I beat the game on normal and unlocked nothing that I could notice. Any ideas? Perhaps I need to log onto LIVE to get them?
How long was the single-player? Any particular highlights you’d like to share? Low points?
It’s short with a SERIOUS cliffhanger.
Quickies:
SINGLE PLAYER -
I love Arbiter, the Covenant guy you play. KEITH DAVID! You play him more than you’d expect.
There’s a bizarre mid-game thing that’s just too weird to make sense, but kind of neat.
I don’t think I like the in-game bump mapped cutscenes and would have preferred more traditional computer animation. The mouths are just wrong, especially with the “creature” in the mid-game thing. There’s also a soldier who has complexion that’d make Robert Davi vomit.
There are some great weapons in the game CURRENTLY not in multiplayer. Fuel Rod Gun, Sentinel Beam, one more I think. No other vehicles to pilot.
Music is good but I wasn’t as blown away as the game reviewers. Steve Vai’s stuff. Poop.
It’s gorgeous.
I was rushing through it this time, hoping to open up new maps/weapons so the locals could get the most out of our weeklong living room assault. Singer, give me a buzz if you’d like to come.
MULTIPLAYER -
Swords are great. I fear some people will bitch because of how dominant they are is close quarters. FUCK those people.
The new vehicles are wonderful, though the Banshee doesn’t have its little missile. I really like the peppy new variant on the ghost.
All in all, the alien weapons are finally fun to use.
Only maps I’m not SUPER in love with are BEaver Creek (not a Battle Creek fan) and Ascension (I think, too many fall to your death moments). All of the others are incredible, especially Waterworks, Burial Mounds, Zanzibar, and of course, Coagulation.
The stat tracking is nice, and will be amazing on Bungie’s site.
I don’t like how you have to log in and out to change the settings.
How about that supposedly lame ending that everyone is getting upset about?
[B]SPOILER ABOUT THE ENDING IN BLACK TEXT/B]
Basically the Arbiter and the Master Chief end up on the same side and Master Chief is on the alien ship heading to THE ARK (dunno what it’ll end up being) to “finish the job”.
Quote:
| Originally Posted by Nick Nunziata [B]SPOILER ABOUT THE ENDING IN BLACK TEXT/B] |
Thanks.
So, everything will be wrapped up in Halo: Revolutions in May?
As far as unlocking things, I think that you have to beat it on legendary in order to get new levels and such.
Nick, did you stay past the credits? I really liked the cinema, even if it was a bit confusing.
I’m a decent ways in and just wanted to point something out about the Prophet, since this is a SPoilers thread here goes… When you fight the Prophet you can do the move where you try and take over another vehicle. You can’t take it from him but you can hang off it and punch the shit out of the guy! I had so much fun doing that!
Goddamn, obviously Bungie took ‘ending’ tips from Valve.
Great game, just wish the ending felt more worthy of having to stand in line until 2 in the morning.
Oh well. MULTIPLAYER TIME
When you are the Arbiter, use the invisibility and walk slowly while crouched and then whip out the sword at the last moment. Works well. The same thing can be done in multiplayer. You won’t show up on a person’s radar.
Something just occured to me. I just landed on the new Halo and I haven’t seen a Brute in action yet. I’m playing or normal difficulty, are they gonna show up soon ? I’ve only fought 2 hunters as well, seems I faced waaaay more of them this far into Halo 1.
I just finished it. The story was amazing while it lasted, but having an ending like that left a bad taste in my mouth, I mean this is worse than Shenmue’s endings because it seems that all they had to do is get more or two more levels in there to tie this shit up. I don’t know what to do now, I mean absolutely nothing was resolved. I feel like I just played through a bunch of levels while great, ultimately lead me back to where I started.
I’ll state the obvious: FUCK “THE FLOOD.” I hate the fact that I have to fight the annoying bastards in the sequel - “Ooh, look at us. We’re mutated and have weapons, and when we get pissed, we run full speed at you and smack you!” Most irritating enemies in the game.
Other than that, a great improvement over the original. The dual weapon system is awesome, the level design is better, and the story is fantastic and more involving. I’m surprised to say the least, speaking as I wasn’t a big fan of the original.
And the game is too pretty for words. Not Half-Life 2 quality but a nich example of getting your Xbox’s polygons pushed.
Just beat the game on Normal last night. It was quite the experience while it lasted with my favourite moments being those little parallelisms between Chief’s and the Arbiter’s journeys.
In my eyes, however, the Brutes were very challenging with their suicidal charges and unbelievable resilience to any weaponry (especially the Brute Captains). But, it felt very nice to be a part of the action (as evidenced in Master Chief’s tour of the Covenant city) rather than the focus of it. Just makes the game that much more of a step up both in story and gameplay than Halo.
