and more unplayable. I know they're probably cheaper grade and they do come scratched to hell, but at least they used to work consistently. I can't help but think "hardware problem" anymore. My new X-Men Legends game is working okay, but I just don't know.

[Martin]

That's a bit like OutRun2, it loads on all of the drives, but has trouble on Thomsons, and some trouble on philips.

[Chuplayer]

That's a bit like OutRun2, it loads on all of the drives, but has trouble on Thomsons, and some trouble on philips.

WTF? I was going to play the arcade version some more before buying the home version, but I was seriously considering getting it. Now there's a problem? I'm definitely doing something about this Thomson piece of junk because I really want to get into Outrun 2.

[atom]

A kid in my clan has an early model, and he CONSTANTLY fails to load the map.  You can tell which drive you have by how many holes are in the tray. I have the samsung, and have no problems, but i feel the drive is a little slower then the other ones.

[dhau]

Halo 2 is ok in single player, not fantastic, but not all that sucky. It's kind of fun in custom games, even though all my coworkers moved on to bigger better things to play online in like two days after Halo 2 release (mostly Ghost Recon 2 and Mech Assault 2).

I also had more fun with first Halo, because the story line wasn't bloated, and there was some big, nice looking areas. And the last mission (overload reactor then do some agressive warthog driving) is far more satisfying then the sequence with brutes chieftain (wait for elite with needler to paralize the bad guy, then plant a couple of plasmas on him).

[Lesmot]

I'm not a big FPS fan, the only shooters I enjoy involve some kind of aircraft, so I am obviously biased from the start.

Online gaming, even terrible online gaming, is strangly addictive. I think this is some primal functioning of our brains, that we have a need to compete and triumph. The game Eternal Lands is a good example, it's terrible, but people play daily anyway.

Halo is not great. I don't think it's even that good. The battles can be occasionaly fairly epic, but everything else is only alright. I have the demo of the new Unreal graphics engine and IT WILL BLOW HALO AWAY. Simply amazing.

It won't really blow Halo away sales wise, too many people get trapped into a hard-line support for things they think are supposed to be great, even if they're not.

My favourite newer game is Katamari Damashi. So, you can pretty much tell where I stand.