Halo 2 gripes

Yeah the crouch thing is weird. Especially since when in crouch you cannot be seen on radar. It would help a ton to not have to hold it down and walk... damn lazy Bungie Studios...

The crouching thing really bothers me, I can barely stand to use L3 & R3 to toggle, trying to hold just doesn't work for me. The zoom thing not so much (at least I can understand why it does that) unless I get into an annoying cycle of zooming, getting shot, recharging shield, zooming, getting shot etc. etc.

This happened in Halo 1. I always thought of it as a balancing thing. Got a guy sniping you? Fire in his direction to supress him.

Co-op mode.

From what I understand, this can only be done in Split screen. No system link or online. I don't have Live yet, but I was looking forward to some system link fun. Ah well. Co-op Halo is some of the most fun you can have either way.

I was kinda wishing you could dual wield without having to pick up an nextr gun lying around and just use your primary and secondary.

It is, apparantly, not coming out on the PC.

I also agree that co-op rocks.. It's the reason I am not haven't played the single player yet. Me and my younger brother beat Halo 1 twice in co-op and it just rocks. So waiting till Thanksgiving break when he gets home from college (if I can hold out). The nice thing is that multi-player keeps me so busy..

I played a lot of co-op with Serious Sam on PC with strangers and it was awesome.. So I guess add that to my gripes list. Lack of XBOX Live co-op.

My only gripe so far is that I haven't had enough time to play it... they just made it too addicting.

I love it, my only issues are the Level of Detail lag during cutscenes, which is annoying but doesn't spoil anything, and the opening 2 levels which were a bit rubbish (the Space Station and Earth). After that it's all good (even the cutscenes seem to be fixed) and multiplayer is perfect, apart from the sword.

Goddamn graphic pop up. Jesus, does that suck in cinemas.

Too many people online, and I guess this is true for other games as well but I really notice it here, who all they did was play Halo and now it's all Halo 2. Play a different game for once and stop raping me! I've got friends like this and it's just not fun.

No sprint. They said it was going to be there and it's not. That was, above all else, what I was looking for in Halo 2. I would rather have that than dual.

People treating it like the second coming. It's good, damn good. But I just don't see the whole "best fucking game ever for every genre ever in the history of everness" shine that people give it.

Woah there cowboy.. Sounds like mediumDave has some largedave Halo 2 issues.. only kidding..

I agree with the sprint thing though, that would be nice...

Having to write a 40 page paper before I can have my ass regularly handed to me online. And the fact that while dual wielding your weapons take up 60% of the screen.

Mine won't load maps, Freezes, won't start up, Audio disappears during cutscenes...

In case you haven't noticed yeah mines problematic and i'm getting it exchanged.

Same here.


my gripes:

1.- Human weapons are less effective (it takes at least 2 sniper bullets hits in the head to bring down an Elite. It use to take only one to kill anyone). I figured the convenant reinforced their armor, but humans didn't upgrade their weapons).

2.- Human weapons don't last long. When Johon Woo'ing the Coventant, it takes about 1 clip of the SMGs to kill 2 the mofo's. And there's hardly weapons around when you need them (compared to last Halo 1).

3.- Chris Farley moved faster than the Master Chief does (maybe the coke had something to do with it).

The pistol sucks now.

A lot of times I play with four people, and all the maps seem to be designed for like 12. Hard to find people.

Why couldn't they include all the maps from Halo 1? Would it have been that hard? Thanks for Blood Gulch, but Battle Creek sucks, and no Hang em High? For shame.

Most people are predicting that the orignal maps will be downloadable content. So there's that. I think the current crop of maps is pretty fantastic.

I don't like the short length and the lack of co-op play on Live, obviously. My only other gripe is that the plasma sword needs to be better regulated. There should never be more than two swords on any map at one time (unless you're playing sword mode, of course), but midship always seems to fill up with swords every time I play it. It makes for some pretty lopsided matches.

The Sword needs to be limited in MP like it is in SP, it ruins deathmatches on Midship because by the time you can see the oponent with the sword you are within stabbing range. Also I'd like the shotgun to have a biiit more range, fair enough the old one was overpowered but this one is totally underpowered, even at close range it takes a few shots.

And the pistol is fine, I don't know why everyone is complaining. It's a tad less powerful but you can fire it as fast as you can pull the trigger, and if you dual it up with a submachine gun its lethal.

I think it'll be standard policy to just disable swords under certain conditions- CTF in Ivory Tower, for instance. One sword can tip the balance, and two swords on the same team is just devastating.

I think they've made bash too weak. It was probably too strong in Halo, and now it's gone the other way. Encounters used to be "run close while firing and bash to kill". Now it's more "circle strafe until someone wins". Unless you're dual-wielding (in that case, your opponent won't get a chance to circle-strafe).

And yes, I mourn the lack of Live or LAN co-op.

Okay, gripes:

1. The ending. Everyone who's seen it knows what I'm talking about.

2. The communicator. Maybe it's just my connection, but it's damn hard to talk to people and to understand what people are saying. Also, it seems like in really crowded matches, it's easy to get booted.

