I don't really understand what the problem was with that. It's a cinematic, not a scripted sequence. It wasn't masquerading as gameplay. I was never mad that Starcraft cinematics weren't interactive. Heck, Halo 1 had at least one cinematic that was muuuch longer than this one, right in the middle of Guilty Spark. Even the scarab sequence doesn't seem like a big deal to me. Halo 3 improved on that a lot, but massive climbable enemies were not really a thing back when Halo 2 came out. Just the fact of a big hunk of level geometry walking around on legs was somewhat impressive for the time.
@@jabberw0k812 its because the scarab isnt very well designed. Its just not fun. They crammed like 30 grunts and 10 elites on one platform not designed to be fighting them.
@@psychomantis1926 I guess. Never bothered me. You just pick off the grunts, toss a couple grenades down a ramp, then storm the cockpit. Maybe not genius level design, but it's only like 30 seconds at the end of a very large, pretty solid level of the game. It may stand out more now because the setpiece itself seems dated...
I thought the Arbiter's story was more interesting, even back when I played it as a teenager. The Chief is a just a space badass. He kills aliens and keeps killing them. But the Arbiter has a whole arc about learning the Covenant's religion is wrong and rebelling. It is where all the interesting lore happens. The only problem is that telling your friends/enemies apart is a more work in those levels. But I remember thinking it was a REALLY cool twist when I realized I was going to play as the Arbiter
One nit pick about this video, I wish you stuck to the original graphics of Halo 2 with its original cutscenes to show what Halo 2 looked like at launch as it would make your points better and give the audience and impression of how it was presented originally.
yep, you have no idea how triggered I get when seeing the remastered cutscenes. Everybody just acts so out of character. its lame. There is allot to say about body language. and the remasters really messed up the characters
It also doesn't seem fair to critique elements that were not part of the original game, and character emotes that were written for much, much lower fidelity graphics.
I agree. Even though I prefer the new graphics, I think it is best to showcase the original here. I personally believe that Halo 2 is the ugliest halo game. Halo CE wasn't anything spectacular, but halo 2 had such a dull filter where everything looked so bland and uninteresting. It was caught between Halo CE and Halo 3's graphics, in which I believe are better artistically to look at.
The Arbiter was one of the best things about Halo 2's campaign imo. While his missions might not have been the best (it doesn't help that Bungie gave him all of Halo 2's Flood levels except for one), I've always felt he was a more intriguing character than pre H4 chief ever was. It was tragic to see a great warrior stripped of his honor and publicly shamed, forced to undergo a series of suicide missions to regain his honor but which ultimately lead to him realizing that everything his religion had taught him was a lie. We also got a fascinating look at covenant culture through his missions. It's disappointing that people would dismiss the Arbiter without giving him a chance or even without watching his cutscenes.
I remember young, impressionable me watching my older brother play through this game and being absolutely enthralled by the Arbiter's appearance, history, and culture. I ended up getting a large majority of my Halo books because I wanted to read more into the Arbiter's story. To be honest, I think Halo 2, and specifically the Arbiter, sparked my fascination with science fiction as a whole. It really got me invested into the Arbiter's character arc, which made me want to play all the way through, the first game I felt compelled to do so. I still remember it fondly as one of my very favorite stories, and watching this video made me desperately wish I had a copy of the game I could pop into my Xbox and play. If you have not read Halo: Evolutions, specifically The Return, I highly recommend it. There is a semi- animated sequence on the internet that tells this story you can watch for free, and the story itself is similar to Arbiter's.
Sacred Icon and Quarantine Zone are the best levels in the game - not to mention the later level where you can spring some elites and a pair of hunters from prison cells and have them help you. There are two parts of this game I replayed endlessly - the first act from Cairo Station to Metropolis, and then Icon, Zone, skipping the other missions, and going right to the end. Never cared for the High Charity bits.
I had the opposite feeling when I was young going through as the arbiter, I was intrigued. I wanted to know why the hell the covenant was the way they were. Playing as the arbiter gave me answers to questions I hadn't yet thought of at the time.
Awesome take on the arbiter segment, i love how they "humanized" him for lack of a better word, the culprit of the fall of reach, the strongest highest ranking sangheili in the covenant, responsible for over 1 billion human casualties, stripped down to nothing. I'll Always remember the quote "Tartarus, the prophets have betrayed us"
@@CunningCondor TLOUp2 is a great example of a game that screws this idea up. Presenting a character we are encouraged to hate for 10 HOURS. And then we switch perspectives at the climax. Blue balling us and trying to make us sympathise with said character. This causes the audience to see them more negatively, and the curtain begins to fall as we see the writers trying to make us like this person, telling us that they're actually nice. Failing miserably. Halo 2 nailed it. TLOUp2 did not.
odstlover I like Uprising and Great Journey is my favorite level in the game however all the others are sadly badly designed in terms of gameplay making them not very fun to play.
Holy fucking shit!!!!! I saw my brothers gamertage "shadows of dark" and the emblem he always used at 36:00 you played with him!! thats so crazy!! I am beside myself. how much youtube does one have to watch to spot something like that. those shouting matches were probably started by him lol. great analysis of halo 2 by the way. I have to call him holy shit
Holy Shit! Halo 5 followed the Halo 2 model to a T! Even down to the false advertisement! However, Halo 2's story was very intriguing to me. It added a lot of twist I didn't expect.
Except Halo 2 turned out to be a good game--an amazing game even, and Halo 5 turned out to be trash--cutting features like splitscreen, shoving a terrible narrative down our throats, and releasing key features and content MONTHS after release.
Joseph F Halo 5, overall, was horrendous; however, I will admit, it has the best gameplay. That is purely subjective, but I felt the game play was better than it's ever been. Remove the special abilities and its perfect mechanically.
"No one liked Halo 2 back then." I'm sorry, but your argument is hardly credible when you're trying to say stupid stuff like that. Halo 2 singlehandedly changed online multiplayer forever due to how much the fans loved it. Yes, of course the game had haters. I'm not blind, but the thing is, the dislikers did not outweight the ones who liked it. Just look at the population and relevence that Halo 2 had back in the day compared to what Halo 5 has. Halo 2 had an immense online population. Halo 5 has been struggling to even remain below the number 15 on the charts. And no, the same thing does not apply to Halo 3. Halo 3 boasted an even larger online population in its day in accordance with its time period, and stayed on the top of Xbox Live's charts for nearly 5 years. The game also was the community's highest point. "The hate Halo 5 is getting is no different then[sic.] The hate that Halo 1-3 got." Such is simply not the case. Halo CE, 2, or 3 NEVER removed features, and tried to sell a game that lacked features that its predecessors had. Halo CE's campaign, Halo 2's campaign, and Halo 3's campaign were generally praised for their time by most fans and most reviewers of their time. In Halo 5's terms, almost every reviewer spoke on Halo 5's poor story, and the majority of the Halo community has accepted that Halo 5's campaign is subpar. Also, your point about Halo 4 is hardly true. Yes, people hated the multiplayer (and still do) but the campaign has been generally loved since launch. The game garnered fairly positive mixed reception from the fans. That has not changed. Halo 5 has been generally accepted by the fanbase to be subpar. Halo CE, 2, and 3 were never generally accepted by the majority of the fanbase to be subpar. There is a clear difference here.
Sorry, but as someone who was an adult for all of Halo's history and with a high speed connection that entire time (to view the interest reaction, etc.) - there has never been a sequel to Halo CE that was not immensely shit on (either the SP or MP) when it first came out, only to be praised highly once the next one hits (except maybe 3). "Halo CE, 2, and 3 were never generally accepted by the majority of the fan base to be subpar." Wrong, Halo 2 was, except for multiplayer. "Halo 5 has been generally accepted by the fan base to be subpar" - So just like Halo 2 - people bitch about the SP, and the multiplayer is very popular and well-received. Halo 2 - everyone dissed the SP, everyone loved the MP Halo 3 - both are generally liked, overall, as far as I can tell - although I remember some not like the changes to MP vs 2. EDIT - Actually, many people shit on Halo 3's graphics. Halo 4 - everyone dissed the MP, everyone loved the SP (well, based on comments I have seen over time, the SP was once divisive, but is not universally praised) Halo 5 - everyone disses the SP (to an unnecessarily degree IMO), everyone loves the MP. * - "everyone" doesn't mean literally everybody - I have never been involved with an online game where there aren't forums full of people bitching about this change or that balance or whatever new or revamped feature. Actually, looking back, Halo 2 and Halo 5 have much in common, except Halo 5 is living in a different online-gaming world than Halo 2 , and Halo 2's SP didn't have to face the same microscope of 2015's internet-culture. Case in point about time changing everyone's mind - at some point between Halo 2 and 3, the Arbiter went from something generally disliked to being a fan favorite character that people were excited to see in Halo 5. At any rate - IMO, each Halo SP has issues. 2's ending is bullshit, you play as Arbiter more than Chief (even ending the game with him). 3 removes layers that 2 gave to characters, and kills off people for inorganic story reasons. 4 introduces a villain that only novel fans know anything about, has a weird rushed lore-dump to bring you up to speed if you didn't read the right novels, and IMO totally botches the death of Cortana. 5's explanation of the cannon reason that a shard or something of Cortana ended up where it did is bs, and I have no idea why the hell I am playing more than half the game as this other character (who doesn't even have 2's excuse of "well, we need the player to see the other factions POV"). In terms of gameplay and level design alone, and except for 2 being lesser than CE, I feel each Halo has improved with level design and combat, which is what you do for 99% of the playtime, so I can somewhat forgive mucking up the story and/or how it is told.
@El Matadores I think there is still hope, halo infinite from what we have seen seems to be bringing back the old halo magic , that doesn't mean it will be great but i have hope. 343 has also been having a good track record with halo wars 2 and the halo pc ports
Los Matadorès Games set on Zeta Halo (finally officially confirmed but everyone knew anyways). They have a real opportunity here to explore the lore we’ve all wanted to see for years. I hope they deliver
am I the only one here who likes halo 2's campaign the best? halo 3 plays better on coop than 2, but I still prefer 2 overall. Ce felt like more of an adventure as well, but I still preferred halo 2 overall.
I disagree, the amount of holding one position (8 times i think), Arbiter missions were no fun until the last half of the game, small environments and fighting brutes are a turn off for me. Although I love Metropolis, Delta Halo/ Regret, and Gravemind.
Mike Mcglasson I don't hate it... Then again, my parents wouldn't let me play a Mature game until I convinced them to let me play, by then, my first Halo game was MCC, so the ending for me was a simple intermission as opposed to waiting for three years and a new console for the next game...
Mike Mcglasson did you play it when it came out, or did you play it for the first time more recently, like in the MC collection? most of us who played at release hated the end because there was no resolution and we had to wait years to find it.
Halo 2 even with its flaws is the best in series. Its reach extended its grasp but Halo 2 set the tone for the rest of series in gameplay, look and mythology.
@@obiwaankenobi4460Combat evolve is repetitive and doesn’t have as many weapons and options as the games that came after. Is a good game, but I think saying is the best is kinda of insane
Except I was referencing it's absolutely horrific development process that literally tore Bungie apart internally being akin to Halo 2's development mess, not the final result of the game. Soooo no.
I wish people would stop playing Destiny just so that Bungie can die as a company. The example they are setting to other developers is harmful to the gaming industry. And let's not forget that the fanbase is literally the most pathetic bunch of individuals on the planet, especially when they act as a hivemind of retardation.
