The Ultimate Halo 2 Critique 

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Bungie didn’t pay for the rights to Blow Me Away by Breaking Benjamin. The band actually made the song for Halo 2.

It has to be noted that Blur studio's anniversary cutscenes are sexy as hell, and help improve the brilliant dialogue even further. Remastered Johnson looks🔥🔥

2:22:30 This is my favorite line in the entire series. The writing/scripting by the story writers at Bungie, the amazing score of Marty O'Donnell, the fantastic work of Blur studios, and the absolutely phenomenal delivery by Keith David, all of it came together to make it one of the hardest hitting in the trilogy. With the way it's slightly quieter and the way he's not looking at Tartarus, The Arbiter is saying this line to accept that reality himself just as much, if not MORE than he is trying to convince Tartarus. Such a great line.

I always found it odd that the Heretic leader was about to explain what the halo rings actually do but instead of letting the oracle explain he shoot Arbiter instead. Why would not let 343 guilty spark explain the situation and maybe have arbiter on his side as an ally.

I remember when I first played as the arbiter and I wasn’t really upset about it not being more about the chief, but I was more confused more than anything but later on when I grew up I appreciated the effort bungie did and try and make an emotional story arch

The amount of times I’ve played sacred icon and didn’t see the backwards phantom and the location of the area was so close to the last mission. 😅

The cutscene just before the first level with the arbiter on the phantom has changed for me between the blur and original cutscenes. In my mind, when Arbiter said "that makes two of us" in the original, it was in defiance against the commander, not in agreement.

I know exactly how you feel about the Arbiter in Halo 3. Bungie expected players to play the campaign in coop with a friend or sibling, thus the Arbiter would be there as a permanent presence. However if you're a lonely boi like me, his screentime in the campaign was extraordinarily small, though his final confrontation with Truth remains just as impactful as anything you'd see in 2.

I love the section going over the bridge in the Scorpion. So simple yet so satisfying.

I was so pumped when this came out, I didn’t even have an Xbox, but my cousin did, so I stayed at his house for what seemed like a month playing it

Story wise, Halo 2 is my favorite among the entire franchise. I remember being so intrigued by it back in the day, with how cinematic it was and the Arbiter twist. I love it dearly, even among all of its flaws.

I just want to say that it is actually possible to lower Tartarus' shields by yourself, but you'll need to take a beam rifle with you. This is often used in the Halo 2 speedrun to speed up the boss fight Amazing work as always, will be interesting to see you continue this work with the 343 games

I don't see how Blow Me Away is "Cheesy" it was a song Breaking Benjamin specifically wrote and made for Halo 2.

im only in my 20s so i never had the context of the e3 halo 2 demo, it was my favorite growing up because the dialogue is still funny to me like when the scarab decimates the scorpion in metropolis and the marine says "you see this look? it's terror!" followed by their superior remarking "marine, did i give you permission to bitch?"

33:56 A cool fact I love about Arbiters arc is that in cannon the Arbiter of the Sangheili was a leader of their people. After the sanghili swear allegiance to the Covenant, the San'Shyuum twist the history of the arbiter and rebrand the title as not of honor and integrity but one of a dishonor and mislead self thought. Meant to be a one off weapon of destruction for those that need to be silenced but not without carrying out a few more crusades in the name of the Covenant. I adore the story, albeit a bit late, because in the grand scheme of things, Thel 'Vadamee restore the honorific title of The Arbiter and goes on to help lead his people to freedom and restoring that honor driven core of the Sangheili Race.

I remember when this came out. I was 10. I was so hyped for it. I remember being in awe of this game. Something about it reinforced the nostalgia of ce. The progression from ce felt massive yet not over bearing. Something about h2 makes me respect and love ce.

I played more halo 2 on the original Xbox than any other game of my childhood. I can confirm and I am 100% certain that the pathfinding for the allies at the end of the game post prison was ALWAYS TERRIBLE. I had a weird obsession about keeping my allies alive, supporting, equipping, and escorting them. They ABSOLUTELY got stuck in those same stupid hallways for no reason ALL THE TIME.

You repeatedly mention how you should be fighting the UNSC in the arbiter missions, but I think bungie was specifically avoiding gameplay where you'd be killing humans.

