[mawk]

I've been reading a couple threads in OT, as well as doing a bit of googling on it out of sheer boredom, and I've just been considering all my experiences of Halo 2, between the time I first played it, right up to now, a time when me and my friend make the unstoppable multiplayer team, even 4 v 2.

I feel as though Halo 2 was like one of those very delicious looking sweets that simply disappeared in your mouth. Or like a great idea with a lot of potential, that ended up as a great game with too much unexplored potential. The game was good, a much needed improvement on Halo 1, but it always felt like it hadn't been taken far enough. It was too linear almost, even with all the new attacks that bungie added - there still wasn't enough to do.

There are a number of things that, when you think about them, really don't make sense at all. For instance, the only replayability of Halo 2 is in the multiplayer, since the singleplayer gameplay is too linear and not open ended enough. Multiplayer however, has been highly disregarded and ill-considered - a lack of customizable options plagues the setups, also you can only choose the covenant elite and the human Spartan cyborg. There are many other things which demonstrate the lack of imagination within bungie (or the abundance of inspiration killing time constraints), but none so glaringly obvious as the lack of multiplayer maps, and the total lack of decent multiplayer maps.

It is only now that I notice an unfortunate similarity between Halo 1 and Halo 2; When Halo 1 first came out, most of us were expecting it to be really good, and we weren't even considering the possibility of a sequal... but then, much as we liked it, we had to admit that it really wasn't good enough, and so we began looking forward to Halo 2. When Halo 2 came around, we felt just as we did when Halo 1 came out, we were full of optimism, and we thought this would be the good one - but now that we realise that it's not, we all look forward to Halo 3, just like we did with Halo 1, only this time we wonder to ourselves, whether it will be any good, or even worth buying. The optimism is now gone almost completely, and although most of us will remain devout fans of the Halo concept, most of us now hate, or at least dislike the games.

What are your thoughts on this?