I unfortunately was to young at the time to play Halo 2 online, so my first experiences with Halo multiplayer was the amazing Halo 3 experience. However i started my Halo journey with Halo CE, then after beating that in co-op with my dad, went to Halo 2. I love it. My favorite missions are those on Earth, just driving that Scorpion is so nostalgic. Halo 2 mightve been rushed, mightve only been 1/3rd of what Bungie wanted. But who cares, the game is still one of if not the best fps shooters of all time. Simply because it revolutionized gaming as a whole. Through multiplayer and a producer that cared. Bungie couldve done what developers do nowadays, rush a game to be completely broken and then just patch it out. But they didnt, they shipped a game that didnt need patching, and instead jumpstarted online gaming. I cant say how great its multiplayer was, because i never experienced it, and i will always love Halo 3's multiplayer the most out of any game. But i will never deny that Halo 2 is an all around amazingly awesome game. When MCC was announced i learned of who made the classic Halo 2 theme with the bass, that song just stirs my soul and i catch myself humming it or singing it all the time. This is what makes Halo, Halo. Not some fancy guns or anything but a game that makes you want to play it, that stirs your brain and heart to come back and play more and more.
I had a similar experience. Cept my dad wouldn't get us xbox live till like.. Reach xD and I started playing halo when I was around 4, with my dad rapidly changing his decision over the years whether I was allowed to play such a game or not.
Mackenzie Braden I had the exact same experience. I beat the first one with my dad and eventually got halo 2 right before halo 3 launched. When I found out it was coming out I flipped. I had to wait 6 months to get a 360 and halo 3 for my birthday but when I did I was so happy. I played that until Halo Reach came out and I was finally able to play Xbox Live. Because Reach was the first Halo I played online on my own it has a soft spot in my heart. Now every time I think back I just wish I was older so I could have played all of the games when they came out.
@@juanmanuelcorrea7673 I know you wrote this 2 years ago, but I would like to correct you. Halo 2 revolutionized the online space because it was the first console game to have a multiplayer. It kick-started all online play and multiplayer games because it was the first to do it. Halo CE didn't have online play because you could only play split-screen.
I guess being 12 messed with your ability to enjoy this game. As someone in my twenties at the time, and playing with those one or two decades older, we were blown away by getting to play the arbiter. We also loved the cutscenes. Even with all the cuts they had to make, it was a great game for its day and a good game even by modern standards. The whole point of story in a video GAME is to make the gameplay more enjoyable. And all of the Halo games have done that well except for 5. And I liked the ending of Halo 2. Gamers today are just spoiled.
@Mark Mitchell I think this says a lot about the context we're at in the industry. Halo 2 has a lot of 3 and 1s qualities of gameplay and adds up a lot to the franchise's storyline with themes that are easily understandable but not so easy to relate to.
Just sounds like a lot of excuses. The Arbiter got reasons to care about him after we played as him, not the other way around. It was good, but this game really hurt Bungie, and dismissing that because “I’m older” doesn’t make sense. And the industry moved on from your mindset of “story is only meant to improve gameplay.” Because now we have games about the story more than the gameplay. And people love them. (Witcher 3) The end of Halo 2 isn’t an end, it just stops. That would be unacceptable in any story, regardless of medium. It was criticized for this ending even when the game released. Gamers today aren’t spoiled. Their tastes evolved. And they and the game industry moved on from the mindset that people like you have.
@@moonmoon2479 Sometimes it's ok to enjoy and love a game despite its flaws. A game will never be perfect, and often (like real life) the imperfections and deviations from original plans can make for some of the most memorable experiences.
I got this game by accident. The clerk was using it for the final test when I baught my used Xbox and he forgot to remove it before the sale. I got it home and when I turned it on lo and behold the game started. I loved it from the first seconds of the loading screen. I still wish I could find the guy and thank him. Now its 9 years later and the game still fuckin rocks
I like the idea that these carrion birdy-bois are actually the deadliest enemy in the game - I don't like having to deal with them. The only thing between you and death is a clear sightline - in the Mombasa levels this is poignant and quasi-realistic, in monolithic forerunner structures it makes me want to jump off a cliff.
Marnix van Baalen Nothing wrong with you at all. Halo 2 by far had the longest, and most intersting storyline. What a game man, great characters, great story, great music. 10/10 And to think it wasn't even a finiahed game; if bungie got to do what they wanted with it who knows how much better it would've been.
What a lot of people didn't understand (and still don't) is that the Arbiter is the main character of Halo 2's campaign. Chief hardly contributes anything to the plot besides the assassination of Regret. With that in mind, people would have been less frustrated by the cliffhanger. They were frustrated because the story lacked resolution in their eyes, but in reality, the resolution was Arbiter joining the side of the "Heretic" leader he assassinated, attempting to enlighten Tartarus (despite all he'd done to him and his fellow elites), killing him when he refuses to stand down and finally he, destroyer of Reach and killer of a billion humans, forms an alliance with the enemy he used to revel in decimating. When you look at it from this point of view, Halo 2, in my opinion, has the most compelling story and characters of the franchise.
Oh Halo 2, my old faithful companion. My first, ever, online multiplayer game. It was also the first game I ever preordered. Of course, there was actually reason to preorder back then. It's hard to believe that things have changed so much in 12 years. Hell, I still have the collectible slurpee cups from the Seven Eleven promotional. For 13 year old me, Halo 2 was the most amazing thing I had ever experienced. Watching this analysis of the game brought back many fond memories. Though, I don't remember going up against the BXR or double shot that much back then. What I remember, most vividly, was dealing with the noob combo. The hatred I had, for people who used that combo, burned brighter than the sun. So I made it my mission to dog those sons of bitches every chance I got. Ah, good times.
I don't remember the BXR or double shot either. I was only 10 when Halo 2 released so I was just having fun playing online. I am jealous you still have the Slurpee cups!
I got good at the bxb but the bxr was too damn difficult to master for me. I never got past level 43 and I totally felt the same way about the noob combo!!!! This video brought back some amazing memories of playing online with my brothers on two different TVs in the same room
it's strange that he didn't mention the rocket-launcher-and-sword-exploit/glitch, where you could zoom in with the rocketlauncher on a player and no matter how far away he was, as soon as your zoomed in and your bazooka-cross turned red, you just had to switch weapons immediately and pull the right trigger as fast as possible to charge through the whole map right to the enemy = easy kill.... ua-cam.com/video/lvSalM0HH6w/v-deo.html
Button glitching, super bouncing, butter fly glitch with swords, banshee launching, tank launching. The glitches and fun game types made Halo 2 my favorite game of all time. Now 25 but I was 12 then and this game made me love shooters but also to have fun with harmless glitches which were an endless bed of exploration in the game. Anyways gone are the days when not everything at to be perfect. Singleplayer was flawed but the multiplayer was perfection to me I played until they shut the servers off in 2010. MCC is fun but the fps rates make the glitches not work. Halo Cartographer on PC is a good substitute though and has a good community.
I am amazed how Halo 2 came out. Even though it was heavily rushed, the game itself is still very fun. I will admit the campaign is pretty dull, but thank god the multiplayer made Halo into the game it is today.
what? Quarantine zone is by far my favourite level, I certainly wouldn't say 'one of the worst in the game' there's so much going on it's just a crazy fun mission
Came here to say the same thing. COGconnected condemned my favorite aspect of Halo 2 (the covenant story and playing as the Arbiter) and condemned my favorite levels too. Halo 2 is my favorite one in the series.
Alan Batsford there is slight nostalgia talking here but even without that it's mine too, the arbiter levels are probably the best in the game and without them i feel it would be a far worse game
I like the Arbiter's design. It informs on the lore that his is an old and honored office. It also informs on how brutally tough the elites are. They don't rely on their armor as much as the spartans do, since the Arbiter can walk around in his midevil armor and still wreck house.
Halo 2 had a very well crafted narrative, I wouldn't criticize it just because it "didn't follow the marketing" It's an epic story about betrayal, (Arbiter and the elites being betrayed and slaughtered), among many other things, and the civil war within the covenant was such a cool moment in the Halo universe that made the game even more epic and prevented it from being too much like Halo CEs narrative. If we didn't play as the Arbiter, and didn't witness these things happening on the Covenant's side of the story in relation to the Human's side of the story, we'd be left with a plot that is virtually the same as CE and with 4 villains we know nothing about. Chief leaving behind Cortana on High Charity to go and stop Truth and defend Earth was also a very epic and pretty emotional moment. There were many awesome things that did happen with Halo 2's story, but even more that were cut, and the rushed development just doesn't do it much justice because the game does indeed suffer from level design and an overall downgrade from Halo CEs masterful gameplay loop. Still, many things were added to the game's sandbox which did well to partly make this up.
Halo 2 was amazing, I'm so glad to have gotten in a few dozen games on those last days of the OG xbox live. I never got into the MP during its heyday because I was a kid and had no idea how to connect my xbox to the internet lol
I loved the arbiter. And the elites. The sangheili where my favorite enemy. But just like anything they got boring. Changing the enemies by making the sangheili allies is so much more interesting than just killing them off. Halo 2 might not have been exactly what they originally said, but thats because they had to change something. Versus alot of modern "11 years later" games which arent accurate at all. Elder scrolls online, no mans sky etc. Lol I feel the nostalgia thing. All through highschool we had a club where we played halo 2 at lunch.
Good times, I also remember the zombie gamemode. I also remember that we played once or twice "Micheal Jackson" where we had to get to the hill before MJ got us.
I can not disagree more about bxr and quadshotting. Those glitches turned the BR into the most OP weapon in halo history. Yes, more powerful than the CE pistol. Not head to head but within their respective games. It threw balance out the window for a weapon that was already op without them. Personally, Halo CE is my favorite and I love a game being punishing with experience, but only when balanced and intended. These glitches are neither balanced or intended. Halo 2 didn't create custom games, Halo CE PC did. People were playing things like pistols no shields forever before swat was officially a thing. Also, foundation swat was awesome.
I feel you so hard on the Legendary difficulty. I remember being a 12 year old frustratingly trying to beat certain areas that I thought were virtually impossible and would spend literally 2 hours on a segment that should have been about 10 minutes.
I found this from the HBO forums, so I'm not familiar with your whole review series, though I'll definitely check it out now. This is a really well-done analysis. I was really into the Arbiter storyline as a kid just because I soak up that kind of storytelling, and I liked the knight/samurai inspiration, but I still hated that all the ads were misleading and it wasn't about the Chief defending Earth. Even i love bees ended with a lead in to the Covenant invasion, and ILB was advertised with those awesome ads with Master Chief standing against the orange smoke. And thanks for calling Bungie out on their lies that Halo 2 levels are bigger than Halo: Combat Evolved. One of the biggest flaws contributing to Halo 2's closed in environments is the addition of the invisible wall. Halo: Combat Evolved didn't have that, possibly as an oversight because Bungie was less familiar with FPS conventions in the console medium (?), and it made the environments feel more real and like a bigger sandbox, enabling you to address obstacles in many different ways without feeling like you're cheating. Halo 2 corrected the oversight, and then the game felt more closed in and linear. Unfortunately, there were a few moments in the video where I saw a flicker of some visual you tried to remove but hadn't completely. It would be excusable for a lesser video, but this one is so polished that these little mistakes are disappointing.
+GoingRampant - I wince a little every time I see those flickers. Admittedly, it was due to laziness, and after working on the video for so long, I thought that it wouldn't be worth it to spend another day rendering for a handful of flickers. I'm actually glad that someone noticed them, it means I'm not crazy :D
I've played halo 2 since it came out and still do on MCC. This by far is the most complete and solid review I have seen( I have watched many). Seeing you touch on every aspect of the game and look you even got a comment from Walshy lol. I'm super stoked that you even mentioned the button glitches and holy fuck...Tower of Power and the true start to zombies on Foundation! Most people don't even know what I'm talking about when I mention those. I am in the process of watching your whole series of Halo videos and all I can say so far is excellent job! I don't know if you still play MCC but with the new update around the corner it will hopefully bring back some more of the community. If you would like to play sometime just let me know and I'll send you my GT. Thank you for taking the time to make such an in depth series about a game close to so many people including myself.
Original xbox servers were shut down because games like halo 2 were still pulling better numbers online than the new xbox 360 games like gear of war. It was embarrassing for Microsoft that their older games had more players online than their new ones. Even after halo 3 came out, halo 2 was the was still in the top 10 most played games until they shut it down. I Still cant believe they got rid of that clan system, and no other fps games have copied it. That was the main reason so many custom games existed.