I still remember being hyped seeing commercials and when 7Eleven was selling the slurpee cups

This game completely blows my mind that the story is THIS good despite the absolute developmental hell the developers went through with it. It is nothing short of a miracle that the game even works, let alone excels in many aspects. Almost feels like a metaphor in it of itself lol. That is why this is my favorite game of all time.

A brilliant game in so many ways with unfair undercooked combat on Legendary. It's certainly doable but it's meticulously slow and loses the point of Halo's potential for dynamic combat at this difficulty because it locks you down into playing linearly

One of the things I like about the remastered version is that the Marines all look fairly baby faced, you know, like they would in real life.

Quarantine Zone is honestly so underrated or maybe overhated rather. I can understand the complaints but it’s imo the best flood mission and has a great and active environment

You can take a beam rifle into the Tartarus fight and remove his shield yourself. Or just take a banshee in.

Halo and WoW are the cornerstones of my childhood gaming. Best times.

Halo 2 Brutes are peak Brutes and Gravemind is their masterpiece. Dual needlers absolutely delete them, even on Legendary.

First thing that always comes into my mind when I hear Halo 2 is Games with Microsoft Live on PC... Crazy times

Thanks Ben for this great critique of Halo 2. Watching your legendary run of it on your stream as such a great time! Keep up the good work man

I played halo 2 for the first time back in 2011 on GFWL, I finished the campaign but did not remember it fondly at all. Replayed it a couple of months ago after seeing your critiques (remastered) and had a better time of it

New to your channel and was waiting for this one after binging the others !!! Thank you

As someone also named Ben the EE at 1:02 scared me for a sec lol.

The way the jackal sniper can be fixed they actually did in Infinite but they didn't even use the OG covenant sniper. Just give the sniper a big laser sight that you can see

Also why was the assault rifle removed from halo 2?

The cut scenes (OG and remaster) are both master pieces. Bungie really knew what it was doing and what its vision was.

Love the video, thanks for the great content as always!

For that part about Reclaimer playing in Quarantine Zone: The song that plays isn't a dynamic loop like most other in-game songs, it's a single music track that always lasts the same length. This also applies to a few other songs used in the game, such as Leonidas during the gondola ride in Regret.

Of all my memories of playing halo 2 the hunters busting through that door always stuck in my mind

Great video! I loved it ☺️

Got a very long shift tomorrow, this vid should cover a good amount 😎 Keep up the solid effort man 🍻🤙

Amazing videos as always sir

The carbine is actually one of the less effective weapons against the Brutes. They take massively increased damage from explosives, so the Needler is far and away the best gun to deal with them. Usually one supercombine is enough to put them down, which can be done in good time with ammo that can be found easily.

On your talk on ourkirts, near the end you talk about how many levels are pairs in halo 2, part of me believes they did this mainly due to difficulty, especially in laso where you have to make it through entire levels at once

A small point, but I liked the characterisation of Vadumee's spec-op Elites on the gas mine. When the doors open, the Elites go first, and make sure the room is clear before nodding for the Unggoy to move in and hold the room. A crueller master would have let the Unggoy go first, thinking of them as nothing more than disposable cannon fodder, but the Elites in Vadumee's unit have care for all the troops with them.

I think the lack of verticality and so on in sacred icon was a deliberate choice, along with the high volume of flood enemies, to guide you to play the level by running and dodging enemies. Same with quarantine zone for large chunks - I genuinely think the devs intended you to avoid encounters as much as possible. Arbiter has camo and they want you to use it, even as a kid that’s how I played these levels

1:10:00 “largest fleet”. Woman you were evacuated from Reach. That was the largest Covenant fleet ever assembled (Halo: Broken Circle). Great book written from the perspective of a Prophet

If Halo 2 didn’t have only 6 months to be conceived I bet majority of the game would have felt like the E3 trailer. Crazy to think this game went through development hell yet is one the best.

Ever since finding your channel and watching your Halo 2 vids, it has rekindled my obsession with Halo 2 😅.

well howdy howdy! I hope I see Marty O'Donnell in the comments soon :) I don't mind Halo 2's gameplay, but the biggest stain on its legacy is its overtuned Legendary difficulty. It should have been fixed for MCC but 343.. We all know how long it took them just to FIX MCC (a literal long f'ing time). Halo 2 has the best story and voice acting and incredible music. They did the Prophet of Truth dirty though in Halo 3. AI voice can fix that soon though..