3. Random "best possible" matching. If there are tens of thousands of people online, and I play a one-on-one random match and they put me with someone who's about 20 levels better than me. That is not "best possible". That's just random. And mean.

4. I can't figure out the talk button. Do you have to hold down the white button to talk to people or do you just have to tap it? How do you know if it's on or off? [EDIT - Thanks YA. It's been confusing as hell.]

5. That damn sword is WAAAAAY too powerful. Sure, it can only be used at close range, but most fights are at close range anyway. My questions is why didn't Bungie just make the sword like it is in single-player, i.e. with a limited amount of hits.

6. Am I the only one who can't crouch in multi-player? I'm pressing left-stick like a motherfucker and I got nuthin.

None of these are deal-breakers of course, but I'm just sayin the few problems I've come across so far.

Ok Matt, when you tap the white button you hear the walkie-talkie clicking noise. For as long as you talk from now on the communiator will stay on, you don't need to hold the button. When you stop talking, after a second or two you'll hear another clicking noise, meaning the channel is closed. You'll need to tap the button again to talk now. This will send whatever you say to anyone on your team, no matter where they are.

When you're near someone (no matter which team they are) they can hear you talking without pressing the white button, but it's so close and quiet it's pointless unless you want to taunt someone you're fighting with.

A lot of people seem to be getting confused by this, they should have made it more clear. Once you knwo what to do though it's an easy and well thought out system that stop people breathing down the mic, background noise or unecessary talking which lags up the server.

My biggest pet peeve is with the split screen mode on widescreen TVs. Instead of making it top/bottom, Bungie decided to bisect the screen vertically (left/right). The wife and I tried playing in this mode, but it sucks not to have that extra peripheral vision. The only way to switch it to top/bottom was to turn off the widescreen & 480p option on the Xbox dashboard, but it subsequently kills the resolution.

Hopefully, it's patchable.

Got to say, the single player campaign is distinctly underwhelming. I'm just not getting the same sense of tactical play that made the first game so addictive. Too many levels rely on linear vehicle runs, or forced "arena" battles where you enter an area and have to blast X number of enemies before the checkpoint is triggered. There's not so many of the pitched battles where smart use of cover and ammo was essential, real strategic gunfights where you had to push forward on an enemy position using brains as well as brawn.

The online stuff makes up for it, but I'm finding it very easy to switch off the campaign mode to do something else.

Also, having you play that long boring chunk of the game as the Arbiter (or whatever he's called) is just dumb. It completely ruins the Master Chief narrative, makes a mockery of the whole "first person" idea and comes at a really clumsy point. You've just beaten the Scarab, there's this great build-up of narrative momentum...and all of sudden you're this alien guy playing through what feels like the Library level from the first Halo all over again.

It's not quite as bad as swapping Snake for Raiden in MGS2, but it's close.

If you want to tell the story from two sides, then have them as two seperate game modes - forcing players to swap between them weakens the entire structure of the story.

Disagree with both points, Dan.

The tactical battle elements are still there...just no so much on the Normal difficulty mode. Just like in the original, enemies are somewhat dumb and battles are fairly simplistic on Normal mode. Once you bump up the difficulty to Heroic or Legendary, brains suddenly become essential to victory. Nothing has really changed there. Ratchet up the difficulty level and you'll see that the tactical gunplay is still there.

And give the Arbiter a chance. Not only is it fucking cool to play as Keith David, but I think the storyline DOES justify his inclusion. Watching the inner factions of the Covenant fight and squabble for power goes a long way towards making the entire war more interesting, and the conflict between the Brutes, Elites and Prophets that's established in those first few Arbiter levels does pay off in the end.

I love this game, but the online matchmaking system is a bit annoying. I am getting the feeling from what Bungie has been posting on their websites is that they may end up tweaking it more to the public's liking.

Also, I think the sword is balanced in the fact that if a guy has the sword, EVERYONE is gunning for him. Unless you are in a smaller game I think I barely last 2-3 minutes with the sword because im bombarded by gunfire from all angles.

Same here.



What happened to all the cool new vehicles? We didn't get ANY new human vehicles, and we only had 2 (controllable) to begin with!

Maybe it's just my controller but I have a hard time boarding vehicles, I have to hit the x button several times, anyone else have that problem? Another problem I'm having is that they're relying too heavily on the same mission set ups from the first game. I feel like I'm playing a remixed version of Halo because of it. First level - Charge your shields, run around on a space ship and attack aliens that are boarding it. Second Level - Crash land on a planet and make your way around. Also there doesn't seem to be near as many high res graphics on walls or objects as in the first game. In Halo you look at a wall in a building and you can make out all the tiny grain formations, in this game, it's blurry as fuck.

