Halo 2 First Thoughts

As everyone is aware, Halo 2 was released 3 days ago and broke entertainment retail records in its first 24 hours on the shelves. It was announced that 2.4 million units were sold in the U.S. and Canada raking up a cool $125 million. It made more money on its first day than any of the major box office movies. Of course at $50 each it wouldn't be fair to compare it to a $10 movie ticket but still it shows how big the gaming industry has become.

Now on to the review. Upon starting up the game I noticed that the graphics looked nice but not completely different than the first one. The lighting textures is improved as well as the look of the weapons. The sound is incredible. The voice acting is just as good as it was in the first one with the occasional humorous line from both the aliens and your human allies. The positioning of sounds in DD 5.1 is excellent and background soundtrack is perfect, drawing you in to the game making it feel like a cinematic experience. The game looks good in both 480i and 480p although I was a little disappointed to still see some jagged edges but with the xbox sporting 4 year old hardware it still looks awesome. The gameplay is pretty much like the first, run and gun although there is an added feature the 'dual wield' ability to have a weapon in each hand. This comes in handy when trying to dispatch those tough enemies with shields allowing you to unload each weapon in tandem so while you are reloading one you can start firing with the other. This results in being able to unload on your foe without having to worry about stopping to reload. This will definitely come in handy in the multiplayer aspect of the game. I decided to play this the first time through on Heroic so that it wouldn't be too easy to beat. So far I've put in about 6 hours of gameplay and I don't have anything to complain about.
As far as multiplay I played online for about an hour and the action was nonstop. I did notice that with about 8-10 people in the game it seemed to run fine. Once more people joined it got laggy fast. I was in a game with 16 people and it was terrible. Note: I didn't play on Xbox Live because I don't like the idea of having to pay to play so it could be better on Live but I'm betting it isn't. As an alternative to Live there are some tunnel programs out there that will let you get online and play for free, two of them are XBConnect and Team Evolutions XLink Kai. (www.xbconnect.com, www.teamxlink.com) Both are excellent as far as connecting and finding games and best of all they are both free.
In conclusion I would probably agree with the ratings out there and give it a 9.8 myself due to the fun I've had so far playing it online and playing the single player campaign. If I find anything that makes me decide to lower the rating I'll post again.