Do you ever neglect what you really liked about your favorite games?
Over time, you may need determined it was the music, or the lore, or the poignant demise of a essential character. And all of these issues matter. But truly, once you return, you uncover that the magic lay in one thing extra nebulous. Developers name it ‘gamefeel’ – the enjoyment that comes from the easy expertise of shifting about and interacting with a world.
Halo 2 is a type of games. Where its friends from 2004 can now really feel clunky and dated, Bungie’s first particular person shooter has a way of move, a bounding arc, that fashionable shooters like Doom Eternal are only just catching up to. And so, with its addition to the PC’s Master Chief Collection, I made a decision to drift by New Mombasa yet another time, logging the journey as I went.
2 minutes: Bungie took a seismic storytelling determination by letting you look contained in the Covenant and its politics. Before this second, your enemy was really alien, clever but unfathomable. It’s enjoyable to see the galaxies revealed in larger element, nevertheless it does injury the sense of thriller tied to these monolithic gray buildings within the first game.
four minutes: Sort of blows my thoughts that the Covenant name it ‘Halo’ too. Did they’ve a part of Christianity? Think of the knock-on results for all these fan wikis – they’d must have a web page for each guide within the Bible.
10 minutes: The opening tram journey is a fun nod to Half-Life, even when it does final for actually the size of a nod.
12 minutes: Hey, anyone speaking up the impenetrability of a defence system within the opening of a thriller deserves what they get.
20 minutes: The juxtaposition of UNSC and Covenant rituals is fascinating. The people formalise battle by medals and ceremony, making it noble – whereas the aliens strip their very own bare, model them with burning poles, and expose the brutality of battle.
21 minutes: First contact with Chips Dubbo, the loudmouth Australian marine who by no means seems in cutscenes but makes his presence very a lot recognized. The indisputable fact that he even made it off Halo within the first game makes him a hero – the place’s his medal?
30 minutes: “I don’t believe it! They’re retreating, we won!” The Marines’ fool optimism has at all times been one in every of their loveliest traits.
44 minutes: Halo 2’s hardest mode isn’t Legendary, truly – it’s taking part in on Normal whereas protecting each pleasant AI character alive. I’ve reloaded the checkpoint a number of occasions to see if it’s doable to avoid wasting the man who yells, “Get the hell out of my armoury, split lip”. It’s not doable.
49 minutes: “How much time was left?”, the Chief asks Cortana after disarming a bomb. “You don’t wanna know,” she replies. Wish Alexa was this banterous.
52 minutes: The bomb journey continues to be entertainingly ludicrous, even by motion game requirements.
1 hour: Sometimes, a Marine steps over to a Covenant corpse and fills it with lead, simply to be protected. It’s a tiny contact that lends the AI a great deal of character.
1 hour 6 minutes: I’m beginning to recognise buildings that later confirmed up in Halo Wars, just like the sniper tower with the hover-lift. You can’t overstate what the pink and purple enemy palettes do to brighten up these games, in an period the place brown was changing into the official color of shooters.
1 hour 30 minutes: Marines know do many issues, however flipping a jeep the proper means up isn’t one in every of them. I do it myself, and provides them an encouraging beep from the Warthog’s driving seat. But they don’t climb again in – as a substitute standing round, wanting dejected.
1 hour 34 minutes: Shout out to the psychopath Marine who, throughout Earth’s invasion, asks: “Hey you having fun? Me too!” We swap weapons, for amusing.
1 hour 40 minutes: I’m flooring it by a tarmacked tunnel, a second Warthog screaming alongside beside me. As we bear down on the Covenant convoy forward, an surprising stream of blue gentle blossoms from the second car, and I realise it’s the Marine psychopath, firing the enemy rifle I gave him.
1 hour 42 minutes: During the following conflict, my Warthog will get mashed beneath the lead Covenant transport, so I take the Ghost hoverbike it was carrying as a substitute. The flexibility of Halo 2’s sandbox continues to be astonishing, even in our period of open-world games.
1 hour 45 minutes: Nothing beats the aeroplane whine of the Ghost once you disembark.
1 hour 48 minutes: “Thanks for the tank,” Cortana tells Sergeant Johnson. “He never gets me anything.”
“Oh,” he replies. “I know what the ladies like.”
My my, Johnson. You saucy, misogynist satan.
2 hour 7 minutes: Somewhere between the unique game and its remastered Anniversary version, this firm modified its title. But why? Neither sounds actual.
2 hour 25 minutes: I like that no one tells you to leap onto the big, strolling assault platform, the Scarab. It’s simply there, proper beneath you on the bridge, and the thought hits you: what would Master Chief do?
2 hour 56 minutes: I’m the Arbiter now, combating Covenant heretics, alongside the Covenant. “Are you blind??” screams a pleasant Elite as I smack him with my sword. Sorry, pal, however your character mannequin isn’t distinct sufficient from the lads I’m imagined to be killing. That’s on you.
three hours 23 minutes: The Arbiter is a good distinction to the Chief. As a disgraced common, he occupies a place of disgrace in society, his position a type of execution by fight. For that cause he’s handled with disdain and disgust by his friends, as a substitute of reverence. Playing him appears like embedding in an alien tradition – one with very completely different concepts about justice.
three hours 34 minutes: Halo 2 Anniversary’s strategy to music is… odd. Mostly, it merely provides weight to the unique soundtrack, armour plating it with guitars and drums. But throughout a Banshee dogfighting sequence, Marty O’Donnell’s Middle Eastern-influenced backing is changed wholesale with nerd-pleasing prog rock. If any OST needs to be untouchable, absolutely it’s Halo’s?
The dogfighting, although, has aged surprisingly effectively – Bungie’s secret weapon has at all times been autos, and it’s a surprise they don’t lean on them extra in Destiny.
three hours 46 minutes: While combating a boss who creates illusory clones of himself, I stab the true one first by likelihood. Master of RNG.
four hours: The opening catastrophe, the sluggish build-up to the invention of the Flood in an underground, temple-like complicated – Halo 2 positively follows a few of the identical beats as Combat Evolved. That first game was so sturdy, it allowed the collection to repeat itself and get away with it.
four hours 5 minutes: Bungie does such a very good job of throwing factions in opposition to one another in stunning configurations. There’s a pleasure simply in watching Halo’s programs bounce round in a confined house; the chain reactions that see a Flood provider’s explosion set off the grenade on the belt of a useless Marine’s physique, firing the Chief’s ragdoll into the air. Wheee.
four hours 24 minutes: I can’t cease eager about a Halo battle royale. Gamboling over inexperienced hills on a Halo construction that’s falling aside, piece by piece, sending sluggish gamers spinning into the void. Hopping right into a jeep to run somebody down, a thrill Halo mainly invented. 343 Industries has said that the “only BR we’re interested in is Battle Rifle,” however that’s such a very good line it feels rehearsed, to throw us off the scent. I’m onto you, Guilty Spark.
It’s unusual to return to Halo 2 and realise that, whereas the game worlds shooters occupy have gotten wider, the probabilities have closed down. If a linear, setpiece-driven FPS like this one can change into a playground for surprising clashes between car physics, AI and alien ballistics, then we must always count on extra from in the present day’s first-person shooters as a style. Bungie used to create games that made you snigger with shock, and in a locked-down period of predictable routines, we might all do with extra of that.
