13lack-Omen
08-27-2007, 01:26 PM
Anyone who had Halo 1 before getting the second will tell you that the campaign itself was something to buy the game for. While it IS true that Halo did not have the distraction of online play, at least not for a couple years, the campaign was a great, entertaining one or two days of playing almost on end.
The Halo campaign had many things that Halo 2's didn't. First of all, Halo began a story or world unknown to most. While some people had read the books and had a basic background understanding, most players still had none whatsoever. Essentially, this was something new to us, and fascinated us in the way new ideas do.
So when we found ourselves being unfrozen in the Pillar Of Autumn, we really felt a sense of importance. We felt a curiousity to know why; to understand what was happening. As we fought our way through the Pillar of Autumn to the escape pods, we felt like what we were doing was important to the survival of the characters.
But, unlike a bad campaign, the sense of novelty never left. Every mission, an interesting plot twist made the game interesting again, and the levels never seemed long, or drawn out like some of the levels in Halo 2. While it is true the silent cartographer bored the hell out of some of us, it was a short mission, and was simple enough to keep us excited until we uncovered the flood.
Now let me tell it straight here: as a ten year old, the flood scared the liviing hell out of me. Around every corner, it was like waking up to find Michael Jackson leaning over your bed when you woke up. Without having to cover your ass, though. Maybe this particular part of the campaign wasn't common to everything, but the fact that I was scared of the flood, at least for the first few levels that they were around, made killing them all the more fun, exciting and rewarding. Halo 2 never had that. Maybe it was just that I was 13 or 14 when Halo 2 came out, but I never once jumped when one of those ****ing contortionist acrobat floods leaped at me.
The idea of a little bit of fear, or nervous tension in a game gives the gamer an idea of how the characters in the game world felt about what they were going through. Maybe it was just that I didn't want to play the level again, whether in the interests of saving time or because I didn't want to deal with the flood again, or that I genuinely, at some level, wanted the human forces to succeed in Halo.
Halo 2 just felt like a long, drawn out target practice. The arbiter levels made that even worse. At first, I thought it would be cool, but I quickly realized that without Master Chief, the campaign quickly becomes dull. I didn't give a **** whether or not some heretics were destroyed. While I understand one of the main purposes of those scenes was to reveal the plans of the heretics and monitor to activate another Halo, it could have been done from a cinematic cutscene.
In the last level, I rushed my ass off, and almost got angry every time I hit a barrel, or missed a jump and cost myself some time. I WANTED to make it out of there alive.
This sense of excitement, or desperation, was never there in Halo 2. Everything was slower, more tactical, and less exciting. The only thing I felt was a desire to leave the house, and do something else. The only push I felt to beat Halo 2 was just to be able to say that I did. A level or two later, I realized that video games are supposed to be played for fun, not status. So I put down the game, played a few levels here and there in my spare time, but never finished the Halo 2 Campaign as Xbox live began to take over. Later after that, my Halo 2 disc got screwed, and when I tried to play the game, it wouldn't let me. I borrowed discs from my friends, but still never felt the desire to finish the campaign as I did in Halo 1, and again went outside or did something else.
Don't get my wrong - the Halo 2 campaign is a thousand times better than that of most shooting games. If it was repackaged, and sold as a different game, without the lingering feel of Halo on it, the campaign could have been a huge success.
All in all, Halo 2 was and is a great game.
Now you may ask why I took the 5 minutes to write this. Well, Halo 3 is around the corner, and many gamers will get to see how it feels to compare a Halo game to its sequel. Maybe some of you who didn't play Halo will feel a difference between the Halo 2 and 3 campaigns. Maybe the Halo 3 campaign will be amazing, like or even better than that of Halo.
I don't even know if I'm going to get to play it. I haven't had a working Xbox in years, and play it once in a while at a friends house. Maybe it's just a part of growing up, that more important things like hanging out with family and friends, girls (thats right, bros before hoes) become more exciting things to do (in more ways than one as far as girls are concerned), and religion and school become more important; or that not many games are exciting enough to keep my attention like some of my favourites. I play some multiplayer games like Mario Baseball, Smash, Strikers, and Madden at friends houses or with my brothers, but nothing serious and for no other purpose than passing a few minutes or an hour or two. These games catch my attention and keep it because its something fun to do with friends when nothing else is around.
The fact that I don't play this game anymore, or any other video game seriously for that matter doesn't matter to me anymore - I want the Halo 3 campaign and multiplayer to be great. I feel Bungie owes it to me, who stuck with them, to produce a game that touches the sky. To make it a serious competitive game, while making it playable to casual gamers like I am now. Who knows? Maybe the game will really interest me enough that I buy an Xbox and Halo 3, seriously enjoy the campaign and god knows, play competitively again.
All we can do is hope that Bungie creates a great game, and then tweak it ourselves to make it better.
In the words of Kanye West, "I ask, cause I'm not sure, does anybody make real **** anymore?"
