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So I'm up to Gravemind now, and I'm guessing I'm fairly near the end. Agree with Elegant and h.k on a lot of points, although I think the singleplayer is significantly worse than the posts so far make it sound.
The sections I enjoyed most in the first game's campaign were those where you're faced with rolling hills, massive waterfalls and small installations in the middle of them. Huge, open expanses of land with the odd rocky outcrop or patch of trees and you have to make every possible use of these for cover. That's what was great - the scenery being awesome to look at, but massively dangerous.
And there's fuck all of that here. It's virtually all indoors. There's only been one outdoors moment where the sequel comes close to hitting those heights, imo - the very beginning of the level Delta Halo, where you evac next to the ancient ruins. The one other place in the game where it looks like you might get a return to that style of play is Quarantine Zone, but they screw that up mightily by having you bomb through it in vehicles.
Otherwise, it's all corridors. Wonderful. And that's the least of the problems I've got with it. There's also the Flood. Okay, so I realise that they had to be in here somewhere, but they're the dullest enemies possible. All the impressive enemy AI suddenly disappears and you're faced with creatures that run straight at you. When the pathfinding works - more often than not they seem to hit a wall and just keep on banging their heads against it. It's like Doom. Halo: Combat Devolved.
The alien levels are the worst offenders. The Arbiter is as tiresome as the first game's Library level. Where's the variety? Where are the impressive environments. Not here. But even that's better than Sacred Icon.
Jesus. Sacred Icon. The level where you run to the end of a corridor and press X. Drop down the hole to the next corridor. Run to the end of it. Press X. Ignore any and all enemies that start shooting at you. Just get to the end of the corridor and press X. And is it just me, or are all the levels really dark? Like, I can't tell where the fuck I'm supposed to be going dark.
The technical problems I could care less about, really. So detail levels pop in suddenly and obviously. It's stupid, but it's not as much of an issue as the stunningly boring level design.
Oh, and the storyline. I'm sorry, but I've got no idea what's going on. I followed it up to and including the shamelss Half-Life rip, but everything since has completely passed me by. Not helped by the fact that Bungie have messed up the sound levels yet again. You know how Guilty Spark supposedly had lots of interesting things to say in the first game, but you never heard them because they'd got the volume levels wrong? It's like that all the way through here. Almost every element of exposition is drowned out by music or gunfire.
Maybe a second run through will improve matters a bit. Maybe co-op mode will show the design of the levels in a new light. I don't know if I've got the energy to play the campaign again, though. Certainly not straight away.
It's no surprise that Bungie wouldn't let the press see anything other than the multiplayer in the run up to release. That really does seem to be where all the effort went - it's brilliant (when the matchmaking system doesn't stick you in a team game with dickheads, natch). |
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