Halo 2

Nathan Davis sees the universe as a giant sliced onion salad.

Utterly thwarting previous single-day box office sales, game sales and any entertainment feat for that matter, Halo 2 is all the rage, sitting at $125 million on the first day. Overtaking even Half Life 2 in terms of popularity on some polls, one thing is blatantly obvious - Bungie have a colossal title in the bag. Now sequels, particularly for the console, are a tad infamous for being not all that great as the original. Been there. Got the shirt. All that. Well 'all that', my furry friend, is not the alleyway this game has taken. Halo 2 has sharply found its mark as one of the most exceptional game sequels to hit gold.

And how gold it is. Nowhere near as repetitious as the original - which grew to be, in all honesty, a large assortment of corridors - this continuation of the chronicles of Halo is an instant hit. An epic tale it is, but of course the story is formed in such a clever way, that you still go on a mega shooting frenzy by giving concussions and using weaponry that goes ka-blam.

It's loads more playable than the original. The levels are more diverse, the characters are better portrayed and the overall feeling is to keep playing until your hands melt - that is if you can manage it in 12 hours. As is the standard for more first person games, the total play time equates to this if you just plough through it, but many more hours can be enjoyed if you spend time looking at every facet within the Halo 2 universe.

Among many new maps, Blood Gulch is one that's carried over. So many barren playgrounds waiting for a good bloodening.	'Do I look good?' Master Chief demonstrates to the sceptics why two weapons are always better than one.

Sometimes it isn't entirely clear as to where you're supposed to be headed, but with a relatively linear pathway, there's never really a time where you get totally lost - more just unfamiliarity with the topography of the area. If you do get caught out though, we see the return of the strangely arousing Cortana, the holographic blue girl who acts as an assistant to Master Chief. She babbles on quite a bit too, keeping the goings-on interesting. There's nothing quite like a chick computer talking to you in your head, but one way she could be improved is if she could insert waypoints to your HUD.

One of the largely different aspects of the game is how the story affects the gameplay. It becomes a crossover story, slightly reminiscent of Max Payne 2, where you jump between the human side - following Master Chief - and an Elite Covenant fighter who ends up appropriately being called Arbiter. This particular Elite Covenant fighter was the guy in charge of keeping the original Halo clean of humans. Of course, the Covenant didn't succeed, so Master Chief arrives home to crowds of praise and in contrast, this Elite fighter gets hung by his entrails for heresy. Do you feel the envy?

In the end, however, there are unexpected twists to the story and overall it's a pleasant ride. It doesn't come without the humour, as there is a lot more witty talk among the characters. In fact, there is an impressive collection of differing voices and recordings as the game progresses, with few sentences sparsely repeated, making you feel more as if you're really in the world.

One of the great things about the original Halo was how the characters were defined with this type of conversational audio - the typical brute 'Aww, crikey mate' Aussie bloke, the Mr. T American 'I'll wipe that bitch like Tuna on toast' persona and others - they're all back, and acting better than before, now with increased communication between the different characters which almost always involves some playful humour, whether taunting an enemy or proclaiming that you just stole one of their pop shots (sucker). These strong personality traits really add to the game, even though much of them get blown to smithereens when in your party.