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Well, as I said I would notify you about heavy opinions, I’m doing so.

Halo 2 is overly hyped. The graphics don’t look that much better (they can’t, the xbox is static, can’t upgrade, can’t put better graphics on), Halo’s (1) story was pretty good and such, but it didn’t have a few things:

1) Weapon choices, which, from what I have read, doesn’t improve much in Halo 2. Yes, you get more, but do you get the range you do in Counter-Strike?
2) Graphics — simply put, an Xbox can’t handle the level of detail that the Source engine pumps out (Counter-Strike: Source, Half-Life 2, Half-Life: Source, etc.)
3) Gameplay (Xbox only) is pitiful on a controller. Try turning with a joystick and then with a mouse. Which one is easier?
4) It’s published by Microsoft (personal bias )
5) Microsoft is squeezing people to buy Xboxes who don’t want to wait for Halo 2 on PC (yes, I will buy Halo 2 on PC when it comes out in a few years just to try it)

Good:

6) Graphics were OK for PC. Relative to the performance, it was horrible, but that aside, they were ok.
7) Halo had a good story line (did I mention this already?). Single player was fun to play through. Multiplayer is fun to have jeep wars. Vehicles are not rampant like in Battlefield 1942, which is a plus.

Half-Life 2, on the other hand, looks very promising:

1) Weapon choices. Manipulator. (more guns than in Halo 2 as well as far as I know)
2) Graphics are amazing
3) Physics are amazing
3) Gameplay is amazing, no joysticks unless you want it
4) VALVe != Microsoft

Bad:

5) No console support (maybe this is a good thing, we don’t have to annihilate all the poor people using consoles)

At the time of the writing, neither game was released yet. I have seen Halo 2 and Half-Life 2 trailers.

P.S. I think Halo 2 should be a decent game and would like to play the PC port whenever it comes out. Halo’s engine was, however, terribly ported and runs awful.

Edited:

Thanks to Spaceman Spiff of the Shary Forums, who apparently is reading the manual, there are 18 weapons in Halo 2, which is enough to put my ‘not enough’ weapons point in the garbage can, ignore it (that is, if he is correct in his saying).

This entry was posted on Monday, November 8th, 2004 at 10:57 pm and is filed under General Tech, Old Archive. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.