Now the Bungie arc is completed... Will you be doing 343 next?

heroic is the standard difficulty level for halo. "way it was meant to be played" wasnt added later but its clear, heroic is difficult but engaging, legendary is completely psychotic and invalidates half the sandbox. normal and easy are for people new to FPS games.

2:12:49 i just finished my first playthrough of Halo 2 on legendary a couple days ago and the game refused to allow me to use the wraith, i was forced to use the other thing and i was so unhappy

so glad u made this

I love how in the bomb room on cairo station in your footage you pan right just when u can see the supercarrier goes down thru the window. No one ever sees it

To the gun noise in space you’d hear something transmitting through the suit cause internal oxygen

In the Tartarus fight you can bring in your own Beam Rifle and lower his shields yourself then lay into him with another weapon and Johnson will still fire his Beam Rifle, so it shouldn’t take anyone That long unless you’re on Legendary.

1:20:17 if you make a certain grenade jump you can actually encounter and kill the marines before the flood does

For me Halo 2 was my first Halo experience. Since I didn't understand English at the time I wasn't aware of the E3 demo so I had no preconceptions about the game, and I absolutely LOVED it. I actually did not play Halo CE until after Halo 3 had come out, and while I did like Halo CE it felt REALLY dated when I played it. It felt like an N64 game in terms of plot and general mechanics, like the indestructible vehicles and the very janky looking animation in cutscenes.

Regarding your guns making sound in space; That actually does make sense. The reason sound doesn't carry in a vacuum is because there is no air to carry the vibrations to your ears. However, in the case of holding the object making the vibrations there is actually something to carry those vibrations, your arms. Although your body isn't nearly as good as a conductor of sound as air or even water is, hence why it sounds all muffled.

this warms my heart

Halo 2 was such a legendary Halo game, and not because Jackel Snipers weren't an endangered species yet. Such a great game that I love to this day.

Do you think it’s intentional Gravemind and High Charity level names were intentional given that the flood holds more prescence in “High Charity” while in the level “Gravemind” the covenant are there cause it’s their home city

Thank you! I love your views and opinions on Halo!

2:06:30 - Yeah, i felt this way too -- but then realized that where you're at is the "governing body" of high charity and NOT living quarters. They SHOULD have had you go down to the populated areas though, and then continue down to get to the grav lift to get to the forerunner ship in the center -- to at least EXPOSE you to where the populations live. Would have been COOL as hell to see parts of high charities city -- even if it was the edge that separates the governing body and the regular population. Imagine a game set in high charity... having to navigate and hide in the city... during this mission and then the flood coming about..... and the population trying to escape....

I don't know if I would say halo 2s first level was more impressive than CEs. While CEs is drab full of small copy paste hallways and feels like an extremely generic (for the time) fps, that was the genius of it. It was brilliantly designed for that to be your introduction. To lower your expectations into thinking it was just another Scifi hallway shooter. It is impressive in just how much more impressive it made the second mission. It hasn't aged as well as halo 2s as most people now expect large open environments and that wow factor is gone. But it crafted a moment for those of us who grew up playing games in the 80s and 90s that we will never forget.

I always took being able to "hear" in the space sections of Cairo station as the internal atmosphere of the suit responding to local vibrations. Definitely does not correct for all the audio in that section, but it helps maintain my suspension of disbelief

High Charity is my favorite level

23:14 i had a chuckle i heard ban cheese XD

It’s been a while since I’ve played H2 and I’ve recently downloaded the MCC. But since when can you mount hunters and grenade them like wraiths?!

it deserves a remaster, Bunie (old Bungie) deserves a chance to refine their franchise.

1:14:30 That phantom also flew backwards in the original, it's something I've always notices since I was a little kids and I always point it out to friends in coop now. Also Cortana in Halo 3 is very easy on legendary, the flood are totally cheesed by melee and splash damage.... Literally just grab a brute shot and start slicing and blowing them up, all the combat forms gib.

2:04:32 - Imagine we got blur quality CGI for a movie :( Why couldn't the halo TV show be a retelling of halo 1-3 with some 4/5 mixed in (with some minor retcons to make it better imho -- as didact looks like an orc with force powers). Also, we could have even had a forward unto dawn-like show, showing humans venturing into space, colony uprising, odd discoveries, shaw-fujikiwah engine discovery, spartans, reach, covenant encounter.... It would have been PERFECT. Major plot is expected, but so many details and side stories untold, even including the eric nylund books / details. So much potential.... But noooo.... the studio pulled a "343 move" where they wanted it to be "their own rendition" vs just building off of a great universe that's established"

The scene is definitely still there.