Ack, didn't realize this was uploaded already! Really loved your CE video, i'm gonna respond to a few of the points you raised like I did then, hopefully you see this. Also, I apologize for the walls of text, this is gonna be very long, there's a lot more I disagree with here then with your CE video, and a lot more i'd like to hear your thoughts on. I actually typed so much out youtube won't let me post it, so here's a pastebin: pastebin.com/NzjN0ATf
+Jabberwockxeno To respond generally to your inquiry about my dislike of "set-pieces", I and many other people don't like them because they often come across as spectacle over substance. Chief doesn't fly with a bomb in outer-space to blow up a ship single handily because that's where the story thematically and emotionally leads to, it's done because its cool. Not only does it jump the shark, but it also sacrifices gameplay and/or the combat sandbox in order to do so. As I listed in the video, the Scarab fight is a bore because when you look past the vehicle's visuals, it's just two small rooms with enemies that you have to take care of. You're doing the same thing you've been doing through the whole game, just with less options in the sandbox since there's only one way to board the craft. Set-pieces only work if they're able to use the restricting visuals and events to emotionally invest the player, and in Halo 2, I never felt anything for them. I couldn't help but feel that all the Michael Bay explosions were nothing more than a desperate cry for attention. Subtlety is something that you point out Halo 2 has in some of its story, which is true, but that subtly is often overshadowed by arbitrary big shit go boom set-pieces. That scene in Halo: Fall of Reach is just as ridiculous to me, but its true that Halo 2 is by no means the first time the series sailed towards the sea of over the top fights. "I entirely disagree that "it's hard to blame people" for not caring. When they started to play CE for the first time, they had no reason to care for the PoA or the Chief either, yet they learned to." Chief didn't have the baggage that Arbiter does, since Halo is the first game, it doesn't expect you to be pulled in 100% from the beginning. Combat Evolved used its ground breaking gameplay in the first level to get people's attention, followed by Halo's mystery and beautiful visuals. It used the world to keep the player's interest. Halo 2 immediately kicks off with a character who is an enemy type we've killed dozens of in the last game. For a lot of players, that alone is enough of a reason not to give a crap; unfortunately, the game doesn't assist the Arbiter by giving him the short end of the stick in terms of missions. It's not until the third act that he's finally given a chance. Also, your point about the contrast between the UNSC handing out medals, and the Elite being tortured, is very obvious and cliche. Contrast works much better when its not shoved in your face like the opening credits of The Purge. I understand that the New Mombasa destruction isn't as traditionally explosive, but if a shockwave is strong enough to knock over a freaking space elevator, its definitely powerful enough to wipe people out unfortunate enough to be caught up in the blast. But of course, that didn't really happen, because basically everyone was evacuated, meaning that the entire cutscene of a city being hit by a shockwave has no tension, horror, or impact. And I don't mention ODST and Another Day At The Beach, because at the time of the game's release, neither existed. This video is about how the game stands on its own, and not about future games that would later connect to it, I'll save those for future videos. As for the ending, people can usually tell or feel when a story's been cut at the head, which Halo 2's absolutely was. I'd say that your preparation of it being sudden definitely made you look at it differently. As for the length and missions though, Halo 2 may have had more missions, but total length was ultimately shorter than the previous game, so its completely acceptable that players would've expected at least one more mission on Earth, because that's what was supposed to happen in the original script. To conclude, the reason I constantly refer to Halo 1's missions in the opening is because Halo 1 is more organic game than its sequel. Combat in Halo 1 spawns in enemies and from there, everything that happens is a dynamic combination of the weapons, AI, level, and player. Meanwhile, Halo 2 is a lot more instances where the gameplay is given more restrictions. Smaller levels, boss fights, story set-pieces in and outside of gameplay. It makes for a game that's more predictable and therefore, less exciting. What hurts it even more is that when the gloves come off in Halo 2, it's gameplay is a solid improvement over its predecessor, with better shooting, movement, and weapon design. I'm sorry I wasn't able to address every point, as I've still got to get back to working on the Halo 3 video, but thank you for your passionate comment, and as always, this is only my opinion. I don't want these videos to be viewed as a "Factual" critique of the games. its just my opinion, and I try to make the best argument for it as I can. I appreciate the mention about the differences between the Halo Wiki and Halopedia, I'll remember that for the future. Thank you for watching, hope to see you on the next video. Take care, - CuHnadian
Because oddly enough while the Covenant attacks the Cairo, the Athens, and the Malta; the attack on New Mombasa is when Halo 3: ODST interacts. When you come into New Mombasa, that's when the final climax happens. So when you go into slip space with the Covenant ship, that's when the ODST team escapes the explosion. So it makes sense that New Mombasa is evacuated.
The introductory cut-scene of Halo 2 elevated my hopes for the story of this game. I wasn't a big fan of that green-armoured guy who only had 32 lines of dialogue in H:CE, but I know that a lot of gamers like him: opening with the Arbiter instead was a brave move, and cutting between his punishment with the scene of MC's medal ceremony was a nice piece of storytelling. Unfortunately, it proved to be the highlight, too: the Arbiter's narrative arc was slight, and none of the humans had any arcs at all; the Prophet of Regret probably shouldn't have risked an attack on Earth with his limited forces if his real goal was to follow his star-map and find another Halo; Gravemind's betrayal could have been portrayed better than via one line of dialogue from Cortana during a fight with lots of shotguns sounding off ... speaking of which, since Gravemind didn't actually introduce itself, is the fact that Cortana knows its name a hint at a plot-point in a later game, or just an example of me being eagle-eared when it comes to petty details? Ah well, at least it gave us some fun gameplay - plus, some of my favourite episodes of Red vs Blue, and another Lucas Raycevick video.
Halo 2 was the greatest failure to ever succeed, and succeed it did. While it being an amazing game, it has less than half the intended content, as you mention, and thus being BUNGiE's worst game to make. All things considered, Halo 2 is arguably the best game in the franchise, seeing how all the hell BUNGiE had to undergo to make it as well as making the most of what they could salvage definitely defines they do care.
I miss Halo 2 multiplayer so much. I played this master piece exclusively from release until the player base moved to Halo 3. I must have logged 5000 hours+ and i could do another 5000 if the game had servers and a player base.. I've built up so much nostalgia that i fear no game will ever be able to replace this game from my personal best multiplayer game since the big bang. I played with the best and nothing beats the feeling of winning scrim's vs Str8 Rippin and Final Boss. That will be my legacy! Biggest achievement of my life! I will return to watch this video for the 5th time in a month or so :)
Your username is familiar. I think I had you on my friendslist at some point. I have a similar story, where I randomly stumbled upon and played against Ogre 2 in a match of Halo 2. I think my team lost, but it was a fairly close game if I remember correctly.
Battlefront hasn't aged well? Get the hell out of here. And so far you are the only person I have heard say that the Arbiter levels were "dismissed by fans". Fans I know were annoyed that Arbiter was removed from 4 and 5.
+hellangelzx Battlefront's 1&2 really haven't. They are riddled with lackluster shooting, laughable AI, and mediocre level design. They were pick-up and play console shooters that simply took Battlefield and applied it to the Star Wars universe, nothing more. As for being the first to mention people's distaste of the Arbiter at the time, type in "Hate the Arbiter" into google and you'll get a bunch of forum posts discussing why people didn't like his levels or character at the time. As I point out in the video, it had more to do with the misleading marketing campaign, and the poor level design than the character.
CuHnadian The only accurate thing you described about those two is the laughable AI. The rest is vastly incorrect and shows you haven't played the games in a very long time.
+hellangelzx My steam page says that I played Battlefront II during the making of this video. My buddy (who's played both for dozens of hours) can attest that we played for hours and even managed to join a couple online matches on GameRanger. A UA-cam comment can't tell you when I've last played a video game simply because you disagree with my opinion. Take Battlefront's raw shooting mechanics and compare it with Halo 2, F.E.A.R, Unreal Tournament 2004, Half Life 2, Doom 3, Call of Duty 2, Battlefield 2, and Timesplitters: Feature Perfect, those were games that came out during the same years as both SW:BFs, I doubt you will find many players who'll argue that the shooting is more satisfying in SW:BF than any of these. If you enjoy Battlefront's 1&2 more than these, that's perfectly fine, but saying that the game doesn't have poor levels is hard to argue.
Battlefront 2 (2005, the fact that I even have to denote that pisses me off, thanks EA) is a great game for what it is, it's aged well enough considering how bad most Starwars games are. The AI was always lackluster but the size of battles is what made up for that. It honestly felt like a low blow that only battlefront seemed to get "called out" in that little segment, at least to me. I love Halo and I love Battlefront, but I honestly like Battlefront 2 better than Halo 2 out of the two games.
I love your X Years Later videos. So much history and detail. So well put together. I can only imagine how much work these videos are for you, but I hope you continue to make more of these as much as you can :)
Still my favorite game of the series. I remember people being mad about the ending, and I never understood that. It was obviously going to be the middle of a trilogy. And I thought the story and writing was significantly better than the third game.
Damn, that was a fantastic video! Had these in my recommended for a while, assumed it'd be a quick video talking about gameplay then vs now, then I ended up watching an hour long documentary on the entire game, and it was totally worth it!
I feel like I'm in the minority when I was pleasantly surprised by being able to play as Thel 'Vadam in this game. They're some of my favorite levels. I'm still holding out that there'll be an exclusively Sangheili single player game eventually. But that'll probably never happen.
You know, the early Halo 2 cinematic script (www.halopedia.org/Early_Halo_2_script ) had the first lines about the Master Chief, specifically. Instead of "There was only one ship", it was "There was only one", and "one" referred to one human responsible for destroying the Halo. Maybe that would have been better for immediately connecting their story with the beloved player character's.
People like you really irritate me. First of all the change in role was early in the series and hasn't(obviously)done, again. I'm well-aware Arbiter and chief are roled around fifty-fifty and maybe, even as I loved playing arby; wasn't the best. If you tell me there should've been a opt, I'll cash that all day and night. I'm not here to ogle and cut you up the side. Secondly, this, again is absolutely not to make you feel horrible or whatever for wanting to play as chief all the time. However, don't you think some variety would do some good? Again, I know there is a huge difference having a choice between a and m; but, from what I've read from your comments, it sounds neophyte. All being said it wouldn't strangle me a bit; if you were to assert the change was way too early and that perhaps, may ex or why should've happened before the change. Though, couldn't you say that'd be a little overzealous? Alas, what I hope is concrete(definitive)that playing as Arby isn't that bad and helps to expand the Halo verse.
Maybe its cuz I'm a huge Halo fan (except for Halo 5's campaign) but the quality of narration, footage, editing, the subtle comedy, the in depth analysis of the game in relation to its intention, development, design, legacy on all of your Halo videos..is simply top notch. Its like I'm watching a documentary. Great work!
