I've been playing it all day now - so far it's been a disgrace. The graphics and level design are terrible (literally two or three colors here folks), a step down from Halo 1 in most respects, the menu screens and vehicle physics are laughable, and the storyline isn't making any sense at all. Completely absent is the great flow of the vehicle physics that made Halo 1 enjoyable (the ghost is pathetically jittery); it appears to have left along with the innovative level design and lush, albeit low polygon, feel of the game. Instead, we are treated to the 'graphical upgrades' of poor bump mapping (really only helps on the character models) and blurred backgrounds during cinematics.

(yes, I do think this warrants its own thread)

Update: the first level sucks, the rest is pretty okay.

For some reason, the cutscenes with the Master Chief/other humans are really terrible, whereas the ones with the Covenant are quite excellent. I've gotten to the first big, open terrain level - truly, not as impressive or lush as Halo 1's first level was in terms of terrain (just with higher resolution textures and a pretty snazzy new water rendering system) but not too terrible. The Covenant/Halo installation architecture seems to have lost some of its style and slickness.

The physics system, however, appears to be the victim of a brutal rape. I have no idea why Bungie chose to do this. I would rather play a Halo sequel on the same engine than have them sacrifice key parts of the game for unnecessary graphical features.

We obviously have 2 different views on halo 2.

Oh dear, bit quick to apply the "Stamp Of Hate" were we?

I was never a big fan of the original Halo - I found it a little too simplistic gameplay wise, but it was by no means bad. If the sequel is more of the same then i'm sure it's a perfectly playable game (and by that I mean one that I would stick through till the end and have a bit of fun along the way). I just won't be buying it until it's re-released on the Xbox budget label (not sure what it's called!).

I think part of the problem some of you may be having, and I have too - is that you've all spent time editing for games and it makes you a much harsher critic than the average gameplayer. I've only recently started to enjoy playing games again over the last 6 months or so and that's simply because i've been trying to stop myself from looking for mis-aligned textures, or AI glitches etc.

Every review i've read of Halo 2 has given it a great rating, so they can't all be too far off the mark...

I don't know, most of the reviews for DOOM 3 were good and it was mediocre at best. The magazines have to suck up to the makers or they won't get their 'exclusives', after all

I only played Halo 1's multiplayer, and that got old quick due to the poor level design and dumb weapons. I'd still rather play Goldeneye any day