"Halo 2" is Out, But was it Worth the Wait?

The PC version of the second installment of the highly popular Halo series released in 2007, Halo 2 was such a disappointment. This new version lacked the originality and flair of the original. Masterpiece is an adjective associated with the original but Halo 2 is far from that. First of all, I believe if you don't adapt then you are destined to fail and that is certainly true for Halo 2. Halo 2 tried to capitalize on the success of the original and did not add anything significant to the mix. This can be explained by the acquisition of Bungie, the company which developed Halo 1 by Microsoft and the subsequent exodus of programmers who worked on the original Halo game. So the architectures of the original Halo game left, which can somewhat explain the similarity between the original and the second one. Halo 1 might be a masterpiece when it was released, releasing a new game with virtually the same graphics engine and AI was a fatal mistake on Microsoft's part. This game shouldn't be called Halo 2. It should be named Halo 1.5.

First, the presentation of the menus gives the impression that this was a direct port from Xbox to PC. The main menus and the graphics looked exactly just like the Xbox version, Microsoft didn't even bother to create high resolution models and textures for it, which results in awful graphics. Although this game was release much later than FEAR or Command and Conquer 3, the graphics of those previous games makes a mockery of the graphics in Halo 2. Plants looks like sheets of paper, and enemies and other objects looks very jagged even with full anti-aliasing enabled. In fact I cannot find a different between the original Halo game and this one, it seems as if they just used the old game's engine with tweaks and a new map. The AI gets very predictable, and unfortunately for Microsoft, I played FEAR before I started on Halo 2. FEAR's AI absolutely thrashes Halo 2's, Halo 2's AI seems very scripted and not very realistic at all. For a game that supports DX10, it certainly doesn't show the capabilities of DX10 at all, in fact it looks like a low to mid range DX9 game graphic-wise.