As someone who went to school for video game development, I feel like a lot of goals were ambitious for their time on this game. For all the work that Bungie has done, you simply can't go beyond the constraints of the hardware. Of course there are scripted events. This is 2004. Making Chief fly through space with a bomb is a lot to program in a fps at the time. That alone would have been a huge undertaking that would have had to start from the ground up. The Scarab sequence... yes they could have done SOMETHING beyond shoot these 2 elites to win. Upload Cortana to self destruct the thing or plant a bomb. Still, do you know how hard it was to have a stable section of game on a MOVING object? That alone was revolutionary for the time. While it may not seem like that big of a deal to the layman, it's pretty huge. When I did rigging, we had to rig a character and animate a fighting pose for them. You know when you hover over a character and they have their fists up and kinda bounce back and fourth, maybe do a kick? Doing anything beyond simple things like a kick or a turn was incredibly difficult. And I went to school in 2006-2009. When a rig did a full 360° like a roundhouse kick, it wanted to snap BACK 360° because it didn't understand that it was already back in its original position. These are the small things you spend hours figuring out or having to use alternative methods to fix. Getting a rig to stand on a moving platform that had other moving rigs attacking you and it was as smooth as it was back then? That was amazing. Even in level design, setting up a scripted sequence with a rig moving with a platform was incredibly difficult. Was the Scarab a single complete asset or was it multiple assets moving together to create the illusion of one? Was it treated as a static or dynamic asset? How does the rig interact with both? Engines today do this for you, for the most part, but back then, you had Unreal, Havoc Hammer, and a few other engines available for public use. In house engiens.... I don't even know how they're created. So basically, thinking about the time the game was developed and the technology available, Halo 2 is nothing less than a mastery of game development. Today we can go back and see everything and nit pick at things that are simply refined or obsolete. Back then, it was just pure amazing.
gave me goose bumps im so happy i got to play thee original halo 2 on 360 when the servers were still up god i miss that and mcc has alot of players but not everyone because of 343 fucking up but i still support halo and you will still see me on supporting the games that i love
This weekend i went cross country to visit old friends. We booted up 2 crt monitors and 2 original xboxes. We played 8 player spilt-screen Halo 2 for hours and hours and hours. It is hands down the most fun i have had with a video game in 2016. We laughed and screamed and had an all around blast the whole weekend! Thank you for the amazing video, keep it up! You will soon have waayyyy too many subs to handle ;)
Still, after all of this, my favorite Halo games are Halo 2 and Reach. (followed by Ce and 3) And I do think that campaign is great, but also I agree that The Sacred Icon and Quarantine Zone are not that good. Still, I really like the current Arbiter.
Every time. Every single time. When that title screen came up, I took a moment to relax, inhale from by bowl or blunt, smile and press start. My friend would pretty much say most of the time, "The calmness before the storm". "The Last Spartan" is simply beautiful.
You once said that Battlefield and Halo were two pillars of your gaming experience. I think it would be awesome to hear your thoughts on Battlefield. Keep up the good world. Love the content.
would be cool if each flood type performed a task in a battle similar to the covenant with canon fodder etc. would that make them better in your eyes or would they still be bad.
I disagree with you SOO FREAKING MUCH! Halo 2's campaign is the best! So much variety and epic moments! And it greatly expands the lore for the better! Halo 2 will always be my favorite game of all time.
LOL the easter egg "excuse me who the @#$3 are you" I remember rushing to finish the game as fast as possible when i came out as a kid, then talking to many other kids, of which none had any idea what the octopus creature at the end was about.
So. I just recently played the first two Halo games for the first time. (crazy, i know. Blasphemous even). And I have to say, I feel that your reviews for 1 and 2 are opposites to how I first experienced them. I do agree that 1 had infuriatingly copy-paste levels. I hated its level design. But I felt that, starting with the library level, the game started to pick up, for me. Learning about the nature of Halo and the Flood etc. actually kept my interest going, while in the early levels I was feeling quite bored, despite the good look and feel of the game. Halo 2, as a whole, really impressed me. I had a bad taste in my mouth from one, but it overall intrigued me with its atmosphere and score. Halo 2's story, while not incredible compared to others, was very good compared to one. I really liked the Arbitor levels, and playing the game from a different perspective really enhanced its depth. It also "feels" different playing as the Arbitor, I felt almost like I needed to use different weapons. I agree that the reveal of the Gravemind could have been better, it was a HUGE moment in the story and it was hardly explained well at all. But the last portions of the game were very exciting, and the pinnacle of the game. Even if the Master Chief and Arbitor were forced together, I felt like they were working toward a common goal that, after playing the first game, is obviously a worthwhile one: Preventing the cataclysm of the Halo. For me, returning and preventing the Halo's destruction was more important story-wise than immediately protecting earth. Especially once you discover the extremes that the Prophets had been going to to trigger them. It really was an interesting vantage point to approach a plot that generally was the same as Halo 1. The corruption of the Prophets, the fact that the Covenant was acting on their behalf for centuries (and being manipulated all along), all intrigued me. Overall I felt Halo 2 to be a really strong game, and I'm surprised at how critical you are of the game at every point. I'm looking forward to playing 3; I played a little of it back in the day, but now that I really have a foothold in the series and understand it better, I'm interested at how I feel about the game now.
I was working at EB at the time of Halo 2's launch. You are absolutely right, the hype was unlike [almost] anything else. Had a line outside my mall store all the way to the parking lot. It was ridiculous.
-The different performance characteristics with the original disc are probably entirely due to the fact that you're playing it on a 360, not the condition of the disc or 360. 360 emulation of oXbox games really isn't very accurate, especially not when it comes to performance. Although even on oXbox the game isn't a perfectly rock-solid 30fps. -It seemed a little odd when you were talking about the original cutscenes while H2A Blur CGI footage was running, especially when you commented on Miranda's facial expression when New Mombasa was about to get exploded. -I actually agree that in some ways H2A feels as removed from H2 as CEA does from CE, although we seem to be a minority. H2A's diffuse textures are a closer match to their originals, but the harsh lighting and very different materials produce massively changed vibes. (But: I seem to be the only person out there who overall prefers the original aesthetics, including cutscenes. I thought that Blur's cutscenes created artistic inconsistency with the gameplay, chopped up the flow due to their load times, and had poor audio editing both in dialogue and musical timings.)
+HaloTupolev I didn't have time or hard drive space to record another playthrough of the game with the original cutscenes. I actually didn't play Halo 2 on the Original Xbox online and only played on 360, so it could entirely be that my memory of the game is blinded, and the old version really did have FPS trouble.
Adden, I completely agree. If you compare ce to its anniversary and compare the legend pistol side by side; ce's is MUCH better aesthetically. In ce people'd shid themselves when they saw it and knew it fucked stuff up. On the other hand; the anniversary's is wildly scoff.
not sure if many people know about it, but these guys made a mod (I guess?) for H2 Vista called Project Cartographer which takes away the Windows live restrictions and lets you play on some of their dedicated servers, or if you port forward, you can make your own lobbies. They recently added Infection as a gamemode which now automatically changes yo to the Green Team if you die, and I have to say its some of the most fun I've had in a while
7:15 "didn't know till recently those elites where high council" bitch they have fancy armour and weapons and are standing like the British soldiers guarding the queen for a reason
I'm in a weird boat because I was introduced to Halo CE about a year before Halo 2 came out. I never saw the E3 demo or any of the marketing. I was able to go into it blind, and I loved every minute of it. I only learned about the pre-release hype long after I beat the game and popped in my collector's edition bonus disc. At the time, I didn't even know there was a collector's edition. My parents knew I wanted the game and picked up the first one they could in the store.
The years I spent playing Halo 2 is, and will always be, my favorite and most memorable online experiences. Not only was the game just pure enjoyment but I made friends online that I still speak to and play with to this very day.
Aaron Garza It could be, but there were instances where you could easily be killed or it didn't really give you an advantage. I did it a few times in matchmaking, but mostly kept it to custom games for fun or when trying to find bounce spots with other people that I was in a Glitching/Super Bouncing clan with.
Dont care what anyone says about the heavier reliance on setpieces in Halo 2, Chief falling with that bomb is a legendary scene.
I don't really understand what the problem was with that. It's a cinematic, not a scripted sequence. It wasn't masquerading as gameplay. I was never mad that Starcraft cinematics weren't interactive. Heck, Halo 1 had at least one cinematic that was muuuch longer than this one, right in the middle of Guilty Spark.
Even the scarab sequence doesn't seem like a big deal to me. Halo 3 improved on that a lot, but massive climbable enemies were not really a thing back when Halo 2 came out. Just the fact of a big hunk of level geometry walking around on legs was somewhat impressive for the time.
jabberw0k yeah I thought set pieces are during gameplay not during skippable cut-scenes.
@@jabberw0k812 its because the scarab isnt very well designed. Its just not fun. They crammed like 30 grunts and 10 elites on one platform not designed to be fighting them.
@@psychomantis1926 I guess. Never bothered me. You just pick off the grunts, toss a couple grenades down a ramp, then storm the cockpit. Maybe not genius level design, but it's only like 30 seconds at the end of a very large, pretty solid level of the game. It may stand out more now because the setpiece itself seems dated...
@@jabberw0k812 oh, I absolutely hated the scarab when I played the game
People didn't like the arbiter? I thought it was pretty cool being the enemy
Being the arbiter I mean
Hell Ja
Logan Peterson, I thought it was cool, but most of his levels were ass.
Logan Peterson agreed
I thought the Arbiter's story was more interesting, even back when I played it as a teenager. The Chief is a just a space badass. He kills aliens and keeps killing them. But the Arbiter has a whole arc about learning the Covenant's religion is wrong and rebelling. It is where all the interesting lore happens. The only problem is that telling your friends/enemies apart is a more work in those levels. But I remember thinking it was a REALLY cool twist when I realized I was going to play as the Arbiter
2004: "wait what? why am i playing as this stupid alien guy?!
2020: 343 pls can we play as the arbiter and can we play as elits now pls!
343: we have heard you and the answer is no
HERESY
To this day I would have loved to see a ODST-esque game for the Elites, alas I doubt 343 could handle that at this point
i call this the raiden effect.
One nit pick about this video, I wish you stuck to the original graphics of Halo 2 with its original cutscenes to show what Halo 2 looked like at launch as it would make your points better and give the audience and impression of how it was presented originally.
yep, you have no idea how triggered I get when seeing the remastered cutscenes.
Everybody just acts so out of character. its lame.
There is allot to say about body language. and the remasters really messed up the characters
G Vulture thank you for stating exactly what I thought.
Same dude
It also doesn't seem fair to critique elements that were not part of the original game, and character emotes that were written for much, much lower fidelity graphics.
I agree. Even though I prefer the new graphics, I think it is best to showcase the original here. I personally believe that Halo 2 is the ugliest halo game. Halo CE wasn't anything spectacular, but halo 2 had such a dull filter where everything looked so bland and uninteresting. It was caught between Halo CE and Halo 3's graphics, in which I believe are better artistically to look at.
The Arbiter was one of the best things about Halo 2's campaign imo. While his missions might not have been the best (it doesn't help that Bungie gave him all of Halo 2's Flood levels except for one), I've always felt he was a more intriguing character than pre H4 chief ever was. It was tragic to see a great warrior stripped of his honor and publicly shamed, forced to undergo a series of suicide missions to regain his honor but which ultimately lead to him realizing that everything his religion had taught him was a lie. We also got a fascinating look at covenant culture through his missions. It's disappointing that people would dismiss the Arbiter without giving him a chance or even without watching his cutscenes.
I still advocate for a halo game dedicated to the Arbiter during the time of halo2-halo3.
I remember young, impressionable me watching my older brother play through this game and being absolutely enthralled by the Arbiter's appearance, history, and culture. I ended up getting a large majority of my Halo books because I wanted to read more into the Arbiter's story. To be honest, I think Halo 2, and specifically the Arbiter, sparked my fascination with science fiction as a whole. It really got me invested into the Arbiter's character arc, which made me want to play all the way through, the first game I felt compelled to do so. I still remember it fondly as one of my very favorite stories, and watching this video made me desperately wish I had a copy of the game I could pop into my Xbox and play.
If you have not read Halo: Evolutions, specifically The Return, I highly recommend it. There is a semi- animated sequence on the internet that tells this story you can watch for free, and the story itself is similar to Arbiter's.
Sacred Icon and Quarantine Zone are the best levels in the game - not to mention the later level where you can spring some elites and a pair of hunters from prison cells and have them help you. There are two parts of this game I replayed endlessly - the first act from Cairo Station to Metropolis, and then Icon, Zone, skipping the other missions, and going right to the end. Never cared for the High Charity bits.
Last of us 2 did the dual perspective poorly with Abby.
High Charity was so fuckin epic, blew my mind when I was a kid. I wanted to live there even amidst a civil war.
