Halo 2: Anniversary (for PC) Review

aura : The Master Chief Collection is a nostalgic compilation featuring Microsoft ‘s classic first-person shooter titles, but the rework games come bundled with a dear share of controversy. The previously released Halo : scope and Halo : combat Evolved Anniversary had problems out the gate, including audio bugs, graphics issues, and on-line connectivity problems that weakened the otherwise excellent games. Halo 2 : Anniversary is a better overall game than those titles, but unsurprisingly, it has several flaws, besides. This update Halo 2 is a great personal computer bet on, as it features fast-paced shooting action, wonderfully pass graphics, and the ability to dual-wield weapons, but ocular hitches, multiplayer glitches, and the occasionally rickety enemy AI sours the know a bit. Halo 2 : anniversary can be enjoyed as a part of the $ 39.99 Halo : master Chief Collection or on its own for $ 9.99. It ’ sulfur besides one of the games available in Microsoft ’ s excellent Xbox Game Pass for PC service .

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The Legend Continues

Halo 2 : anniversary picks up where Halo : combat Evolved Anniversary ends, with Master Chief and the marines celebrating their victory, entirely to have the alien Covenant crash the party with a minor scale invasion. This time around, the history besides follows a discredit Elite alien, who takes on the function of Arbiter to serve the Covenant elders as a covert assassin and lapdog as they search for Halos. Master Chief and Arbiter have identical control schemes and weapons, with the only exception being that Arbiter besides has Predator-style camouflage for discreetly navigating environments. As a solution, Arbiter can speed through areas and avoid being targeted far more well than Master Chief .

Guns Blazing

much like its predecessor, Halo 2 : Anniversary is a movement-heavy, mission-based taw that takes you on an intergalactic quest to save the human rush. It besides introduces several herculean newly weapon and enemy types that are n’t in Halo : combat Evolved Anniversary. The expanded weapon list includes weapons from Halo : battle Evolved Anniversary that only enemies wielded, such as the brawny Energy Sword, the laser-spewing Sentinel Beam, the grenade-launching Brute Shot, and the bullet-spraying Sub-Machine Gun. Halo 2 : anniversary brings dual-wielding to the Master Chief Collection, so one-handed firearms can be equipped on either branch, efficaciously doubling your shooting world power. Needlers, guns that launch explosive darts, is my go-to weapon for mid-range engagements, as they absolutely shred foe shields. They ‘re great dual-wield weapons. The downside is that you must drop a accelerator to toss a grenade or use a melee attack, so you must be choosy about when to lob a fail or throw elbows. Halo 2 : Anniversary besides has thrilling vehicular fight. You ‘ll find military rovers, estrange hovercraft, flying ships, and tanks. These fomite sections spice up the gameplay, so the pace stays brisk even when you aren ’ thymine staring down the barrel of a gun. Halo 2 : anniversary expands Halo : battle Evolved Anniversary ‘s enemy framework by adding fresh foes and more variants into the mix. Drones are insect-like aliens that fly around the area and cling to walls whenever they ’ rhenium not shooting at you. Brutes are ape-like bruisers that are fair ampere probably to charge at you as they are to shoot you. many enemies come in bleached tiers that determine their rank ; these colors indicate how much abuse they can take and how hard they hit. Just as important is their armament. An Elite with an Energy Sword is useless at range, but devastating in a melee. Grunts are reasonably easy to gun down, but they can easily drop you in one hit if they bring a big gunman to the party. As such, prioritizing targets is the key to success. unfortunately, on affair, enemies would idle about uselessly alternatively of shooting or pursuing. aura : fight Evolved Anniversary did n’t suffer this exit. Halo 2 : anniversary features online shimmer, including the classic, arena-based player-versus-player modes that the original game popularized. While these games are incredibly playfulness, they suffer baffling bugs that can hamper your enjoyment. The scoreboard can simply stop working, and you can teleport projectiles across the map by shooting at the ground. The latter is a big argue to avoid competitive multiplayer action at the time of this write. Another issue : At times the game occasionally freeze. These instances did n’t last very long, possibly half a second. I encountered this meagerly at first, but the problem became much more outstanding around the fourth mission and ahead .

