A solid game, but overall cannot even contend with its predecessor. Absurdly overhyped is what this game is.
A serious problem with Halo 2 is how much was changed from the original Halo. Bungie has obviously never heard the old saying "Don't fix what isn't broken." They instituted a new physics engine which has the Master Chief running slower and jumping way higher. This new engine also takes out the ability to crouch quickly, thus removing an important tactical device in multiplayer. The slower moving spartans make for slower targets in multiplayer, and thus many firefights are lame and predictable because one can easily keep their reticle over their target the entire time as the target is not capable of quick movement. Melee's have also been severely noobified. Now you dont even have to aim at the person to hit them. You just have to be facing towards them and within 5 feet and your spartan will lunge at them. This coupled with the massive amounts of auto-aim and magnetism make for a very flawed and unbalanced game. Not to mention dual wielding further unbalances the already broken gameplay. Dual wielding took out the purpose of each gun. No longer is ANY dual-wieldable gun useful unless its being dual wielded. What is the point of having the gun only good when its dual wielded? Why not just have it dual when its picked up if it is going to be so bad by itself.
The lack of Halo 1's pistol is no really surprising considering all the debate over it. I would have at least expected Bungie to put in something to match the pistol as a mid-long ranged weapon. The best they can come up with is the Battle Rifle which does a poor job at long ranged combat and a moderate job at medium range. I dont think bungie understood that the pistol was what made Halo 1 balanced. They took that out and Halo 2 was left extremely flawed.
The multiplayer aspect of Halo 1 still keeps players going back for more. Halo 2 does not have this fun-factor. The game's multiplayer is just slow. Even with Carbine or Battle Rifle starts each game takes a long time. Bungie took out the timing of powerups, so whoever gets the powerup first has a huge advantage over the opposing team as they know exactly when it will respawn. This just induces hiding and camping. If one team gets the power weapons the other team will just camp the rest of the match until they get lucky and kill someone on the other team. Bungie brought with it an extremely easy-to-use multiplayer online set-up. This is by far the best feature of the game. The sheer ease of use with the multiplayer is fantastic. This game has the best online features out of any game on XBL to date.
Overall this game left me dissappointed. The multiplayer and campaign pail in comparison to the original's. I would advise picking up Halo and forgeting about this title all together.