I had the opposite feeling when I was young going through as the arbiter, I was intrigued. I wanted to know why the hell the covenant was the way they were. Playing as the arbiter gave me answers to questions I hadn't yet thought of at the time.
Awesome take on the arbiter segment, i love how they "humanized" him for lack of a better word, the culprit of the fall of reach, the strongest highest ranking sangheili in the covenant, responsible for over 1 billion human casualties, stripped down to nothing.
I'll Always remember the quote "Tartarus, the prophets have betrayed us"
We need more people like you reviewing TLOUp2.
@@CunningCondor TLOUp2 is a great example of a game that screws this idea up. Presenting a character we are encouraged to hate for 10 HOURS. And then we switch perspectives at the climax. Blue balling us and trying to make us sympathise with said character. This causes the audience to see them more negatively, and the curtain begins to fall as we see the writers trying to make us like this person, telling us that they're actually nice. Failing miserably. Halo 2 nailed it. TLOUp2 did not.
@@mlproplayer171 Okay, 2020 Reddit user.
@@CunningCondor they presented genuine criticism of what affected their enjoyment in a respectable manner.
Am I the only one that really loves the Arbiter missions?
No your not !!!
More than the chief missions tbh, it was really cool playing as the covenant at the height of their power
odstlover I like Uprising and Great Journey is my favorite level in the game however all the others are sadly badly designed in terms of gameplay making them not very fun to play.
Nope, arbiter missions had more story depth than the entire Halo CE campaign lmao
I like the first two but the second two are my least favorite in the game. They are still good levels though just the other ones beat them
Holy fucking shit!!!!! I saw my brothers gamertage "shadows of dark" and the emblem he always used at 36:00 you played with him!! thats so crazy!! I am beside myself. how much youtube does one have to watch to spot something like that. those shouting matches were probably started by him lol. great analysis of halo 2 by the way. I have to call him holy shit
Haha, to be fair, that footage wasn't mine, belongs to a VERY old montage on youtube. But that's still pretty crazy. Small world.
And thank you!
Holy shit are you serious??? that's awesome
Raycevick what was the montage's name? And can I still find it on UA-cam?
Yeah my buddy Neophaunt showed up here too!
You are
The solo legendary campaign for me was 3 days of pain
Worth it though ;)
+Main Hoop true
It’s so hard
As an 8 year old kid for me it was about 3 weeks of hell but to this day I still have every jackal sniper spawn memorized from it
w00t ? it took me 8 hours
Holy Shit! Halo 5 followed the Halo 2 model to a T! Even down to the false advertisement!
However, Halo 2's story was very intriguing to me. It added a lot of twist I didn't expect.
Except Halo 2 turned out to be a good game--an amazing game even, and Halo 5 turned out to be trash--cutting features like splitscreen, shoving a terrible narrative down our throats, and releasing key features and content MONTHS after release.
Joseph F Halo 5, overall, was horrendous; however, I will admit, it has the best gameplay. That is purely subjective, but I felt the game play was better than it's ever been. Remove the special abilities and its perfect mechanically.
Worst campaign of any halo, by FAR best multiplayer of any halo. In my opinion halo 5 had the best multiplayer of any FPS game.
"No one liked Halo 2 back then." I'm sorry, but your argument is hardly credible when you're trying to say stupid stuff like that. Halo 2 singlehandedly changed online multiplayer forever due to how much the fans loved it. Yes, of course the game had haters. I'm not blind, but the thing is, the dislikers did not outweight the ones who liked it. Just look at the population and relevence that Halo 2 had back in the day compared to what Halo 5 has. Halo 2 had an immense online population. Halo 5 has been struggling to even remain below the number 15 on the charts. And no, the same thing does not apply to Halo 3. Halo 3 boasted an even larger online population in its day in accordance with its time period, and stayed on the top of Xbox Live's charts for nearly 5 years. The game also was the community's highest point.
"The hate Halo 5 is getting is no different then[sic.] The hate that Halo 1-3 got." Such is simply not the case. Halo CE, 2, or 3 NEVER removed features, and tried to sell a game that lacked features that its predecessors had. Halo CE's campaign, Halo 2's campaign, and Halo 3's campaign were generally praised for their time by most fans and most reviewers of their time. In Halo 5's terms, almost every reviewer spoke on Halo 5's poor story, and the majority of the Halo community has accepted that Halo 5's campaign is subpar.
Also, your point about Halo 4 is hardly true. Yes, people hated the multiplayer (and still do) but the campaign has been generally loved since launch. The game garnered fairly positive mixed reception from the fans. That has not changed. Halo 5 has been generally accepted by the fanbase to be subpar. Halo CE, 2, and 3 were never generally accepted by the majority of the fanbase to be subpar. There is a clear difference here.
Sorry, but as someone who was an adult for all of Halo's history and with a high speed connection that entire time (to view the interest reaction, etc.) - there has never been a sequel to Halo CE that was not immensely shit on (either the SP or MP) when it first came out, only to be praised highly once the next one hits (except maybe 3).
"Halo CE, 2, and 3 were never generally accepted by the majority of the fan base to be subpar." Wrong, Halo 2 was, except for multiplayer.
"Halo 5 has been generally accepted by the fan base to be subpar" - So just like Halo 2 - people bitch about the SP, and the multiplayer is very popular and well-received.
Halo 2 - everyone dissed the SP, everyone loved the MP
Halo 3 - both are generally liked, overall, as far as I can tell - although I remember some not like the changes to MP vs 2. EDIT - Actually, many people shit on Halo 3's graphics.
Halo 4 - everyone dissed the MP, everyone loved the SP (well, based on comments I have seen over time, the SP was once divisive, but is not universally praised)
Halo 5 - everyone disses the SP (to an unnecessarily degree IMO), everyone loves the MP.
* - "everyone" doesn't mean literally everybody - I have never been involved with an online game where there aren't forums full of people bitching about this change or that balance or whatever new or revamped feature.
Actually, looking back, Halo 2 and Halo 5 have much in common, except Halo 5 is living in a different online-gaming world than Halo 2 , and Halo 2's SP didn't have to face the same microscope of 2015's internet-culture.
Case in point about time changing everyone's mind - at some point between Halo 2 and 3, the Arbiter went from something generally disliked to being a fan favorite character that people were excited to see in Halo 5.
At any rate - IMO, each Halo SP has issues. 2's ending is bullshit, you play as Arbiter more than Chief (even ending the game with him). 3 removes layers that 2 gave to characters, and kills off people for inorganic story reasons. 4 introduces a villain that only novel fans know anything about, has a weird rushed lore-dump to bring you up to speed if you didn't read the right novels, and IMO totally botches the death of Cortana. 5's explanation of the cannon reason that a shard or something of Cortana ended up where it did is bs, and I have no idea why the hell I am playing more than half the game as this other character (who doesn't even have 2's excuse of "well, we need the player to see the other factions POV"). In terms of gameplay and level design alone, and except for 2 being lesser than CE, I feel each Halo has improved with level design and combat, which is what you do for 99% of the playtime, so I can somewhat forgive mucking up the story and/or how it is told.
I miss this era of Halo :(
Heres hoping Halo 6 can bring back the feeling of the original trilogy.
Oh you bet it will.
If only this poor soul had known that MCC for PC was on the way at the time he wrote this comment.
@El Matadores I think there is still hope, halo infinite from what we have seen seems to be bringing back the old halo magic , that doesn't mean it will be great but i have hope. 343 has also been having a good track record with halo wars 2 and the halo pc ports
Los Matadorès Games set on Zeta Halo (finally officially confirmed but everyone knew anyways). They have a real opportunity here to explore the lore we’ve all wanted to see for years. I hope they deliver
Meanwhile halo 6:
Grapple and open world
am I the only one here who likes halo 2's campaign the best? halo 3 plays better on coop than 2, but I still prefer 2 overall. Ce felt like more of an adventure as well, but I still preferred halo 2 overall.
I agree
still the best campaign for sure
I disagree, the amount of holding one position (8 times i think), Arbiter missions were no fun until the last half of the game, small environments and fighting brutes are a turn off for me. Although I love Metropolis, Delta Halo/ Regret, and Gravemind.
i agree, as it opened up halo into a large storyline. It gave us a real enemy and gave everything a reason and potential to continue.
Halo 2 campaing is the best of all the halo´s. I can play hours and hours the h2 campaing
Am I the only person who doesn't hate Halo 2's ending?
IAmMarshicus That marketing campaign remains to this day the best I have ever seen for any video game. Simply amazing!
Mike Mcglasson I don't hate it... Then again, my parents wouldn't let me play a Mature game until I convinced them to let me play, by then, my first Halo game was MCC, so the ending for me was a simple intermission as opposed to waiting for three years and a new console for the next game...
I love it. It's an infuriating cliffhanger. Also it's way fucking better than Halo 3's huge mess of a final act.
Mike Mcglasson did you play it when it came out, or did you play it for the first time more recently, like in the MC collection? most of us who played at release hated the end because there was no resolution and we had to wait years to find it.
I had the luxury of not having to wait 3 years to find out what happens next, so it had almost no effect on me
Halo 2 even with its flaws is the best in series. Its reach extended its grasp but Halo 2 set the tone for the rest of series in gameplay, look and mythology.
Uh...I think you're confused with Combat Evolved.
@@obiwaankenobi4460Combat evolve is repetitive and doesn’t have as many weapons and options as the games that came after. Is a good game, but I think saying is the best is kinda of insane
@@obiwaankenobi4460no it isn't
"I hope they never have to go through an experience like making it, ever again." Except Destiny. xD
Epic series, subscribed!
EposVox destiny is great now....
so that joke is dead.
just like skolas
Except I was referencing it's absolutely horrific development process that literally tore Bungie apart internally being akin to Halo 2's development mess, not the final result of the game.
Soooo no.
You're right.. however, today's Bungie is literally a whole another company.
The people who were there during the Halo days, are gone.
RIP Bungie :C
TBC1 maybe if you spend extra on dlc, the base game is garbage and that's BS
I wish people would stop playing Destiny just so that Bungie can die as a company. The example they are setting to other developers is harmful to the gaming industry.
And let's not forget that the fanbase is literally the most pathetic bunch of individuals on the planet, especially when they act as a hivemind of retardation.
I unfortunately was to young at the time to play Halo 2 online, so my first experiences with Halo multiplayer was the amazing Halo 3 experience. However i started my Halo journey with Halo CE, then after beating that in co-op with my dad, went to Halo 2. I love it. My favorite missions are those on Earth, just driving that Scorpion is so nostalgic. Halo 2 mightve been rushed, mightve only been 1/3rd of what Bungie wanted. But who cares, the game is still one of if not the best fps shooters of all time. Simply because it revolutionized gaming as a whole. Through multiplayer and a producer that cared. Bungie couldve done what developers do nowadays, rush a game to be completely broken and then just patch it out. But they didnt, they shipped a game that didnt need patching, and instead jumpstarted online gaming. I cant say how great its multiplayer was, because i never experienced it, and i will always love Halo 3's multiplayer the most out of any game. But i will never deny that Halo 2 is an all around amazingly awesome game. When MCC was announced i learned of who made the classic Halo 2 theme with the bass, that song just stirs my soul and i catch myself humming it or singing it all the time. This is what makes Halo, Halo. Not some fancy guns or anything but a game that makes you want to play it, that stirs your brain and heart to come back and play more and more.
I had a similar experience. Cept my dad wouldn't get us xbox live till like.. Reach xD
and I started playing halo when I was around 4, with my dad rapidly changing his decision over the years whether I was allowed to play such a game or not.
+Kaneki Ken lol
Mackenzie Braden I had the exact same experience. I beat the first one with my dad and eventually got halo 2 right before halo 3 launched. When I found out it was coming out I flipped. I had to wait 6 months to get a 360 and halo 3 for my birthday but when I did I was so happy. I played that until Halo Reach came out and I was finally able to play Xbox Live. Because Reach was the first Halo I played online on my own it has a soft spot in my heart. Now every time I think back I just wish I was older so I could have played all of the games when they came out.