The Old and New

As with the previously released Master Chief Collection games, Halo 2 : anniversary lets you switch between the authoritative Xbox game and the update Anniversary game on the fly. This trade character models, environments, and music, letting you play with whatever aesthetic suits your fondness. With that said, Halo 2 : Anniversary wonderfully updates the graphics without radically changing the art design, quite unlike Halo : fight Evolved Anniversary. That game ‘s overhaul graphics had busy, over-designed textures and tweaked colors that changed the world ‘s look and feel. This is not the case in Halo 2 : Anniversary, so the update graphics are a congregation improvement over the master bet on ‘s visuals. The anniversary graphics make capital use of modern shadow and lighting techniques to breathe life into the earth. It should be noted, however, that a lot like Halo : fight Evolved Anniversary, Halo 2 : Anniversary has many graphic flaws when played in classical modality, including level of contingent ( LOD ) issues and absent lighting, so the game looks worse than the original Xbox version, at times. This is a sleep together topic that the development team is aware of, so we ’ ll just have to wait for a fixate. interestingly, the Anniversary graphics besides come with new CG cutscenes for several history sequences, which leads to some pacing issues when swapping between ocular styles. The Anniversary CG doesn ’ metric ton synchronize with the Classic mood ‘s in-engine cutscenes, so you can find yourself at different points in a view if you swap visuals. Audio is another significant improvement in Halo 2 : Anniversary. The original game ‘s indulgent music and tinny gunfire sounds are replaced by a music-forward soundtrack with fresh flourishes and weapons with beefy fathom effects. In fact, I experimented with all of Halo 2 ’ s weapons in no small part due to the sounds they made, which is a will to what good sound blueprint can do for a taw .

Under the Hood

Halo 2 : anniversary runs reasonably well on mid-range hardware. My Intel i5-4690/ Nvidia GeForce GTX 970-powered background gambling calculator pushes polygons between 60 and 80 frames per second at 1080p resolution. You can crank the ensnare rate up to 120fps if your calculator can run it, and the game does identical well at these higher frame of reference rates, with one leftover exception. Hand animations, such as recharge, sword-swinging, and grenade-lobbing, are locked to 60fps, so when you run the game at a refresh rate higher than 60, the animations look a bit choppy. To play this game, your personal computer needs at least an AMD Phenom II X4 960T or Intel i3550 CPU, with an AMD HD 6850 or Nvidia GTS 450 graphics poster or better. Halo 2 : anniversary features full accountant confirm, ultrawide monitor hold, 4K graphics, Steam Achievements, and Steam deal Cards. much like Halo : battle Evolved Anniversary, Halo 2 : anniversary allows two-player on-line cooperative deoxyadenosine monophosphate well as on-line PvP action. There is no local split-screen play, and its anyone ’ randomness guess when developer 343 Industries adds it, if always. You need to create an Xbox Live score if you don ’ thyroxine already own one, but you do n’t need a pay subscription to play on personal computer .

Fantastic and Flawed

Halo 2 : anniversary offers great slam for your buck, but the plot hush needs improvement. It runs well on mid-range hardware deliver for the inexplicable bumble at times. Multiplayer is loads of fun, yet the bugs can ruin the have at the lapp time. As a stand-alone $ 10 game, it ‘s a antic respect, but it could be better than it is nowadays. If you ’ ve never played the game, it ’ sulfur well worth the buy. But if you ’ re on the fence about Halo 2 : anniversary, or the Halo : master Chief Collection as a wholly, possibly wait a bit for the inevitable drawstring of bug fixes that follow. For more steam crippled reviews and previews, check out PCMag ‘s Steam Curator page.