I got HALO 2 for xmas. It’s cool. Started playing it the 29th. Today, I finished it. Now, I’m a decent video gamer, I’ve been playing video games since they were invented, almost, and can usually figure things out pretty qucikly.
I’ve been playing Vice City for like, 6 months, and haven’t completed the entire game yet. So am I comparing apples and oranges with VC and HALO2, or does HALO really jsut suck? Have I gotten better? Or is HALO 2, just a big commercial for HALO 3 (oh yes, it’s coming). Score one more for uncle bill.
I’ve played and finished both. Keep in mind there is one major difference to the two. In VC there is much more “fluff” as I call it with the side stories/exploring/cruising around than in Halo2. That adds to the time it takes to finish. Also, in the GTA series to really finish it there are tons of hidden items to find, meaning you have to explore damn near every square foot of the game. It would be like finding every single weapon and health pack in Halo2. That would make it seem longer.
Also, and this IMHO, I’ve found that with the more consistent action in H2, 2 hours of gameplay goes much faster than the same time playing VC. I finished H2 in about 3 weeks, but it took me about 9 months to finish VC. YMMV, of course.
I found H2 much better than the original, and H3 will have to be even better to make a decent profit. I can’t friggin wait!
Aside: Since Halo is an FPS and GTA is more Adventure, I hate to compare the two. I’d put them both at the top of their respective lists.
If you’re a person that simply wants duration in your games, then yes, it does suck.
I do acknowledge that it was short, but the gameplay is extremely varied and geared towards gunplay and military tactics against some pretty damned crafty opponents. Vice City is geared towards driving around, being chased by really stupid cops, killing really stupid enemies…
Too true. Single-player Halo 2 isn’t as fun as SP Halo 1. At the very least you need to do it co-op… then you actually get to engage in strategy with your teammate. It’s just a shame Legendary has its added gimp…
You do realise that you have to buy a new Xbox for Halo 3?
The Xbox 2 is not going to be compatible with the older Xbox.
Games developed for the Xbox 2 will not run on the older Xbox and vice versa.
Yeah, that and and the “DVD” player. Yeah, it’ll play DVD’s, if you don’t mind shelling out $60 for a $2 IR dongle and a $10 controller… bloody Microsoft. I would’ve bought a PS2, which is at least backwards compatible, except that GT4 doesn’t look like it’s going to be released in my lifetime.
It seems like most games these days have a total playing time of maybe 12 hours. I’m not a good gamer by any stretch of the imagination, but I finished Prince of Persia:Sands of Time in two days. Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell may have taken me three. The new PoP, more like a week and a half. Vice City I’ve yet to finish.
I think Halo 2’s (I’ve really never gotten into first person shooters) value lies not only in its stunning graphics and amazing gameplay, but it has A LOT of replay value. Most of my friends who have it don’t play the story, but login to XBox live to play it online. Plus you have the cool coop modes and the such. I think that’s where a lot of its worth comes from.
But your observation that games are becoming shorter and easier seems to be true. I can’t think of too many games I’ve won on 8- or 16-bit systems. I’ve won several in just days on the XBox. I mean, Christ, Fable—billed at one point as the greatest RPG of all time—has a measly 10-12 hours of playing time. That is absurd for an RPG. Hell, Ultima 3 for the computer billed 80-100 hours of playing time (of course, much of that was go outside, kill some monsters, gain experience points, go back to town, rest, go outside, kill some monsters, repeat ad infinitum…) Sure, it’s got some replay value, but the game sucks.
Anyhow, enough ranting before I start sounding like an old man “Why, back in my day…”
I don’t see why Gates should be to blame. That’s been happening with consoles since the beginning of time. Now that I’m used to the look of PC games, console games look just, I don’t know, blah. Should they stick with the same outdated hardware forever?
More like $30, which still is quite a lot. However, don’t DVD player manufacturers have to pay the DVD consortium (or whatever it’s called these days) a certain amount of money per player? That’s probably a way for them to not pay fees on each Xbox sold, and instead pay fees on each (quite costly) remote sold.
Well, obviously the XBox 2 games aren’t going to work on the original XBox. They’re going to be designed to take advantage of the more advanced technology available in the newer console which, obviously, don’t exsist in the old XBox. That’s how video games work. You don’t expect to be able to play Half-Life 2 on a 486, you don’t expect to play NES games in a GameCube, why would you expect to play XBox 2 games on an XBox?
As for XBox 2 not being able to play XBox games, you have a cite? Last I’d heard XBox 2 was going to be backwards compatible with the previous generation XBox games, just like PS2 was with PSX games. Although word was that you’d have to buy a kit to do it, like you do for playing DVDs.
It’s all just speculation at this point. The last concrete thing I heard was that Balmer will be making an announcement this month. That, of course, is subject to change.
Who plays H2 for the single player? I think that’s your problem right there. AI and campains will never compete with the variability and skill of human opponents. As far as I’m concerned, the single player portion of the game doesn’t even exist.