Halo 2 didn't revolutionize anything at all. Doom and Halo CE did, but Halo 2 nope.
@@juanmanuelcorrea7673 I know you wrote this 2 years ago, but I would like to correct you. Halo 2 revolutionized the online space because it was the first console game to have a multiplayer. It kick-started all online play and multiplayer games because it was the first to do it. Halo CE didn't have online play because you could only play split-screen.
I guess being 12 messed with your ability to enjoy this game. As someone in my twenties at the time, and playing with those one or two decades older, we were blown away by getting to play the arbiter. We also loved the cutscenes. Even with all the cuts they had to make, it was a great game for its day and a good game even by modern standards. The whole point of story in a video GAME is to make the gameplay more enjoyable. And all of the Halo games have done that well except for 5.
And I liked the ending of Halo 2. Gamers today are just spoiled.
Wow I totally understand you and agree
@Mark Mitchell I think this says a lot about the context we're at in the industry. Halo 2 has a lot of 3 and 1s qualities of gameplay and adds up a lot to the franchise's storyline with themes that are easily understandable but not so easy to relate to.
I totally agree
Just sounds like a lot of excuses. The Arbiter got reasons to care about him after we played as him, not the other way around. It was good, but this game really hurt Bungie, and dismissing that because “I’m older” doesn’t make sense. And the industry moved on from your mindset of “story is only meant to improve gameplay.” Because now we have games about the story more than the gameplay. And people love them. (Witcher 3) The end of Halo 2 isn’t an end, it just stops. That would be unacceptable in any story, regardless of medium. It was criticized for this ending even when the game released.
Gamers today aren’t spoiled. Their tastes evolved. And they and the game industry moved on from the mindset that people like you have.
@@moonmoon2479 Sometimes it's ok to enjoy and love a game despite its flaws. A game will never be perfect, and often (like real life) the imperfections and deviations from original plans can make for some of the most memorable experiences.
I got this game by accident. The clerk was using it for the final test when I baught my used Xbox and he forgot to remove it before the sale. I got it home and when I turned it on lo and behold the game started. I loved it from the first seconds of the loading screen. I still wish I could find the guy and thank him. Now its 9 years later and the game still fuckin rocks
you triggered me with that clip of the jackel snipers
Worst part of the campaign on any difficulty.
totally agree.
I like the idea that these carrion birdy-bois are actually the deadliest enemy in the game - I don't like having to deal with them. The only thing between you and death is a clear sightline - in the Mombasa levels this is poignant and quasi-realistic, in monolithic forerunner structures it makes me want to jump off a cliff.
For me Halo 2 campaign is still the best, maybe i'm weird.
Marnix van Baalen
Nothing wrong with you at all.
Halo 2 by far had the longest, and most intersting storyline.
What a game man, great characters, great story, great music. 10/10
And to think it wasn't even a finiahed game; if bungie got to do what they wanted with it who knows how much better it would've been.
Reachs was good
the story and music was great in halo 2, but the level design was dull and there was way too much flood
I can recognize people's complaints with it, but goddamn I loved Halo 2's campaign and everything about it.
I do too. I love the long campaign and I do like quite a few of the levels, especially the one with Breaking Benjamin section.
What a lot of people didn't understand (and still don't) is that the Arbiter is the main character of Halo 2's campaign. Chief hardly contributes anything to the plot besides the assassination of Regret. With that in mind, people would have been less frustrated by the cliffhanger. They were frustrated because the story lacked resolution in their eyes, but in reality, the resolution was Arbiter joining the side of the "Heretic" leader he assassinated, attempting to enlighten Tartarus (despite all he'd done to him and his fellow elites), killing him when he refuses to stand down and finally he, destroyer of Reach and killer of a billion humans, forms an alliance with the enemy he used to revel in decimating.
When you look at it from this point of view, Halo 2, in my opinion, has the most compelling story and characters of the franchise.
Oh Halo 2, my old faithful companion. My first, ever, online multiplayer game. It was also the first game I ever preordered. Of course, there was actually reason to preorder back then. It's hard to believe that things have changed so much in 12 years. Hell, I still have the collectible slurpee cups from the Seven Eleven promotional. For 13 year old me, Halo 2 was the most amazing thing I had ever experienced. Watching this analysis of the game brought back many fond memories. Though, I don't remember going up against the BXR or double shot that much back then. What I remember, most vividly, was dealing with the noob combo. The hatred I had, for people who used that combo, burned brighter than the sun. So I made it my mission to dog those sons of bitches every chance I got. Ah, good times.
I don't remember the BXR or double shot either. I was only 10 when Halo 2 released so I was just having fun playing online. I am jealous you still have the Slurpee cups!
I got good at the bxb but the bxr was too damn difficult to master for me. I never got past level 43 and I totally felt the same way about the noob combo!!!! This video brought back some amazing memories of playing online with my brothers on two different TVs in the same room
it's strange that he didn't mention the rocket-launcher-and-sword-exploit/glitch, where you could zoom in with the rocketlauncher on a player and no matter how far away he was, as soon as your zoomed in and your bazooka-cross turned red, you just had to switch weapons immediately and pull the right trigger as fast as possible to charge through the whole map right to the enemy = easy kill....
ua-cam.com/video/lvSalM0HH6w/v-deo.html
Button glitching, super bouncing, butter fly glitch with swords, banshee launching, tank launching. The glitches and fun game types made Halo 2 my favorite game of all time. Now 25 but I was 12 then and this game made me love shooters but also to have fun with harmless glitches which were an endless bed of exploration in the game. Anyways gone are the days when not everything at to be perfect. Singleplayer was flawed but the multiplayer was perfection to me I played until they shut the servers off in 2010. MCC is fun but the fps rates make the glitches not work. Halo Cartographer on PC is a good substitute though and has a good community.
“Sadly that means no Breaking Benjamin song in this level, which means it has no reason to exist”
Finally someone besides me said it.
Remember when being the last Spartan meant something
It tends to happen with any series really. Which is why I loathe that trope.
I've always dreamed about what Halo 2 could've been had Bungie had the timeframe to do what they really wanted with it.
Halo 3 pretty much
I am amazed how Halo 2 came out. Even though it was heavily rushed, the game itself is still very fun. I will admit the campaign is pretty dull, but thank god the multiplayer made Halo into the game it is today.
imagine if they had another year in development time... omg
And it's still my favorite Halo game, no bias obviously.
Lets face it the bugs are what made the game great.
The campaign pretty dull? Are you Fucking kidding me?
HAZARDGrunt4500 its because the cliffhanger
what? Quarantine zone is by far my favourite level, I certainly wouldn't say 'one of the worst in the game' there's so much going on it's just a crazy fun mission
Came here to say the same thing. COGconnected condemned my favorite aspect of Halo 2 (the covenant story and playing as the Arbiter) and condemned my favorite levels too. Halo 2 is my favorite one in the series.
Alan Batsford there is slight nostalgia talking here but even without that it's mine too, the arbiter levels are probably the best in the game and without them i feel it would be a far worse game
But, honestly, his design, namely the damn arms, was kinda underwhelming. Regular Elites looked cooler to me.
brucenatelee I never had a problem with his design to be honest, apart from in Halo 5 where he looks ridiculous
I like the Arbiter's design. It informs on the lore that his is an old and honored office. It also informs on how brutally tough the elites are. They don't rely on their armor as much as the spartans do, since the Arbiter can walk around in his midevil armor and still wreck house.
Halo 2 had a very well crafted narrative, I wouldn't criticize it just because it "didn't follow the marketing" It's an epic story about betrayal, (Arbiter and the elites being betrayed and slaughtered), among many other things, and the civil war within the covenant was such a cool moment in the Halo universe that made the game even more epic and prevented it from being too much like Halo CEs narrative. If we didn't play as the Arbiter, and didn't witness these things happening on the Covenant's side of the story in relation to the Human's side of the story, we'd be left with a plot that is virtually the same as CE and with 4 villains we know nothing about. Chief leaving behind Cortana on High Charity to go and stop Truth and defend Earth was also a very epic and pretty emotional moment.
There were many awesome things that did happen with Halo 2's story, but even more that were cut, and the rushed development just doesn't do it much justice because the game does indeed suffer from level design and an overall downgrade from Halo CEs masterful gameplay loop. Still, many things were added to the game's sandbox which did well to partly make this up.
Ce is bad
Halo 2
@FBWalshyFTW can you REupload all your dancetage videos of halo 3? Some of them are deleted. I loved them so much :)
FBWalshyFTW Nah brah halo 2 is better but halo 3 is still one of the best halo games to date
FBWalshyFTW YOUR FINAL BOSS WALSHY OMG I JUST FIGURED OUT YOU earned a new sub
Halo 2
You love Halo 2 or it's better than 3?
Halo 2 was amazing, I'm so glad to have gotten in a few dozen games on those last days of the OG xbox live. I never got into the MP during its heyday because I was a kid and had no idea how to connect my xbox to the internet lol
Project cortana .. search it download it love it
"Okay, let's be cool" -Marine who exploded mere seconds after saying that.
He will be remembered for his bravery
I loved the arbiter. And the elites. The sangheili where my favorite enemy. But just like anything they got boring. Changing the enemies by making the sangheili allies is so much more interesting than just killing them off.
Halo 2 might not have been exactly what they originally said, but thats because they had to change something. Versus alot of modern "11 years later" games which arent accurate at all. Elder scrolls online, no mans sky etc.
Lol I feel the nostalgia thing. All through highschool we had a club where we played halo 2 at lunch.
11:40 "Okay, everyone be cool!" *Warthog blows up*
Think that's David Cross, comedian and Tobias on Arrested Development. Also Zero from GTA Sand Andreas.
Oh man Tower of Power, you just hit me right in the childhood
Good times, I also remember the zombie gamemode. I also remember that we played once or twice "Micheal Jackson" where we had to get to the hill before MJ got us.
I can not disagree more about bxr and quadshotting. Those glitches turned the BR into the most OP weapon in halo history. Yes, more powerful than the CE pistol. Not head to head but within their respective games. It threw balance out the window for a weapon that was already op without them. Personally, Halo CE is my favorite and I love a game being punishing with experience, but only when balanced and intended. These glitches are neither balanced or intended.
Halo 2 didn't create custom games, Halo CE PC did. People were playing things like pistols no shields forever before swat was officially a thing. Also, foundation swat was awesome.
love the work you put into these vids! keep them up, subbed.
I feel you so hard on the Legendary difficulty. I remember being a 12 year old frustratingly trying to beat certain areas that I thought were virtually impossible and would spend literally 2 hours on a segment that should have been about 10 minutes.
I found this from the HBO forums, so I'm not familiar with your whole review series, though I'll definitely check it out now. This is a really well-done analysis. I was really into the Arbiter storyline as a kid just because I soak up that kind of storytelling, and I liked the knight/samurai inspiration, but I still hated that all the ads were misleading and it wasn't about the Chief defending Earth. Even i love bees ended with a lead in to the Covenant invasion, and ILB was advertised with those awesome ads with Master Chief standing against the orange smoke. And thanks for calling Bungie out on their lies that Halo 2 levels are bigger than Halo: Combat Evolved.
One of the biggest flaws contributing to Halo 2's closed in environments is the addition of the invisible wall. Halo: Combat Evolved didn't have that, possibly as an oversight because Bungie was less familiar with FPS conventions in the console medium (?), and it made the environments feel more real and like a bigger sandbox, enabling you to address obstacles in many different ways without feeling like you're cheating. Halo 2 corrected the oversight, and then the game felt more closed in and linear.
Unfortunately, there were a few moments in the video where I saw a flicker of some visual you tried to remove but hadn't completely. It would be excusable for a lesser video, but this one is so polished that these little mistakes are disappointing.