Halo 2 was a great game that has a sequel I’m looking forward to even more so than the anticipation I felt just after I beat its predecessor.
I just beat this last night as well on Normal (also playing co-op with a buddy on Heroic - MUCH tougher). I really gotta hand it to Bungie as far as the story is concerned. Much improved over the first Halo. That being said, the cliffhanger ending was a slap to the face that I didn’t see coming at all. Not a bad thing really, but like Ryo said a few posts up, it felt like something that could’ve been resolved in perhaps a couple of more missions. In any case, the missions (thanks to the story) were involving as all hell and kept me wanting more. Very good thing. Bring on Halo 3… or would Halo 2.5 be more accurate?
Loved the subtle improvments in graphics, and though far from perfect, I dug the look of the cutscenes (especially the Covenant related stuff). I thought the sound was phoenomenal and incredibly immersive (this needs to be played on at least a DD 5.1 setup). There were probably 3 or 4 music tracks that I absolutely loved (Impend being my favorite). The rest were pretty good and suited the game well.
As far as multiplayer is concerned, all I can say is that it’s a blast to play with a group of friends in the family room. The new maps are pretty damn fucking good (if a bit more geared towards larger groups). I’m not on LIVE yet (hopefully you gents will still be at it towards the end of the year when I sign up) so I can’t say how that is. From the sounds of it, it seems to be more fun than tossing dwarves. I’m glad.
Overall, great fucking game. It’s lived up to the hype (for me anyways) and if you don’t like it, then you’re some kind of robot (and not one of the cool ones mind you).
By the way…
Nick, you unlock Foundation when you beat the campaign in Normal. Don’t know what’s unlocked (if anything) if you beat it on Heroic or Legendary though.
I actually finished this yesterday. That’s record time for me. It was tons of fun and I must admit I was a little confused here and there along the way, but it all came together pretty well. I’m going to go therough it again… and again. I’ve already done the Cairo level again and it seems clearer already.
The end is a bit frustrating of course and here are my hopes on that. It’s obvious that Bungie has a plan for all of this, story wise. They don’t need a new engine, they don’t need to add more stuff, they need to just continue the story. Is it too much to wonder if they’re already working on it and have it pretty far along? They could pull a fast one on the whole gaming world and have developed it at the same time they developed the sequel we’re all playing and nobody would know. Halo 2.5, Halo Revolutions, Halo 2 Expansion Pack, whatever… I think it’s out there… at least I hope so. I don’t want to wait 3 years. Here’s to hoping we won’t have too.
Hey guys, dunno if you’ve seen this already:
http://bungie.net/Forums/posts.aspx?postID=1038259
It sounds as if there’s a glitch that can prevent you from unlocking Foundation if you complete all of the in-game tutorials as you come to them (like "Do a barrell roll by pressing this button!"
. Apparently the work-around is to save at least one of those tutorial actions for the final level, in which case you will unlock Foundation. Reading around, it seems like this has in fact been confirmed.
Lys
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Gamertag: Lysander86
I beat the game yesterday, and truely, it rocked my cock up until the ending. They’ve got to have something in mind, but I remember reading all over about how Bungie was “done” with the universe after Halo 2. Maybe they’ll get a third-party (Wideload maybe?) to come on and finish it up. That’s what they did with Marathon Infinity all those years ago.
So this “Ark” thing, it’s Earth, right? Am I the only one who got that out of the ending? This would explain why the Covenant didn’t seem to think that it would be the Human Homeworld, and why Guilty Spark seemed to recognize the humans.
Also, when I beat it on normal, I got jack.
I finished up the game last night. I was surprised by some of the voice acting cast. David Cross?
The Flood were annoying at first until I realized that the plasma sword works GREAT on them. Most of the time they take one hit, then they vaporize. Also, the annoying little popcorn parasite things that used to just be a distraction in the first game are MUCH more nasty now. Did you notice that if one of them comes up to the body of a dead Flood critter, it’ll bring it back to life? They burrow into the corpse and reanimate them. However, if you destroy the body (either by blowin’ it up real good or usin’ that nifty sword), they can’t reanimate them.
The Brutes were great. It was neat that if you got a head shot on one of them they’d just lose their helmet, then you’d have to hit them again to get the kill.
Love the vehicle damage. Great stuff.
The Banshee DOES have missiles, but only in single player campaign. Use the B button to fire the missiles (called a Banshee Bomb, I think).
Does the Wraith have a secondary weapon apart from the big cannon? I couldn’t find one.