glh's Journal: Halo 2 review

First, Amazon bungled up my order. They decided to wait until Monday (the day it was supposed to ship) to let me know the credit card they had on file was not valid (duh, I cancelled it a while ago.. would have been nice to know before the day it was going to ship). I was in a scramble on Mon to pre-order and most of the places were sold out, so I ended up pre-ordering from Worst Buy. I picked it up yesterday over lunch.

I got it home, popped it in and got an error message about my xbox not being able to download an update from Xbox Live. My first response was "great, they are maxing out the servers". However, I remembered tightening down my router and found that was the real problem. I did a factory restore (backed up the settings first) and everything was fine.

Now to the actual Halo 2 review... First off, I haven't actually played campaign mode yet. I went straight to xbox live. It's basically Halo 1 with some new weapons and the ability to steal vehicles. The new weapons are nice, but the default weapon (SGM?) is pretty worthless even if you are dual wielding. I wailed on someone within inches for several seconds with the SGM's, and they killed me with one pop from a shot gun (this happened several times). The vehicle improvements are pretty good. Most covenant vehicles (ghost, wraith, Banshee) now have "afterburners" that allow you to have a speedy getaway. I was having fun doing barrel rolls on the Banshee. Unfortunately, they took away the plasma cannon, so it's not quite as powerful. Also, the vehicles "die" pretty easily but this is probably a good thing.

The graphics are improved quite a bit. Everything seems a little smoother, and faster. It's a great gaming experience though I'm still not a big one for game controllers.

In terms of sound, I've heard the music is better but I wasn't really paying attention to that last night (probably only in campagin mode). The way voices are done on XBox live is cool. Once you are playing a game, you can only hear people that you are in close proximity to. This includes enemies. It's great for walking up to someone and beating them down with a weapon, right after you taunt them of course.

On Xbox live, you now have the ability to send "voice messages" to friends that were on (lets you record a voice mail and send it to them to listen). This is a neat little feature. I was playing against 16 other people for several hours with virtually NO lag. That is pretty amazing. When I first started out I got my butt handed to me, but after an hour or so I was doing a lot better (16+ kills per game).

I definitely think this game was worth the $50. I will be enjoying halo 2 for a while!! As I've said before, it's a great way to get your non-PC geeks involved in gaming. You can easily set up "private party" and invite your friends in by invite only. Great for avoiding the pre-teen let-me-impress-you-by-cussing crowd.

Have you used gamespy?

[TechnoLust]

They had that Xbox Tunnel before Xbox Live ever came out. Did you ever try it? I've used it with pretty good results.

Re:Have you used gamespy?

[glh]

I think I tried it once, but things were pretty slow so I gave up. It's not a bad idea.. Definitely cheaper than going Xbox Live!

Re:Have you used gamespy?

[Osty]

Definitely cheaper than going Xbox Live!

But XBox Live! costs less than $5/mo ($50/12 months = $4.17/mo), so it's not like you can really complain about the price that much.

Other interesting Halo 2 tidbits:

• Steve Vai [vai.com], guitar god of the 80s and 90s, played the guitar parts in the remix of the Halo theme, as well as in a few other places (that's him you hear during the bungie logo when you first start the disc, and the theme and other songs play at various other times during the campaign). Have a lis [nilerodgers.com]

Re:Have you used gamespy?

[glh]

Hey, thanks for the tips- those are really helpful. I really like that link for Bungie.. I can see I have a lot of practice to do.. :)

I'll have to check out the campaign mode soon, I know I could use the practice.