+GoingRampant - I wince a little every time I see those flickers. Admittedly, it was due to laziness, and after working on the video for so long, I thought that it wouldn't be worth it to spend another day rendering for a handful of flickers. I'm actually glad that someone noticed them, it means I'm not crazy :D
+GoingRampant Also, where can I find this video on the HBO forums? I didn't know that someone linked it there. That's awesome!
+CuHnadian carnage.bungie.org/haloforum/halo.forum.pl?read=1210760
I've played halo 2 since it came out and still do on MCC. This by far is the most complete and solid review I have seen( I have watched many). Seeing you touch on every aspect of the game and look you even got a comment from Walshy lol. I'm super stoked that you even mentioned the button glitches and holy fuck...Tower of Power and the true start to zombies on Foundation! Most people don't even know what I'm talking about when I mention those. I am in the process of watching your whole series of Halo videos and all I can say so far is excellent job! I don't know if you still play MCC but with the new update around the corner it will hopefully bring back some more of the community. If you would like to play sometime just let me know and I'll send you my GT. Thank you for taking the time to make such an in depth series about a game close to so many people including myself.
You are the best reviewer I have ever come across
Haha, I'll have to disagree on that, but thank you, I really appreciate it.
nah dude you are great, so underrated to!
if you like this guy, try mistercaption.
8:24 master cheese 😂😂
Sharkboy1006 nice, real nice...
cheesy
Indeed
You seem to have put quite a lot of time and effort into making this video, and I enjoyed it. Subbed.
SWAT on Ivory tower was what dreams were made of. RIP Halo 2, we miss you
13:32
Eww you used Halo wikia! Use Halopedia instead.
Original xbox servers were shut down because games like halo 2 were still pulling better numbers online than the new xbox 360 games like gear of war. It was embarrassing for Microsoft that their older games had more players online than their new ones. Even after halo 3 came out, halo 2 was the was still in the top 10 most played games until they shut it down.
I Still cant believe they got rid of that clan system, and no other fps games have copied it. That was the main reason so many custom games existed.
Gears of war passed halo 2 in most played
@@psychomantis1926 Yeah, years later.
@@fuzzydunlop7928 2 years later
Gears of War sucks
Ack, didn't realize this was uploaded already! Really loved your CE video, i'm gonna respond to a few of the points you raised like I did then, hopefully you see this. Also, I apologize for the walls of text, this is gonna be very long, there's a lot more I disagree with here then with your CE video, and a lot more i'd like to hear your thoughts on.
I actually typed so much out youtube won't let me post it, so here's a pastebin: pastebin.com/NzjN0ATf
+Jabberwockxeno
To respond generally to your inquiry about my dislike of "set-pieces", I and many other people don't like them because they often come across as spectacle over substance. Chief doesn't fly with a bomb in outer-space to blow up a ship single handily because that's where the story thematically and emotionally leads to, it's done because its cool. Not only does it jump the shark, but it also sacrifices gameplay and/or the combat sandbox in order to do so. As I listed in the video, the Scarab fight is a bore because when you look past the vehicle's visuals, it's just two small rooms with enemies that you have to take care of. You're doing the same thing you've been doing through the whole game, just with less options in the sandbox since there's only one way to board the craft. Set-pieces only work if they're able to use the restricting visuals and events to emotionally invest the player, and in Halo 2, I never felt anything for them. I couldn't help but feel that all the Michael Bay explosions were nothing more than a desperate cry for attention. Subtlety is something that you point out Halo 2 has in some of its story, which is true, but that subtly is often overshadowed by arbitrary big shit go boom set-pieces.
That scene in Halo: Fall of Reach is just as ridiculous to me, but its true that Halo 2 is by no means the first time the series sailed towards the sea of over the top fights.
"I entirely disagree that "it's hard to blame people" for not caring. When they started to play CE for the first time, they had no reason to care for the PoA or the Chief either, yet they learned to."
Chief didn't have the baggage that Arbiter does, since Halo is the first game, it doesn't expect you to be pulled in 100% from the beginning. Combat Evolved used its ground breaking gameplay in the first level to get people's attention, followed by Halo's mystery and beautiful visuals. It used the world to keep the player's interest.
Halo 2 immediately kicks off with a character who is an enemy type we've killed dozens of in the last game. For a lot of players, that alone is enough of a reason not to give a crap; unfortunately, the game doesn't assist the Arbiter by giving him the short end of the stick in terms of missions. It's not until the third act that he's finally given a chance.
Also, your point about the contrast between the UNSC handing out medals, and the Elite being tortured, is very obvious and cliche. Contrast works much better when its not shoved in your face like the opening credits of The Purge.
I understand that the New Mombasa destruction isn't as traditionally explosive, but if a shockwave is strong enough to knock over a freaking space elevator, its definitely powerful enough to wipe people out unfortunate enough to be caught up in the blast. But of course, that didn't really happen, because basically everyone was evacuated, meaning that the entire cutscene of a city being hit by a shockwave has no tension, horror, or impact.
And I don't mention ODST and Another Day At The Beach, because at the time of the game's release, neither existed. This video is about how the game stands on its own, and not about future games that would later connect to it, I'll save those for future videos.
As for the ending, people can usually tell or feel when a story's been cut at the head, which Halo 2's absolutely was. I'd say that your preparation of it being sudden definitely made you look at it differently. As for the length and missions though, Halo 2 may have had more missions, but total length was ultimately shorter than the previous game, so its completely acceptable that players would've expected at least one more mission on Earth, because that's what was supposed to happen in the original script.
To conclude, the reason I constantly refer to Halo 1's missions in the opening is because Halo 1 is more organic game than its sequel. Combat in Halo 1 spawns in enemies and from there, everything that happens is a dynamic combination of the weapons, AI, level, and player. Meanwhile, Halo 2 is a lot more instances where the gameplay is given more restrictions. Smaller levels, boss fights, story set-pieces in and outside of gameplay. It makes for a game that's more predictable and therefore, less exciting. What hurts it even more is that when the gloves come off in Halo 2, it's gameplay is a solid improvement over its predecessor, with better shooting, movement, and weapon design.
I'm sorry I wasn't able to address every point, as I've still got to get back to working on the Halo 3 video, but thank you for your passionate comment, and as always, this is only my opinion. I don't want these videos to be viewed as a "Factual" critique of the games. its just my opinion, and I try to make the best argument for it as I can.
I appreciate the mention about the differences between the Halo Wiki and Halopedia, I'll remember that for the future.
Thank you for watching, hope to see you on the next video.
Take care,
- CuHnadian
Thanks for the response! Can't wait to see what you say about halo 3, this series has quickly become my favorite set of halo videos on youtube.
+Jabberwockxeno
You're welcome, and thank you for the high praise, I've still got a lot to improve but I'm glad you enjoy it. Stay tuned!
+Jabberwockxeno Glad you like them! We're quite proud of them as well.
Jabberwockxeno z
Because oddly enough while the Covenant attacks the Cairo, the Athens, and the Malta; the attack on New Mombasa is when Halo 3: ODST interacts.
When you come into New Mombasa, that's when the final climax happens. So when you go into slip space with the Covenant ship, that's when the ODST team escapes the explosion.
So it makes sense that New Mombasa is evacuated.
Great to see you made another video the first one was excellent. Keep it up guys.
+Rob Cram - With viewers like you, we absolutely will! Halo 3 is obviously next in the series, and I'm beginning work on it soon.
"some players didn't even know if the grave mind was flood"
Come on now. The opinion of 5 year olds doesn't matter in this argument
I honestly love how you talked about the custom games, that was my life and how I made most of my friends. GG Halo2, GG.
The introductory cut-scene of Halo 2 elevated my hopes for the story of this game. I wasn't a big fan of that green-armoured guy who only had 32 lines of dialogue in H:CE, but I know that a lot of gamers like him: opening with the Arbiter instead was a brave move, and cutting between his punishment with the scene of MC's medal ceremony was a nice piece of storytelling. Unfortunately, it proved to be the highlight, too: the Arbiter's narrative arc was slight, and none of the humans had any arcs at all; the Prophet of Regret probably shouldn't have risked an attack on Earth with his limited forces if his real goal was to follow his star-map and find another Halo; Gravemind's betrayal could have been portrayed better than via one line of dialogue from Cortana during a fight with lots of shotguns sounding off ... speaking of which, since Gravemind didn't actually introduce itself, is the fact that Cortana knows its name a hint at a plot-point in a later game, or just an example of me being eagle-eared when it comes to petty details?
Ah well, at least it gave us some fun gameplay - plus, some of my favourite episodes of Red vs Blue, and another Lucas Raycevick video.
Halo 2 was the greatest failure to ever succeed, and succeed it did. While it being an amazing game, it has less than half the intended content, as you mention, and thus being BUNGiE's worst game to make. All things considered, Halo 2 is arguably the best game in the franchise, seeing how all the hell BUNGiE had to undergo to make it as well as making the most of what they could salvage definitely defines they do care.
I miss Halo 2 multiplayer so much. I played this master piece exclusively from release until the player base moved to Halo 3. I must have logged 5000 hours+ and i could do another 5000 if the game had servers and a player base.. I've built up so much nostalgia that i fear no game will ever be able to replace this game from my personal best multiplayer game since the big bang. I played with the best and nothing beats the feeling of winning scrim's vs Str8 Rippin and Final Boss. That will be my legacy! Biggest achievement of my life! I will return to watch this video for the 5th time in a month or so :)
Your username is familiar. I think I had you on my friendslist at some point. I have a similar story, where I randomly stumbled upon and played against Ogre 2 in a match of Halo 2. I think my team lost, but it was a fairly close game if I remember correctly.
Project cortana
"Hey guys, time to talk about the multiplayer 11 years later!
Aaand he proceeds to talk about the original multiplayer for 20min."
When he says “judge” at 27:01 he sounds like the Halo multiplayer announcer
Battlefront hasn't aged well? Get the hell out of here. And so far you are the only person I have heard say that the Arbiter levels were "dismissed by fans". Fans I know were annoyed that Arbiter was removed from 4 and 5.
+hellangelzx Battlefront's 1&2 really haven't. They are riddled with lackluster shooting, laughable AI, and mediocre level design. They were pick-up and play console shooters that simply took Battlefield and applied it to the Star Wars universe, nothing more.
As for being the first to mention people's distaste of the Arbiter at the time, type in "Hate the Arbiter" into google and you'll get a bunch of forum posts discussing why people didn't like his levels or character at the time. As I point out in the video, it had more to do with the misleading marketing campaign, and the poor level design than the character.
CuHnadian The only accurate thing you described about those two is the laughable AI. The rest is vastly incorrect and shows you haven't played the games in a very long time.
+hellangelzx My steam page says that I played Battlefront II during the making of this video. My buddy (who's played both for dozens of hours) can attest that we played for hours and even managed to join a couple online matches on GameRanger. A UA-cam comment can't tell you when I've last played a video game simply because you disagree with my opinion.
Take Battlefront's raw shooting mechanics and compare it with Halo 2, F.E.A.R, Unreal Tournament 2004, Half Life 2, Doom 3, Call of Duty 2, Battlefield 2, and Timesplitters: Feature Perfect, those were games that came out during the same years as both SW:BFs, I doubt you will find many players who'll argue that the shooting is more satisfying in SW:BF than any of these.
If you enjoy Battlefront's 1&2 more than these, that's perfectly fine, but saying that the game doesn't have poor levels is hard to argue.
Exactly. Battlefront 2 surpasses modern shooters.
Battlefront 2 (2005, the fact that I even have to denote that pisses me off, thanks EA) is a great game for what it is, it's aged well enough considering how bad most Starwars games are.
The AI was always lackluster but the size of battles is what made up for that. It honestly felt like a low blow that only battlefront seemed to get "called out" in that little segment, at least to me. I love Halo and I love Battlefront, but I honestly like Battlefront 2 better than Halo 2 out of the two games.
I love your X Years Later videos. So much history and detail. So well put together. I can only imagine how much work these videos are for you, but I hope you continue to make more of these as much as you can :)
Still my favorite game of the series. I remember people being mad about the ending, and I never understood that. It was obviously going to be the middle of a trilogy. And I thought the story and writing was significantly better than the third game.
