…I arrived at the mall at 11:05 pm Monday night. There were about 40 other people sitting, standing, and slouching all around Electronics Boutique. A guy calls over and says,

Hey Man, nice shirt!”

I didn’t know him but he seemed friendly enough. We talked about videogames, politics, and of course Halo 2. This was the final hour. Three years of waiting: mild interest at first, then growing into a seething, jittering, explosive excitement. Three years whittled away to one nightmarishly long hour.

I chatted with one of the EB employees and got a flyer with a number on it. They raffled off a handful of XBox games (not Halo 2) during the half hour before midnight. My buddy Evan, also an EB employee, showed up in his capacity as all around door thug. His job was to make sure that no more than fifteen people were actualy inside the store at any given time.

At ten seconds to midnight a large man in the crowd (which had grown to almost 350 people) started counting down:

10, 9, 8, 7…”

Everyone joined in and as the last number was called I they let out a huge cheer. Then, one by one, each person was allowed into the store to buy a copy of Halo 2.

By the time I got to the gate Evan was showing signs of irritation. I can’t say I blamed him. Aside from myself, Evan is the biggest Halo fan I know personally. He had to stand there till 2:30am watching 300 people get a copy of the game before him. I got mine at around 12:45. I said goodbye to Evan and went home to play…

Playing Halo 2 the first time was one of the strangest experiences I have ever had playing a videogame. After three years one tends to build up a lot of expectations. I had expectations about how the game would look, feel, sound…smell. As I played, and toyed around with all of the new things (like dual weilding), I got this strange feeling. I kne win my head that the game had to be incredible. Everyone said so. It was just so…different.

I suppose that I was not alone in thinking that Halo 2 would be like Halo Plus: more of the same but you can hold two weapons now instead of one. I failed to realize that Halo 2 would be different in every concievable way, yet still oddly familiar. I can’t explain it sufficiently, however, after playing through the first two hours or so that night with Evan, he felt the same way. The next moring I talked to my friend Nick. At first we both said how great it was, but there was just something about it that didn’t sit well. I hesitated to say it was disappointing. Halo 2 can’t disappoint. It’s Halo 2. I wrote tons of blog posts about how incredible it was going to be. It couldn’t be fall short of that. I had an image to maintain. I went to bed Monday morning feeling very, very odd.

The next day, Tuesday, I quickly checked a few of the online forums I frequent to see what their reactions to the game were. Bungie’s own forums were loaded with posts about the game and how much of a letdown it was. I still wouldn’t allow myself to be convinced. Halo 2 deserved another chance. The game represents five years of development from one of the most successful studios in the gaming industry. Bungie has always released (at the very least) good games. Most of them are great. And this time they had as much time as they needed and a line of credit from Microsoft. I came to the conclusion that it was, in fact, my problem.

Tuesday night I sat down, fired up the XBox and continued the campaign where I left off. Almost immediately I was reassured. I had reached a point in the game that felt…familiar. I had a point of reference to the first game and I started to compare, this time knowing what to expect. All of a sudden the problems I had seen before were losing their justification. For example, the shotgun in Halo 2 looks diffrent and seems weaker than the shotgun in Halo. At first I rejected it. However, when I actually used it for a while, I realized that now the balance of the weapon is much better. It’s not so much weaker as it is shorter range. That is, for the shotgun to be effective in Halo 2 you have to be a bit closer thatn you did in Halo. The poin tof this is that now you really have to decide ahead of time if you’re going to rush into a firefight with the close-range shotgun, or the long-rage, scope-equipped battle rifle. This type of thing happened across the board for me yesterday. And the more I played the more I loved. Every new location and situation had the soul of Halo but kicked up a couple of notches.

Jason Jones, head of Bungie studios, said this about the game:

Halo 2 is a lot like Halo, only it’s Halo on fire, going 130 miles per hour through a hospital zone, being chased by helicopters and ninjas, and the ninjas are all on fire, too.”

And now, I tend to agree with him. Halo 2 is the single best experience I have ever had playing a video game.

The only two things that I never at any point had issues with were the story and the sound design. The story in Halo 2 is better than a lot of the movies that have come out this year. I won’t get into it for a few more days out of respect for those who haven’t played through it all yet. The sound is flawless. The music has that incredible Halo quality but it seems much more dynamic and responsive to combat situations, pulsing during firefights and swelling into these little lilting melodies when I’m exploring. It’s gorgeous. The sound effects are equally well done.

My final thoughts on this game are this:

• If you like Halo 2 the first time, good. You are a normal healthy gamer.
• If you didn’t like it but you liked Halo than you just aren’t used to it yet. Give it a second chance with an open mind now that you won’t be shocked with all of the changes they made.
• If you didn’t like it and you didn’t like Halo either, you have a serious problem. Get a CAT scan.

Filed under Uncategorized.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the comments feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

« Tonight at midnight…   |   The Glorious Unveiling… »