Isn't it all just a little too familiar?
Halo 2 is the sequel to Halo: Combat Evolved, which was innovative and had a great foundation but didn't deliver on a lot of parts, most glaringly level design. Despite this, Halo was lauded with both phenomenal popularity and glowing critical reviews, so it's not much of a surprise that Halo 2 follows in a similarly disappointing fashion.
Halo 2, just like Halo, has great controls that work fantastically, as well as a terrific melee attack which thuds against the enemies with devastating effect. Vehicles, just like in Halo, are a big part of this game and a very pilotable things. Halo 2's starting missions are probably its best. It starts off on Earth, with you fighting off the Covenant in the streets. This is a terrific environment which has far more interesting level design than the rather dry corporate textures of Halo, and the winding streets and multi-level buildings really help make Halo 2 have a great first impression. One very good thing about Halo 2 is that it takes the energy shield innovation from the original a step further, discarding health altogether. This is a fairly daring move but it actually works really well, making it so that you're never too weak for fights and you're encouraged to get into thrilling firefights. The AI's still pretty good, and although there are a couple new enemies in these levels, mostly, everything will be prettty familiar.
From there, everything drops down.
Halo 2 quickly discards its promising beginning to opt instead to just redo Halo. The pretty good sci-fi storyline of Halo totally dwarfs this pathetic attempt at a story, which inexplicably involves a psychic talking plant who lives underwater and is very similar to the plant in The Little Shop of Horrors, none of which is ever explained. Halo 2 takes another step in the wrong direction as it includes the Flood again, which was one of the crippling faults of Halo. The Flood were, simply put, no fun to play against, and this hasn't changed since everything's pretty much the same. It's disappointing that after a great start Halo 2 quickly falls down.
There's also ignoring the fact that Halo 2 simply doesn't innovate as much as Halo, which leaves you much less inclined to ignore its faults. There are pretty much only two significant new game mechanics: vehicle-jacking and dual-wielding. Vehicle jacking basically consists of timing, and is a maneuver that you'll have to get extremely familiar with during the course of the game, because you will have to do it ALL THE TIME. Vehicle jacking evidently gave Bungie the excuse they were hoping for to throw twenty-odd vehicles at you simultaneously if they feel like it, under the rationale that "you can jack it". Unfortunately, while vehicle jacking is fun at first, after doing it five hundred times it loses its lustre. Dual-wielding is exactly what it sounds like and isn't innovative as it's been featured in games before. It's admittedly balanced fairly well though, as you lose the ability to both grenade and melee if you choose to dual-wield, both of which are extremely important in Halo.
Other than that, everything is almost exactly the same, in the Master Chief levels that is.
Now to the Covenant levels. I won't even bother to explain why you're playing as the Covenant. In any case, the Covenant are functionally almost EXACTLY the same as Master Chief, except for the crippling option to cloak for a limited time, an ability which is also rechargable. Why is this crippling, you ask? Well, apparently Bungie was under the impression that this cloak was somehow USEFUL, which would be a drastic misinterpretation of the reality. First off, the cloak lasts for all of two seconds. Second off, once you attack, the cloak is automatically lifted, plus, if you're attacked, the cloak is also lifted. Third, enemies will usually shoot you when you're cloaked, thus incapacitating your cloak anyway. However, in Bungie's somehow deceived eyes, you can use your cloak to SNEAK past TONS AND TONS of enemies, vehicles, and whatnot, which you just can't do. They will shoot you. You will die. And eventually, instead of bothering to fight it out, you will just find yourself trying to run through the Covenant levels.
So that covers the singleplayer.
One good thing about Halo 2 is the multiplayer. It's got good XBOX Live support and robust options, and it's already got solid multiplayer from the first game. The fact is, though, that this multiplayer is simply not as good as it's made out to be, whether it's Unreal Tournament 2004 or Battlefield 2 or Half-Life 2: Deathmatch pretty much everybody can find something that will suit their tastes better.
Moving on. The graphics are great for an XBOX game, although they're not as good as games like Riddick or Ninja Gaiden, they're still pretty impressive, with lots of bump-mapping and the like. The sound is still terrific, almost certainly the best thing in the game, with a similarly great score and terrific weapon sounds. The value is buoyed up by online multiplayer, since the single-player is extremely repetitive and pretty short at that. Overall though, Halo 2 is once again a major disappointment. One can only hope that with Halo 3 Bungie will unlock the potential that has always been in this franchise.