Damn, that was a fantastic video! Had these in my recommended for a while, assumed it'd be a quick video talking about gameplay then vs now, then I ended up watching an hour long documentary on the entire game, and it was totally worth it!
I feel like I'm in the minority when I was pleasantly surprised by being able to play as Thel 'Vadam in this game. They're some of my favorite levels. I'm still holding out that there'll be an exclusively Sangheili single player game eventually. But that'll probably never happen.
I don't know how I found your videos but their quality is fantastic. Hope your channel continues to grow
You know, the early Halo 2 cinematic script (www.halopedia.org/Early_Halo_2_script ) had the first lines about the Master Chief, specifically. Instead of "There was only one ship", it was "There was only one", and "one" referred to one human responsible for destroying the Halo. Maybe that would have been better for immediately connecting their story with the beloved player character's.
People like you really irritate me. First of all the change in role was early in the series and hasn't(obviously)done, again. I'm well-aware Arbiter and chief are roled around fifty-fifty and maybe, even as I loved playing arby; wasn't the best. If you tell me there should've been a opt, I'll cash that all day and night. I'm not here to ogle and cut you up the side. Secondly, this, again is absolutely not to make you feel horrible or whatever for wanting to play as chief all the time. However, don't you think some variety would do some good? Again, I know there is a huge difference having a choice between a and m; but, from what I've read from your comments, it sounds neophyte. All being said it wouldn't strangle me a bit; if you were to assert the change was way too early and that perhaps, may ex or why should've happened before the change. Though, couldn't you say that'd be a little overzealous? Alas, what I hope is concrete(definitive)that playing as Arby isn't that bad and helps to expand the Halo verse.
Maybe its cuz I'm a huge Halo fan (except for Halo 5's campaign) but the quality of narration, footage, editing, the subtle comedy, the in depth analysis of the game in relation to its intention, development, design, legacy on all of your Halo videos..is simply top notch. Its like I'm watching a documentary. Great work!
I'm contemplating hooking in my original Xbox and playing some halo 2 with some friends...
My personal favourite of all Halo games. Too many great moments and great memories playing this countless times with my sister. Good times.
As someone who went to school for video game development, I feel like a lot of goals were ambitious for their time on this game. For all the work that Bungie has done, you simply can't go beyond the constraints of the hardware. Of course there are scripted events. This is 2004. Making Chief fly through space with a bomb is a lot to program in a fps at the time. That alone would have been a huge undertaking that would have had to start from the ground up. The Scarab sequence... yes they could have done SOMETHING beyond shoot these 2 elites to win. Upload Cortana to self destruct the thing or plant a bomb. Still, do you know how hard it was to have a stable section of game on a MOVING object? That alone was revolutionary for the time. While it may not seem like that big of a deal to the layman, it's pretty huge. When I did rigging, we had to rig a character and animate a fighting pose for them. You know when you hover over a character and they have their fists up and kinda bounce back and fourth, maybe do a kick? Doing anything beyond simple things like a kick or a turn was incredibly difficult. And I went to school in 2006-2009. When a rig did a full 360° like a roundhouse kick, it wanted to snap BACK 360° because it didn't understand that it was already back in its original position. These are the small things you spend hours figuring out or having to use alternative methods to fix. Getting a rig to stand on a moving platform that had other moving rigs attacking you and it was as smooth as it was back then? That was amazing. Even in level design, setting up a scripted sequence with a rig moving with a platform was incredibly difficult. Was the Scarab a single complete asset or was it multiple assets moving together to create the illusion of one? Was it treated as a static or dynamic asset? How does the rig interact with both? Engines today do this for you, for the most part, but back then, you had Unreal, Havoc Hammer, and a few other engines available for public use. In house engiens.... I don't even know how they're created.
So basically, thinking about the time the game was developed and the technology available, Halo 2 is nothing less than a mastery of game development. Today we can go back and see everything and nit pick at things that are simply refined or obsolete. Back then, it was just pure amazing.
gave me goose bumps im so happy i got to play thee original halo 2 on 360 when the servers were still up god i miss that and mcc has alot of players but not everyone because of 343 fucking up but i still support halo and you will still see me on supporting the games that i love
"Excuse me, who the fuck are you?"
Play the video at 0.25 speed, and pause it at 6:48
This weekend i went cross country to visit old friends. We booted up 2 crt monitors and 2 original xboxes. We played 8 player spilt-screen Halo 2 for hours and hours and hours. It is hands down the most fun i have had with a video game in 2016. We laughed and screamed and had an all around blast the whole weekend! Thank you for the amazing video, keep it up! You will soon have waayyyy too many subs to handle ;)
Still, after all of this, my favorite Halo games are Halo 2 and Reach. (followed by Ce and 3) And I do think that campaign is great, but also I agree that The Sacred Icon and Quarantine Zone are not that good. Still, I really like the current Arbiter.
still my absolute favorite halo game - the music, campaign, everything :)
Kazoobird ^^
No love for ODST?
Every time. Every single time. When that title screen came up, I took a moment to relax, inhale from by bowl or blunt, smile and press start. My friend would pretty much say most of the time, "The calmness before the storm". "The Last Spartan" is simply beautiful.
I love this series it's like a documentary.
Thanks for creating these high quality mini-docs. Good job!
I miss the old Bungie who didnt try and rape my wallet for emotes.
+Edmundo studios Hi Edmundo, small world eh?
+Rob Cram Yes our small internet world! :)
@Cosmic Rift *Facepalm*
@Cosmic Rift Uno reverse card.
@@AAhmou i would try to argue against you but bungie is free now.
This game seriously still has one of the best soundtracks I've ever had the privilege of experiencing
You once said that Battlefield and Halo were two pillars of your gaming experience. I think it would be awesome to hear your thoughts on Battlefield. Keep up the good world. Love the content.
I miss playing 1v1 on lockout and ivory tower back in 2004
Definitely the best Halo game. At least the best single player with the most interesting story.
Intro song is Elegia by New Order.
would be cool if each flood type performed a task in a battle similar to the covenant with canon fodder etc. would that make them better in your eyes or would they still be bad.
Watched the whole way through, so good. Thank you for putting in the time and effort. I've subbed. Thanks again!
The Arbiter was amazing wtf you mean
I thought in halo one I was walking in circles and the enemies kept respawning in the cloned rooms
I disagree with you SOO FREAKING MUCH! Halo 2's campaign is the best! So much variety and epic moments! And it greatly expands the lore for the better! Halo 2 will always be my favorite game of all time.
LOL the easter egg
"excuse me who the @#$3 are you"
I remember rushing to finish the game as fast as possible when i came out as a kid, then talking to many other kids, of which none had any idea what the octopus creature at the end was about.
So. I just recently played the first two Halo games for the first time. (crazy, i know. Blasphemous even). And I have to say, I feel that your reviews for 1 and 2 are opposites to how I first experienced them. I do agree that 1 had infuriatingly copy-paste levels. I hated its level design. But I felt that, starting with the library level, the game started to pick up, for me. Learning about the nature of Halo and the Flood etc. actually kept my interest going, while in the early levels I was feeling quite bored, despite the good look and feel of the game.
Halo 2, as a whole, really impressed me. I had a bad taste in my mouth from one, but it overall intrigued me with its atmosphere and score. Halo 2's story, while not incredible compared to others, was very good compared to one. I really liked the Arbitor levels, and playing the game from a different perspective really enhanced its depth. It also "feels" different playing as the Arbitor, I felt almost like I needed to use different weapons. I agree that the reveal of the Gravemind could have been better, it was a HUGE moment in the story and it was hardly explained well at all. But the last portions of the game were very exciting, and the pinnacle of the game. Even if the Master Chief and Arbitor were forced together, I felt like they were working toward a common goal that, after playing the first game, is obviously a worthwhile one: Preventing the cataclysm of the Halo. For me, returning and preventing the Halo's destruction was more important story-wise than immediately protecting earth. Especially once you discover the extremes that the Prophets had been going to to trigger them. It really was an interesting vantage point to approach a plot that generally was the same as Halo 1. The corruption of the Prophets, the fact that the Covenant was acting on their behalf for centuries (and being manipulated all along), all intrigued me.
Overall I felt Halo 2 to be a really strong game, and I'm surprised at how critical you are of the game at every point. I'm looking forward to playing 3; I played a little of it back in the day, but now that I really have a foothold in the series and understand it better, I'm interested at how I feel about the game now.
I was working at EB at the time of Halo 2's launch. You are absolutely right, the hype was unlike [almost] anything else. Had a line outside my mall store all the way to the parking lot. It was ridiculous.
-The different performance characteristics with the original disc are probably entirely due to the fact that you're playing it on a 360, not the condition of the disc or 360. 360 emulation of oXbox games really isn't very accurate, especially not when it comes to performance. Although even on oXbox the game isn't a perfectly rock-solid 30fps.
-It seemed a little odd when you were talking about the original cutscenes while H2A Blur CGI footage was running, especially when you commented on Miranda's facial expression when New Mombasa was about to get exploded.
-I actually agree that in some ways H2A feels as removed from H2 as CEA does from CE, although we seem to be a minority. H2A's diffuse textures are a closer match to their originals, but the harsh lighting and very different materials produce massively changed vibes. (But: I seem to be the only person out there who overall prefers the original aesthetics, including cutscenes. I thought that Blur's cutscenes created artistic inconsistency with the gameplay, chopped up the flow due to their load times, and had poor audio editing both in dialogue and musical timings.)
+HaloTupolev I didn't have time or hard drive space to record another playthrough of the game with the original cutscenes.
I actually didn't play Halo 2 on the Original Xbox online and only played on 360, so it could entirely be that my memory of the game is blinded, and the old version really did have FPS trouble.
Adden, I completely agree. If you compare ce to its anniversary and compare the legend pistol side by side; ce's is MUCH better aesthetically. In ce people'd shid themselves when they saw it and knew it fucked stuff up. On the other hand; the anniversary's is wildly scoff.
not sure if many people know about it, but these guys made a mod (I guess?) for H2 Vista called Project Cartographer which takes away the Windows live restrictions and lets you play on some of their dedicated servers, or if you port forward, you can make your own lobbies. They recently added Infection as a gamemode which now automatically changes yo to the Green Team if you die, and I have to say its some of the most fun I've had in a while
can't believe they shut down the servers
Project Cartographer brings back online servers.
I don't even like Halo but I'm watching this whole thing and loving it. I really love the production behind this, really, really amazing!
7:15 "didn't know till recently those elites where high council" bitch they have fancy armour and weapons and are standing like the British soldiers guarding the queen for a reason
I'm in a weird boat because I was introduced to Halo CE about a year before Halo 2 came out. I never saw the E3 demo or any of the marketing. I was able to go into it blind, and I loved every minute of it. I only learned about the pre-release hype long after I beat the game and popped in my collector's edition bonus disc. At the time, I didn't even know there was a collector's edition. My parents knew I wanted the game and picked up the first one they could in the store.
Thel's missions are dismissed by most fans? Most Halo fans love Thel just as much as John now.
The years I spent playing Halo 2 is, and will always be, my favorite and most memorable online experiences. Not only was the game just pure enjoyment but I made friends online that I still speak to and play with to this very day.
I got a tank through that fucking tunnel.
I got a banshee ;) LOL
XD
I got instant goosebumps when you played the music.
Hated the BXR glitch.
That and the super jumps. Omg I hated that even more.
Aaron Garza I loved super bouncing!
+Wally17 It was terrible. It was exploiting the physics engine and that is cheating.
loser! i was probably wrecking you back in 05
Aaron Garza It could be, but there were instances where you could easily be killed or it didn't really give you an advantage. I did it a few times in matchmaking, but mostly kept it to custom games for fun or when trying to find bounce spots with other people that I was in a Glitching/Super Bouncing clan with.
I loved the beginning with the grunt filter. I need to find one of those.