A very good game for the Xbox, and sure to sastisfy most of the Halo veterans.
Staying true to the Halo series, Bungie has kept the easy controls known from Halo 1, with only slight modifications for new features. Like always, all the controls are the same, except for the triggers. As you may have remembered from Halo 1, right trigger is to shoot and left is placed to throw grenades. This is the same for the most part, but when you pick up a weapon for dual weilding, the left trigger fires the weapon in your left-hand. This is a cool feature and all, but it complicates throwing grenades and melees's.
Graphics and Sound
The graphics are a major improvement from Halo 1, but it still manages to keep a nice fluid frame-rate. There are more colors and larger areas with many more enemies. But because Bungie wanted to have a no load game, the cinematics suffer a bit. Textures of faces and backgrounds take a second or two to load, making it a humerous and somtimes destracting experience. The sound is also noticably improved, nearly everything you do makes a sound. One great feature is that the sound plays into the gameplay; multiplayer maps send sounds throughout the map when you perform a certain action, alerting the enemy to your presence.
Overall
Halo 2 is a must-have game for every Xbox owner, just like it's ancestor. It is a game that will be in the videogame hall-of-fame. The story-mode is so-so and can be disappointing to some, both halo veterans and new players to the series. But the multiplayer on Xbox-Live greatly makes-up for this, and it greatly pro-longs the life of the game. I know I've played hundreds of hours of multiplayer and never got tired of it.