I hate mainstream gaming journalism.

[shockingalberto]

According to nearly every review, Halo 2 has a single-player mode that's "mediocre, at best" and Bungie seemingly gave up and gave it no real ending. Yet, despite half the game apparently sucking, it's still getting near (or completely) perfect scores everywhere

Comments

[timetokill]

I haven't heard the single-player was mediocre, but rather that it was short, and ended incredibly abruptly.

I've heard generally that it's similar to Halo's single player, with some improvements, but generally the same feel.

[shockingalberto]

I was thinking about saying "But if it's anything like Halo 1's single player, mediocre is generous."

But then I realized I can phrase it like a question and have the same effect.

Did you ever get to the library?

-- Imran

[cameraman23]

Personally, I liked Halo 1's single player. I take it that you were referring to the library as monotonous because it was confusingly similar from room to room. I thought that this was effective in creating a more horrific feel to that part of the game. The flood are damn freaky, and when you're so turned around that you don't know where they could come from next... it's thrilling.

But then, I like better games than you, reviewerman. =P

[shockingalberto]

Yeah, but you also don't like Metroid. :P

And the library was neat until you had to turn around and do the whole thing over again, except this time, the monsters came from the other wall! SHOCK! INTENSITY! LAZINESS!

-- Imran

[iskra]

It really isn't that good.

[kilersquirrel]

I though Halo kind of blew in the first place, so I'm not expecting anything great from 2 in the first place. Although, since I am as big a dork as the rest of everyone, I'm still going to be dying to play Halo 2 until I get a friend over to the apartment with his Xbox. As far as Halo 1's levels went, I think "monotonous" is being generous, really. And FPS's do really belong on the PC, console controllers just aren't fast or precise enough to play right.

[frothydragon]

I havn't played it yet, and refuse to read any reviews on it. I like halo, it killed some time and was entertaining, but far from one of the best games ever. The most fun I had was when you were actually outdoors and not seeing the same repeated polygons over and over again. If Halo2 is actually *gasp* diverse with their environments, then it could be fun. I 2nd the opinion that console controllers aren't good enough for FPS's, which is why I can't play halo and won't be able to play halo2 on xbox at all, too clunky and I need precision. Metroid Prime did the "FPS on a console" thing right. You could lock on to enemies, thus eliminating inaccurate aiming and the frustrations I've experienced with halo. Metroid Prime is the best FPS on console ever, probably only to be beat out by Metroid Prime2: Echos. If only it had multiplayer, that would make it beat Goldeneye on the N64 for the multiplayer award.

[housekeepinglq]

While I agree that it probably doesn't deserve the score it's getting based on it's singleplayer campaign, I do believe that games deserve high scores based on their multiplayer, of which I've yet to hear a single complaint. The best example I can think of is Battlefield 1942. That game was unbelievably good, and was one of the best 3 games of last year. However, if you ever actually got around to trying the single player game, you discovered how horrible a fps could be. I'd still give the game an amazing score without so much as blinking, however.

Near perfect or perfect scores though.. I agree, that's a bit much.