kenjisan

Review: Halo 2 Campaign

Chris Freed and I took this game on Saturday afternoon (and on into the night), beating it in about 10 or 11 hours (give or take breaks for dinner/popcorn/Ho-Hos). My initial reaction is, "wow, that was short." After speaking with a number of people, I was assured that it was about as long as the first one was. Go figure.

This game sure is beautiful. On a number of separate occasions, I found myself standing on a ridge looking out across the Halo ring, or at the earth city across the river. Bungie spent a lot of time making this game look good and they don't disappoint. There were a few rendering glitches when we played through (detailed skins took a few seconds to load onto close ups of the models), but we figure that may be due to his dated Xbox (one of the first).

The story itself is good. It picks up immediately after the last one and goes into much greater detail about the motivation behind the Covenant and their obsession with the Halos. My main gripe here—shared by many, I understand—was the abruptness at the end. No spoilers, but you'll see what I mean.

As good as the game play experience was, I share Justin's opinion that Bungie may have spent more time on the multiplayer aspects of the game than the campaign. Maybe I was just spoiled by the first—best of its kind. Or maybe I'm used to playing 40+ hours of an RPG. Or maybe I've been playing World of Warcraft too much. I don't know. The campaign was good, I'm just glad I have the multiplayer game as well.