I regret that they completely abandoned the stealth gameplay that they were claiming would be in the game. I recall that article boasting that we could shoot out lights, hide in the dark, look around corners, etc etc. They were making it out like Splinter Cell Halo, which sounded really interesting. And I'm really missing that ATV in this game, especially considering how much fun it is to drive in San Andreas. I think I've identified the area from the E3 demo but it is so horribly toned down with so much less going on that it's pathetic. Where's the marines that are being treated for wounds? Where's the covenant cannons getting their shit blown up? And all that other crazy stuff that was going on.

Another thing I really miss is the GORE!!!! They toned the gore down! In Halo 1, you could walk up to a covenant and melee attack them and beautiful spurts of blood would fly in every direction, neon orange, purple, blue, it was so pretty. And the more you hit them the bigger blood pool splattered around them. There was something sadistically satisfying about being able to do that to an entire crowd of dead aliens lying around you.

The problem with Bungie is that they seemed to just not care about doing anything that new to the game. They realized all they had to do was re release Halo 1 online and it would have been a hit. So the fact that they were making a completely new campaign probably became more of a burden to them. And as the months ticked by and less progress was made (what's that about them slacking on the game during the dvd? They had 6 months left and hadn't gotten anything finished??) they started taking out all the cool new stuff that would have made it feel more like a sequel and less like Halo 1.5 which it seems to have turned out to be.

It's still a fun game but it's complete bullshit that they had so long on this game and couldn't come up with a longer campaign, multiplayer maps, and more new content vehicle wise. They should take a lesson from Rockstar. They had 2 years to make San Andreas, and while they used the same although highly tweaked engine as Vice City and 3, they did so many new things to the game that it's mind blowing. They actually made San Andreas as big as Morrowind except with good draw distance, no load times, and shitloads of new towns. Holy shit I can only imagine what Halo 2 would have been like if Bungie had the same work mentality as Rockstar!

You say this, and then realise that most of people's problems with Halo 2 are things they DID change from the original Halo. It's a double edged sword, they can't do anything completely new without alienating the old audience and getting exagerrated internet fanboy hate ('I'm never buying another Bungie game again and taking this back tomorrow!!!' claimed someone on Bungie.net regarding the new pistol).

Anyway, about all the new vehicles, they had Jungle Warthogs, Desert Warthogs and Snow Warthogs, even a screenshot of the Cheif in a desert with Marines. They obviously had a huge Earth campaign planned, which is what I think we'll see in Halo 3 (possibly already in development, expect and Xbox:Next launch title) what with the prophet at the end claiming SPOILER how he shall travel to Earth with his fleet and wipe out humanity. Infact, I think Earth was where the Cheif arrived with he ship at the end.

exactly. What was Bungie doing for 3 years?

I've played this game through the Arbiter level and now I'm Master Chief again. I just payed $50 for this game, so I'm going to play it through, but I honestly don't care. I don't want to be misunderstood. I'm not saying this game sucks, because its Halo, and Halo is fucking great. I've only played it for about 3 hours so I have a bit of game left to go through and it probably gets better, but I just don't care if I play any more today. I'm just not hooked. Its like reading a book after seeing the movie adaptation. You're paying attention to all the details. All the little extras, and its nice. But, really, you've seen it all before.

Now, hook up 4 Xboxes and get some multiplayer going and I can play until 4 in the morning. I don't really like online play because I like the friendly competition between my friends ( I get annoyed with stupid people easily) so I can't take to much of the smart-mouthed strangers online. Whether I'm handing ass or getting mine handed to me its just not the same when I'm not in the room with the people.

my biggest gripe...why the hell wouldn't live work for me tonight!?!?!

It's improved but I still think the level design suffers from being linear and set on such a straight path that your journey just seems the same - which is shoot the Covenant and make it to the end of the level.

The story's great - up a point. Then, the Elder and "Great Journey" stuff just bogs down whatever is going on in the game. I agree that Arbiter, while a nice twist, is too present in the game than Master Chief is. Seeing as he is the main character of the Halo universe, I was hoping for more development out of Chief in the game. Apparently, being a silent, gun-wielding cyborg makes you bad-ass in GameLand.

And I wish more game developers would see the importance of an ending to an epic game. Give it more time; let the gamer feel a true sense of accomplishment that they've done their duty correctly. I don't mind cliffhangers but HALO 2'S could've been more fleshed-out.

In the end, I'd say it's a fun game but, despite all the acclaim, I really don't see it as the "be all, end all" of first-person shooters - especially compared to some of the PC juggernauts coming out (Half-Life 2).

I don't think the Halo's are the best first person shooters out there, but they are certainly the most fun and replayable in the long term. I love Half-Life, but I've never been able to drag myself all the way through it more than once, if I try I get too bored about halfway.

There's something about Halo's gameplay, it's just so damn satisfying and enjoyable to play that it's length doesn't matter because it has long term value which, multiplayer aside, is soemthing very few FPS's have after your initial beating of the game.

I adored Far Cry, I enjoyed Doom 3, I had fun with SOF2 and Jedi Knight. But I won't be recompleting any of them any time soon, unlike Halo 2.