![]() ![]() Mostly, it simply adds weight to the original soundtrack, armour plating it with guitars and drums. Playing him feels like embedding in an alien culture - one with very different ideas about justice.ģ hours 34 mins: Halo 2 Anniversary’s approach to music is. For that reason he’s treated with disdain and disgust by his peers, instead of reverence. As a disgraced general, he occupies a position of shame in society, his role a form of execution by combat. That’s on you.ģ hours 23 mins: The Arbiter is a great contrast to the Chief. Sorry, pal, but your character model isn’t distinct enough from the lads I’m supposed to be killing. “Are you blind?” screams a friendly Elite as I smack him with my sword. It’s just there, right beneath you on the bridge, and the thought hits you: what would Master Chief do?Ģ hour 56 mins: I’m the Arbiter now, fighting Covenant heretics, alongside the Covenant. But why? Neither sounds real.Ģ hour 25 mins: I like that nobody tells you to jump onto the enormous, walking assault platform, the Scarab. You saucy, misogynist devil.Ģ hour 7 mins: Somewhere between the original game and its remastered Anniversary edition, this company changed its name. The flexibility of Halo 2’s sandbox is still astonishing, even in our era of open-world games.ġ hour 45 mins: Nothing beats the aeroplane whine of the Ghost when you disembark.ġ hour 48 mins: “Thanks for the tank,” Cortana tells Sergeant Johnson. As we bear down on the Covenant convoy ahead, an unexpected stream of blue light blossoms from the second vehicle, and I realise it’s the Marine psychopath, firing the enemy rifle I gave him.ġ hour 42 mins: During the ensuing clash, my Warthog gets mashed beneath the lead Covenant transport, so I take the Ghost hoverbike it was carrying instead. ![]() But they don’t climb back in - instead standing around, looking dejected.ġ hour 34 mins: Shout out to the psychopath Marine who, during Earth’s invasion, asks: “Hey you having fun? Me too!” We swap weapons, for a laugh.ġ hour 40 mins: I’m flooring it through a tarmacked tunnel, a second Warthog screaming along beside me. I do it myself, and give them an encouraging beep from the Warthog’s driving seat. You can’t overstate what the pink and purple enemy palettes do to brighten up these games, in an era where brown was becoming the official colour of shooters.ġ hour 30 mins: Marines know how to do many things, but flipping a jeep the right way up isn’t one of them. It’s a tiny touch that lends the AI loads of character.ġ hour 6 minutes: I’m starting to recognise structures that later showed up in Halo Wars, like the sniper tower with the hover-lift. Wish Alexa was this banterous.ĥ2 mins: The bomb ride is still entertainingly ludicrous, even by action game standards.ġ hour: Sometimes, a Marine steps over to a Covenant corpse and fills it with lead, just to be safe. It’s not possible.Ĥ9 mins: “How much time was left?”, the Chief asks Cortana after disarming a bomb. I’ve reloaded the checkpoint several times to see if it’s possible to save the guy who yells, “Get the hell out of my armoury, split lip”. The fact that he even made it off Halo in the first game makes him a hero - where’s his medal?ģ0 mins: “I don’t believe it! They’re retreating, we won!” The Marines’ idiot optimism has always been one of their most endearing traits.Ĥ4 mins: Halo 2’s hardest mode isn’t Legendary, actually - it’s playing on Normal while keeping every friendly AI character alive. The humans formalise war through medals and ceremony, making it noble - while the aliens strip their own naked, brand them with burning poles, and expose the brutality of battle.Ģ1 mins: First contact with Chips Dubbo, the loudmouth Australian marine who never appears in cutscenes yet makes his presence very much known. Did they have a phase of Christianity? Think of the knock-on effects for all those fan wikis - they’d need to have a page for every book in the Bible.ġ0 mins: The opening tram ride is a fun nod to Half-Life, even if it does last for literally the length of a nod.ġ2 mins: Hey, anybody talking up the impenetrability of a defence system in the opening of a thriller deserves what they get.Ģ0 mins: The juxtaposition of UNSC and Covenant rituals is fascinating. It’s fun to see the galaxies revealed in greater detail, but it does damage the sense of mystery tied to those monolithic grey structures in the first game.Ĥ mins: Sort of blows my mind that the Covenant call it ‘Halo’ too. Before this moment, your enemy was truly alien, intelligent yet unfathomable. 2 mins: Bungie took a seismic storytelling decision by letting you look inside the Covenant and its politics. ![]()
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