In light of the release of The Master Chief Collection, I wanted to take the time to appreciate the main focus of the collection Halo: 2 and celebrate what an amazing feat it is that the game is still such an enjoyable experience ten years later.

For those not entirely clued up about The MCC, this year marks the ten year anniversary of Halo: 2, and so 343 industries took the opportunity to re-release all of the numbered Halo games. This means Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, Halo: 2 Anniversary, Halo 3 and Halo 4 all in one package and all bumped up to 1080p and 60fps. Nice.

The main focus of the collection is Halo: 2 Anniversary which has newly re-mastered visuals and sound, and even has additional cut-scenes spread throughout the campaign.

As soon as I launched The MCC I dived straight into the Halo: 2 campaign, I didn’t have much choice as the on-line multiplayer wasn’t (and still isn’t) working for me. Back in 2004 I actually missed the release of Halo: 2, I was a huge fan of the original Halo: Combat Evolved, but the focus for this sequel had shifted to embracing on-line play in the form of the newly released Xbox Live. Having only dial-up internet I couldn’t take advantage of all these wonderful features and so mistakenly boycotted the game.

So returning to Halo: 2 now as a matured gamer having played every other iteration in the series and plenty more FPS’ to boot, it keeps striking me how well this game holds up to today’s standards.

Arguably the major draw to replaying Halo: 2 is the remastered visuals. With a click of a button you can instantly swap between old and new. As I played through the campaign I was constantly swapping back and forth to see the progress ten years had on video game visuals. The Anniversary version looks fantastic, though what consistently impressed me is how good the original visuals look upped to HD. You’ll call me crazy or blind, but a couple times during my campaign playthrough I actually had the original visuals on and didn’t realise for some time. Of course when I changed to the anniversary visuals there was a huge difference but the original’s aren’t jarring at all, and I would happily play through the game entirely without the remastered graphics.

The same can’t be said for the original sound, which also received an anniversary treatment, 343 clearly made sound design a priority, every track has been upgraded with modern sound recording technology and orchestras, they even had Steve Vai come back to re-do his classic Halo guitar riffs that featured in the original. In my opinion every single element of the game soundtrack has improved drastically and is now much more present and emotive. The sound re-design doesn’t stop there, as all weapons and in-game sound elements have been improved. Now the energy sword gives an ethereal and electric whir as it is swung that just makes it feel so much more powerful, and every weapon now bangs and pops with such force and  clarity that swapping back to the original IS a jarring experience. The main example of this is with the remastered sound, moving around as Master Chief makes you sound like a walking tank, which is effectively what he is, whereas in the original Halo: 2 sound the chief sounds like he’s wearing 6” stilettos.

Having played through every other Halo game in the series I chose Heroic difficulty for Halo: 2. I always choose this in Halo games as it gives a real challenge without inducing rage-quits. Though this time instead of being given merely a tough challenge I just got my arse kicked time after time. Experiencing this heightened difficulty I developed an admiration for the game, as I was well aware that the elements contributing to the games difficulty were not changed in any way for the re-release, it’s as hard today as it was ten years ago. Which goes to show the talent that Bungie had to create a game that ten years later stood up to modern difficulty standards.

Of course Halo: 2’s age still shows even through its face-lift. Set-pieces and locations are often re-used until a clear pattern of gameplay can be seen, go through this tunnel, kill flood, through that tunnel, kill flood, repeat. This monotony does grate after a while, though using these parts of the game to grind for achievements make them more bearable.

The remastered cutscenes also contribute vastly to showing Halo: 2’s age as every in-game cutscene has been lovingly remastered by Blur Studios. The new cutscenes feature some of the most impressive CGI I have ever seen, and the ability to swap between new cutscenes and old creates an almost laughable response, espescially when seeing the Prophets go from immensely detailed,  menacing creatures to crispy looking squid men in an instant.

Many have their own opinions on whether or not we should be remastering old games, though if any game deserved a remake it’s Halo: 2. It introduced so many elements that we still see in Videogames today, everything from the voice acting, level design, game physics and story elements have remained untouched and yet are still completely as enjoyable now as they were back in 2002. This is a massive achievement in itself and the game deserves to be appreciated in not just one generation but two.

Just wait until this legendary Halo: 2 guitar riff kicks in while you’re shooting banshees out of the sky, there’s really just no experience quite like it.

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