I think it's just awesome, with all the new features and such. Of course i was disappointed with the ending, and how long the story was, and i thought the graphics could have been a bit better. But after singleplayer, i've been playing Xbox Live nonstop. Love dual SMGs.

9.6

I was really disappointed with the ending. After delaying it so long, you'd think the story line would've been a bit better.

Singleplayer seems to be nothing new from what I have seen. I've heard the storyline and it's nothing special. Yet, even in the original, the singleplayer was not the thing that made it so popular (yet, I admit that tallgeese and I have sproadically played through all the levels on all difficulties over the years).

It's Halo 2's multiplayer aspect that is the real revamp. The Xbox Live support allows you to play multiplayer whenever you want. It's too bad they did not include Co-Op into XboxLive though (although it's kind of easy to understand why). The addition of the plasma sword is a pretty big plus (always wanted to use it in the first one when the gold elites were slaughtering me, lol). One thing though, I haven't really seen any spectacularly new maps. Yeah, they brought back Blood Gulch, but it doesn't really have the same feel to it. The few other maps I've played were pretty much uninteresting (maybe I'm spoiled from Halo PC's extra large outdoor maps or something). One huge minus is the removal of the good ole' scoped pistol though. Yeah, the pistol was 'overpowered', and everybody who was any good used it for everything. I'm sure some other weapon in Halo 2 will just replace it as the norm. Gimme back my scope and raw stopping power, damnit. Btw, is it just me or does the Sniper Rifle just... feel weak... I dunno, maybe it does the same damage, but my beloved rifle just doesn't have the feel that it used to. Same with the shotgun... just doesn't have that power behind it like the old version. Maybe I'm just crazy.

Yeah, it's a good Xbox game. The gfx are crappy by modern PC standards (yes, there are a few games on the Xbox that surpass it, but not much), but that's to be expected for a console. The multiplayer is insanely popular (70K players last time I looked at the bungie site), so there will always be a playerbase (larger than any I've ever seen for any online shooter other than CS). But, I suppose I'm biased. I'm a PC fan, so I'd rather be playing UT2k4 or Battlefield (or even Doom 3 occasionally). Hell, I'd rather be playing the original (scoped pistol!) Halo on my PC (prefer mouse/keyboard). Halo 2 is popular because it's the best console-based multiplayer shooter. You could say it is following in the footsteps of legends like Goldeneye (revolutionary) and even Perfect Dark after that. I loved both of those games back in the day too, because they were better than any shooter I, at the time, had on the PC.

My personal verdicts...
The Good: Halo 2 is a good inevestment and is a lot of fun if you own an Xbox
The Bad: Gfx are crap compared to modern PC games. Concept is nothing new, so there's nothing special about it for a PC fan like me.
The Ugly: Halo 2 has a larger playerbase than any PC shooter (save one), so if you want to play a game for years to come... H2 is your thing.

8.8

^^ Reallize that I would probably never give a game a 10... ever....