Nice, christmas came early.

On the gondola in quarantine zone you can simply climb atop it and skip all the encounters on it

I dont care what people say halo 2 is my favorite halo game

I told you your videos would start blowing up one day

2:12:35 I wish we could jump into a Phantom 😂

Fun fact: when you said you were curious as to why parts of metropolis were cut and or why the part in the demo wasn’t available. In the collectors edition of halo it includes a disc showing how the game was made and even goes on to state that the demo alone had to be played a certain way as there was so much packed in it the game it was actually unstable and froze or crashed if they played almost any other way. Hence why many fans had to watch it be played instead of being able to play it. I love rewatching that disc to see the creation timeline! also when the demo was released at the game event they had almost none if not none of the game even started exacerbating the current situation with the game. Not only that but they also had to cut the game short do to the short time limit they had being only a year and a half maybe left to make the game and also console restrictions on the original Xbox. Originally most of halo 3s opening levels were from scrapped halo 2 concept and or cut levels

I know this is 5 months late, but I always assumed Arbiter didn't fight any human enemies in Halo 2 so that you as the player had no reason to have a shred of doubt when he changed sides.

Wow nice Ben. Question for you. Are you ever going to stream Halo ODST and the rest of the Halos on legendary? Even though 4 and 5 and infinite are not really that great?

43:42 try this on legendary there is no standing around just pure panic haha!

The player can take down tartar sauce's shield with a beam rifle. Don't need Johnson to do it.

Agh, good old nostalgia

I never played Halo 2 until last year, I played the whole series but Halo 2. Hearing people saying it is the best of all rise up my expectations, not to mention the E3 trailer featured into Halo CE disc. So when I first had a chance to play it what I found was a boring asf game with good gameplay and precious soundtrack, but that was it. I gotta say the Master Chief levels were the best even with the boring moving plataforms, but Arbiter sections just didn't work, this levels got me disapointed. I love Arbiter storyline, but playing its levels was the worst part of the game, just long uninspired hallways. And the Tartarus boss fight, that freaking fight is boring and useless as the 343 boss fight during Halo 3. This is the Halo game I like the least

The elites protecting the bomb are much more harder to deal with on legandary

Phantom or Wraith at the end of the game is a pretty easy choice! Phantom bbby! 😂

1:52:49 ngl it don't feel it out of place cause it feels like an old school amv Probably very cheesy tho Still love it

YES

Do this again for infinite!

0:06 impossible, I was 4

I remember that E3 showcase. I was in Iraq at the time and we had somehow gotten ahold of a disk with that on it, which I believe came with the game that another guy in my unit had brought back from his 2 week leave. It was exciting as hell to have the actual game after playing Halo 1 in LAN parties during any and all off time we had over there, and I remembered that gameplay footage from E3 where Cortana was calling out the various enemies and whatnot as Chief encountered them so I was actually just as excited for the campaign as I was the multiplayer. But alas, that E3 footage proved to be punched up and scripted a bit, which is a shame because it really just served as a slight detraction from what was already a great experience. That scripted shit only ever seems to serve to disappoint on some level.

The elevator ride in Oracle is atrocious for another reason. It's actual size. Playing on harder difficulty and even at times on normal makes the space even more claustrophobic...

0:00 Unless you know... you were living anywhere else that wasn't the US.

Im not saying your lying but, right after you got done saying that you revisited the Jackal sniper hallway on legendary. A Jackal sniper missed a shot…

Johnson isn't in Hotel Zanzibar

Please review Dead Space 3. Its over 10 years old now and its so far removed from the original Dead Space that had no cutscenes. Im not a writer so i cant make a youtube script explaining why it failed so hard with fans. But seriously if someone could count how much time was wasted in the unskipable cutscenes that would be interesting. also its when EA started getting greedy with microtransactions which i dont think has ever been done in a singleplayer / co-op game before.

I Need A Weapon

33:57 meme

Great vid! Halo 2 is one of my favs! Hope all have a blessed year! 😊 John 3:16-21