Halo 2 Anniversary

Halo 2 is the same engine and core gameplay experience as Halo 1, the visuals are slightly improved in some places, and it has a few new mechanics.

What Halo 2 changes is:

* the addition of Dual wield weapons

*the overhaul of the health system - no longer do you have health bars and health packs, but just one main health shield and when it breaks you die with the next shot.

*MAJOR change - in Co op no longer can you die and then respawn when your buddy is safe. Now, when ONE of you dies, it instantly reverts you to last checkpoint. This alone makes the game FAR more difficult.

* Some new weapons


So about the campaign, it goes through many twists and turns
For instance a lot of scenarios are different
There are levels where you're crawling through destroyed city streets, and a lot of the game feels relatively more urban than the last, because it takes place on Earth.
There seems to be more driving segments, and they last a lot longer, and they kind of feel a bit repetive at times with long tunnels of endless waves of enemies.

Then after a certain point, the viewpoint changes, and now you play half the campaign as the alien race the Covenant. Where you're going around sci fi alien ships using swords and alien weaponry fighting these new enemy types, its all pretty cool and refreshing but at a certain point I wanted to play as Master chief not the aliens.


Really, the main thing for Halo 2 is that I play all Halo games on Legendary difficulty, but for some reason, Halo 2 is the only game in the entire franchise that changes the respawn mechanic when you die on Co op. As stated previously, when any partner dies in Co op  , it instantly reverts to the last checkpoint instead of allowing you to respawn.

Because of this, Halo 2 is notoriously the hardest game in the franchise.
With this in mind, there are many segments that are down right sadistic to play through.
There are areas full of dozens upon dozens of One hit sniper enemies, and its a game of wheres waldo memorization game trial and error shit. You need to die over and over, remember where every single enemy placement is to proceed. It's challening as fuck, but also kind of bullshit.

Also just the regular enemies are way more bullet sponge too. The game is full of Elites which are aliens with huge shields, and pretty much the only reliable way to kill them is by grabbing a Plasma pistol, charging it up, shooting down their shields with it, then swapping to another gun for a headshot when the shield is down.
This game is hard, really hard, on Legendary. 
To the point where it's almost a pain in the ass to get through it,
There are tons of vehicle segments that are the same too. Like the flying sections where it's not uncomon to fly around for 40 minutes repeating the same checkpoint over and over.

There are so many segments like this I can go on forever
Theres another segment where  it keeps spawning 'flood' enemies through 2 pipes in the walls, in a tiny enclosed room, and you just have to survive. There is nowhere to take cover, and no respite. It's a damn endurance run and this part alone took is like an hour. Many many deaths. 



There's some pretty hilarious mid 2000s nostalgic in here too, like randomly hearing Alt rock songs from Breaking benjamin and shit. pretty funny stuff, and honestly can be kind of epic at times. 
Halo 2 is a good game, don't get me wrong. But personally it has some drawbacks for me that keep it from being as good as the first

- The level design is not quite as memorable for me, with some less interesting parts such as too much repetitive driving sections,  boring brown & bloom urban sections, and overall some of the segments just seem to drag on for too long.

- The difficulty seems almost broken accidentally or something, as its the only game in the franchise that does not allow co op partners to respawn. This makes the whole campaign hard as fuck and really frustrating. on the one hand the challenge is fun, but theres a certain point where the bullshit starts to come to a boil after repeating the same checkpoint 15 times in a row and randomly getting 1shot all the time.

All games in the Halo master chief collection have a scoring system where it gives you medals and points after every kill, which is extremely satisfying and fun to see. And there are 'par scores' for every level ,and it was actually a blast trying to get these par score achievements, and we would even replay some levels multiple times just to get the par score achievements. fun stuff. 



7/10