Halo 2

There’s no weight. This describes my overall impression of Halo right now. While playing and the time after I beat Halo 2 I’ve been trying to figure out what it is that makes the game so beloved, yet leaves me rather cold. I even did research to see what other first person shooters existed at the time in order to give some proper context to see if I was expecting too much from the game.

Years ago I played the original Halo on my Mac (which means I played it a year or two after its initial release). At the time I think I was just happy to be playing any games on my Mac at all, but I remember having an okay time with it. I don’t remember being blown away or so totally engrossed that I played it in only a couple sittings.

Around when Halo 3 was coming out I got Halo 2 so I could then play Halo 3. Well after a few false starts, it burned a place on my shelf for a long time. Not false start really, I actually made it about halfway through, but I never found myself engaged in the game story or gameplay wise. Mostly I played it in very small play sessions.

I know that Halo is a big game in terms of being the first big first person shooter to do a number of things. First was that it really popularized first-person-shooters on consoles (I remember thinking when it came out that controlling a shooter without keyboard and mouse would suck) also the two gun inventory and regenerating health. Clearly now there are tons of first-person-shooters on the market and a lot of them built on this basic foundation. Before it, Half-Life was one of the first games if not the first which made the seamless single player campaign with more seamless loading plus scripted story events. Halo gets credit for these things, but I still can’t get all that excited about it.  

Story – In the first Halo, super soldier Master Chief discovers a mysterious ring in space while fighting the aliens known as The Covenant. Turns out it’s a doomsday device capable of destroying all life (within a radius of 25,000 light years if you want to be technical). He’s nearly tricked into activating it to destroy the alien species known as The Flood (think facehuggers, headcrabs, zerglings etc.). They end up destroying the Halo and saving the galaxy.

In Halo 2 Master Chief is sent to do army stuff which involves fighting the Covenant. Meanwhile, the alien responsible for letting the first Halo get destroyed is stripped of rank, and branded a heretic. He’s given a second chance by the high council members in The Covenant for the purposes of taking out another guy who they say is an actual heretic. He’s made Arbiter and sent on this mission. Past this, the story was kind of out of mind for me and boiled down to Master Chief killing more aliens and the Arbiter killing rebel Covenant. Turns out that there are more Halos out there, paths meet and Covenant are invading Earth, game ends.

I don’t mean to sound dismissive, but this is all I remember about the story and that’s even after reading a few summaries. Needless to say, I found very little compelling about the story or even the characters. Most people who like Halo will say Master Chief is a total badass but I’ve seen little evidence to convince me of this. There are a few moments in the game where he does stuff like ride a bomb through space, plant it and head back to a ship, but even those moments didn’t impress me or get me at all excited. The CG trailers certainly make him look like a badass, but they’re not indicative of the gameplay.

If anything I found myself more interested in The Arbiter since he had some actual story stuff going on in the game. Master Chief as far as I was concerned was just going through levels killing aliens with not much motivation. The Arbiter at least kind of had an objective, but even still comparing the two is kind of like comparing Star Wars: the Phantom Menace characters. Without describing what they do in the game, there’s not much you can say about them as characters. If I were to describe the story and characters I’d say once again there’s no weight. No weight to the characters and no dramatic weight. This wouldn’t matter as much if I enjoyed the gameplay more.    

Sound & Design – Halo is known for a number of things in its gameplay. A few I already mentioned like the guns, health and also the enemy AI is known to be good enough that firefights play out differently upon replay. There’s a lot I should like, but there’s this really big one which affects my whole Halo experience.

The sound effects.

I’ll say again, there’s no weight. I hate the sound effects in Halo. Master Chief has no footfalls, his jump is incredibly floaty (though apparently he weighs half a ton) and these guns don’t feel like they have weight at all. Functionally they’re effective at taking guys out, but I don’t feel the impact using them. I remember liking the pistol and its scope in the first Halo, but the guns in this game really bother me.

Let’s start with the worst offender: the submachine gun. This gun can be dual-wielded, but that doesn’t change the fact that it sounds like I’m shooting plastic BBs at the enemy. Maybe they did this to sound more like real weapons? Because real guns don’t sound as impressive as their videogame or movie counterparts. The battle rifle is a bit better with its three-shot burst, but still doesn’t feel very powerful. The shotgun which is very effective should be the best sounding gun of them all, but it still doesn’t do it for me. If you want an example of a good sounding shotgun try Half-Life, Uncharted, heck even Doom has a good sounding shotgun. Halo’s shotgun, not so much.  

 Then you have the Covenant guns which are rayguns and laser guns. There’s little way these can be made to sound like they have weight so these do even less for me than the other guns. Actually, the plasma gun in Doom always felt good to use, maybe it was the behavior of the plasma balls when they hit.I will say the one nearly bright shining part of your arsenal that I enjoyed most were the grenades. Grenades are very effective and it’s satisfying to see two or three guys get taken out by one grenade. Especially the plasma grenades which are grenades that stick to enemies. I definitely enjoyed grenades the most, but even still I could’ve enjoyed more if the sound effects made it feel more substantial. 

The other auditory thing I have an issue with is the music.

Music – It’s not the music itself that I have a problem with, I enjoy the Halo soundtrack a great deal. I get chills when I listen to the Halo track on the Video Games Live CD. During the game I don’t feel like the music is used to great effect. The sound mix feels very flat through the entire game. If it’s been mixed at all to rise and fall for dramatic effect then it’s so subtle I didn’t notice it at all. It’s not like they didn’t possess the technology for music cues to kick in so it makes me wonder.  To their credit, how do you mix music for big action scenes when almost the whole game consists of big action scenes with very little pauses in between? Overall it’s just very flat to me, and there’s no dramatic flair.

Gameplay – Gameplay consists of shooting and vehicle segments either on land or in the air. Most of the vehicle missions I didn’t find that interesting. I don’t like how the Warthog controls so I elected to man the gun turret and let the AI drive. The banshees are okay in the mission where you’re in the sky, but when you’re close to land it’s kind of a pain. Siege tank missions are basically just shooting gallery missions as you slowly move around blowing stuff up. You’re so powerful in this thing it doesn’t really matter what they throw at you. The ghost I actually liked best because of how maneuverable it is and because you’re usually up against other things that make a satisfying explosion or fall into pieces.

Maybe I should’ve played on Heroic difficulty instead of Normal because most of the time in firefights I could just rush in and recklessly kill guys. Only time I couldn’t was closer to the end when enemies could soak up more damage and were in larger numbers. The firefights were okay, but I feel like it’s hard to judge because the sound effects taint my whole experience.

Graphics – I won’t spend too much on this because Halo 2 is already a six years old. Halo 2 is significantly shinier than the original Halo whether it’s Master Chief’s armor, his visor or basically anything else in the game. The amount of detail is much greater. That said, some of those army guys look awwwwwwful. Like, weird skin condition awful. I remember other games that existed at the time on different platforms and there’s no excuse. Also, like the first Halo game, this game suffers from a lot of repetitive looking levels. Not nearly as bad as the first because there is more variety, but once you’re in one setting you’ll be seeing that one for a while before you get to the new one.