Guess we're gonna find out.
Thanks for reading my thoughts, and a "yo what's good" to the people I haven't spoken to in years.
The Halo campaign had many things that Halo 2's didn't. First of all, Halo began a story or world unknown to most. While some people had read the books and had a basic background understanding, most players still had none whatsoever. Essentially, this was something new to us, and fascinated us in the way new ideas do.
So when we found ourselves being unfrozen in the Pillar Of Autumn, we really felt a sense of importance. We felt a curiousity to know why; to understand what was happening. As we fought our way through the Pillar of Autumn to the escape pods, we felt like what we were doing was important to the survival of the characters.
But, unlike a bad campaign, the sense of novelty never left. Every mission, an interesting plot twist made the game interesting again, and the levels never seemed long, or drawn out like some of the levels in Halo 2. While it is true the silent cartographer bored the hell out of some of us, it was a short mission, and was simple enough to keep us excited until we uncovered the flood.
Now let me tell it straight here: as a ten year old, the flood scared the liviing hell out of me. Around every corner, it was like waking up to find Michael Jackson leaning over your bed when you woke up. Without having to cover your ass, though. Maybe this particular part of the campaign wasn't common to everything, but the fact that I was scared of the flood, at least for the first few levels that they were around, made killing them all the more fun, exciting and rewarding. Halo 2 never had that. Maybe it was just that I was 13 or 14 when Halo 2 came out, but I never once jumped when one of those ****ing contortionist acrobat floods leaped at me.
The idea of a little bit of fear, or nervous tension in a game gives the gamer an idea of how the characters in the game world felt about what they were going through. Maybe it was just that I didn't want to play the level again, whether in the interests of saving time or because I didn't want to deal with the flood again, or that I genuinely, at some level, wanted the human forces to succeed in Halo.
Halo 2 just felt like a long, drawn out target practice. The arbiter levels made that even worse. At first, I thought it would be cool, but I quickly realized that without Master Chief, the campaign quickly becomes dull. I didn't give a **** whether or not some heretics were destroyed. While I understand one of the main purposes of those scenes was to reveal the plans of the heretics and monitor to activate another Halo, it could have been done from a cinematic cutscene.
In the last level, I rushed my ass off, and almost got angry every time I hit a barrel, or missed a jump and cost myself some time. I WANTED to make it out of there alive.
This sense of excitement, or desperation, was never there in Halo 2. Everything was slower, more tactical, and less exciting. The only thing I felt was a desire to leave the house, and do something else. The only push I felt to beat Halo 2 was just to be able to say that I did. A level or two later, I realized that video games are supposed to be played for fun, not status. So I put down the game, played a few levels here and there in my spare time, but never finished the Halo 2 Campaign as Xbox live began to take over. Later after that, my Halo 2 disc got screwed, and when I tried to play the game, it wouldn't let me. I borrowed discs from my friends, but still never felt the desire to finish the campaign as I did in Halo 1, and again went outside or did something else.
Don't get my wrong - the Halo 2 campaign is a thousand times better than that of most shooting games. If it was repackaged, and sold as a different game, without the lingering feel of Halo on it, the campaign could have been a huge success.
All in all, Halo 2 was and is a great game.
Now you may ask why I took the 5 minutes to write this. Well, Halo 3 is around the corner, and many gamers will get to see how it feels to compare a Halo game to its sequel. Maybe some of you who didn't play Halo will feel a difference between the Halo 2 and 3 campaigns. Maybe the Halo 3 campaign will be amazing, like or even better than that of Halo.
I don't even know if I'm going to get to play it. I haven't had a working Xbox in years, and play it once in a while at a friends house. Maybe it's just a part of growing up, that more important things like hanging out with family and friends, girls (thats right, bros before hoes) become more exciting things to do (in more ways than one as far as girls are concerned), and religion and school become more important; or that not many games are exciting enough to keep my attention like some of my favourites. I play some multiplayer games like Mario Baseball, Smash, Strikers, and Madden at friends houses or with my brothers, but nothing serious and for no other purpose than passing a few minutes or an hour or two. These games catch my attention and keep it because its something fun to do with friends when nothing else is around.
The fact that I don't play this game anymore, or any other video game seriously for that matter doesn't matter to me anymore - I want the Halo 3 campaign and multiplayer to be great. I feel Bungie owes it to me, who stuck with them, to produce a game that touches the sky. To make it a serious competitive game, while making it playable to casual gamers like I am now. Who knows? Maybe the game will really interest me enough that I buy an Xbox and Halo 3, seriously enjoy the campaign and god knows, play competitively again.
All we can do is hope that Bungie creates a great game, and then tweak it ourselves to make it better.
In the words of Kanye West, "I ask, cause I'm not sure, does anybody make real **** anymore?"
Guess we're gonna find out.
Thanks for reading my thoughts, and a "yo what's good" to the people I haven't spoken to in years.