Halo2sucks.com

Halo 1 > 2

Current Talking Point

Attention Bungie: Make More Money!

I knew that would get your attention. Now, down to business…

It should be clear to you by now that you had a working formula in Halo: Combat Evolved. However accidental this formula was, it worked. If you care to look back at your sales trend data (not lump volume due to brand loyalty and multi-million dollar ad campaigns), you will notice the Halo 1 “formula” was much more effective than that of Halo 2. If, for whatever reason, you find it impossible to utilize the working formula of Halo while constructing Halo 3, you may want to consider one of these two options:

A. Make a version of Halo: Combat Evolved for the Xbox 360 that is set up for Xbox Live play. Now that you have the far superior processing power of the 360, the incredible lag found in online play due to the code structure of Halo C/E should be greatly reduced. In other words, with the inception of the 360, processing demands shouldn’t be considered an issue, and, therefore, you no longer have an excuse for keeping Halo 1 off Xbox Live. Believe it or not, you could take an exact copy of Halo C/E and slap “Now Xbox Live Compatible” on the box and sell it for $50+ a copy. Considering how little time and resources you would expend and how much revenue such a project would generate, as a business, you would have to be foolish not to pursue it.

B. If option A sounds like too much effort (ha) or is simply technologically infeasible, at least consider adding a “Halo 1” option in Halo 3. You could even jazz it up with an option title like “Old School” – make it as adolescent friendly as you want, we just want the content. Include all of Halo 1’s multiplayer maps (you can get rid of Chiron if you want), the same fluid movement, field of view, grenade physics, player physics, hit boxes, glitches, everything down to the t (Why make changes? No one wants them and it costs you money!). Take this option and make it playable on Xbox Live through the Halo 3 disc, and voila! You just tacked on another couple million copies sold. Cha Ching! Cha Ching! I know that’s music to your ears!

News and Updates

From Casey K.

I hope I am not to late te help save Halo from coporate ruin. I am tired of all those who never played Halo 1 and are the proudest and loudest supporters of Halo 2. Everything that separated Halo from all other FPS was taken out or watered down for implementation into Halo 2. Easier health, easier weapons, (plasma sword?) and spray and prey game play, making it an avg. shooter, for average gamers and overall a below decent experience when compared to Halo 1. Halo was a simple game that could be taken to the gamers ability allowing great players the ability to stand out because of their individual skill either by getting kills or by team assists etc. Halo 2 tries to force feed the Halo 1 specialties down your throat making it anything but exciting. My only hopes is that Halo2 is strictly a watered down commercial version to attract more casual gamers, and then Halo 3 will be back with the strategy and true skill required to have a great game. Give me back the accurate pistol, the powerful shotgun, the true health bar, the real grenade throwing ability, the AR and the true Halo players who are about strategy and understand these concepts. You can keep your dual wielding, infinite shield, no fall damage, anything fiesta, noob stick, KB TOYS PISTOL, heat sinking rocket launcher, power jump, Mario party match system, slightly improved graphics, worse user friendly interface, hidden easter eggs, and anything else that fell into the category of larger demographic, or casual gamers surveyed. The majority of "True Halo Gamers " meaning those who had the game at launch, hooked up X boxes all over the house, at all times of night, drove to out of state for tournaments, and truly understood and still understand the uniqueness that Halo brought us would appreciate a true Halo game for True Halo Gamers. If you are looking for us some may have given in to the X box live appeal, however some of us are still playing Halo (the not live compatible?) on Xbconnect. If Halo 3 is to be great you should let the Halo2 fanatics dual wield their weapons, and get 3 shots to the head with a true weapon. Halo2 belonged on the Gamecube. It is not a horrible game but it is not intended nor satisfactory for someone wanting a true Halo sequel. Without Halo 1 gamers there would most likely be no X box today due to the fact that Halo kept it alive. And for thanks to this we got Halo 2. I actually played Halo2 multiplayer before it was released and after 45min I went back to Halo. Praying it was not the actual game I still purchased it on the release date only to be completely disappointed. As I stated before it is an overall good game for the average gamer. It does not however have the Halo gameplay I believed would be there. If Halo2 released with X Box you could find the Dreamcast and the X Box on the same shelf at a garage sale. You (Bungie) may argue numbers, most live games, most player etc... However LAN games played on Halo1 I believe would be far superior as far as numbers are concerned when compared to previous games played with a LAN. I have never been this concerned with a videogame in my lifetime, however Halo showed me a whole new concept of game strategy that you could truly master. Give me Hangem, and chillout, give me original gameplay or do not give me Halo 3.

Halo 3 Suggestion #1 - Priorities

As you might guess, my expectations for Halo 3 are very limited. After learning of Bungie’s Halo 1 ‘pistol accident’ and watching Halo 2’s popularity plummet even faster than we predicted, the odds of Halo 3 landing on my shelf aren’t looking that great. Bungie can only hope that the hype from Halo 1 (not a typo) will be enough to have fans lining up to give them a second chance. Only this time, we’ll know better than to base our decisions on trailers, since, according to Bungie, trailers aren’t required to bear any resemblance at all to the actual game.

Given the Xbox 360’s vastly superior processing power, astonishing eye candy is a given; however, I think many would agree with me when I say I’m not too worried about the graphics. They just aren’t that important to me. I’m worried about the all important factor that keeps people paying $100 for an old school NES with Zelda and Super Mario on eBay – GAME PLAY.

If Bungie thinks they can appeal to the masses with graphics so glorious they overshadow the abundant flaws in game play such as those found in Halo 2, they are wrong. Graphics are great for the first 3 hours then game play and story (for you hard-core campaigners out there) become much bigger issues. So Bungie, focus on the things that will matter in the long-term – not graphics.

H2S Infamy T-Shirts available online

It took me a while, but I finally got everything configured so we can accept online payments for the Halo2sucks.com Infamy T-Shirts. I know a lot of you have been waiting for me to have online payment available. They're up now. Everyone and their mom will be asking you about this shirt!

Help support the site, and get a really cool shirt for a really cheap price. Let the revolution begin! T-Shirts

AU 1.1 - A step in the right direction

As most of you know, Bungie has finally released the first Automatic Update. The Battle Rifle now shoots more accurately (less bullet spread), grenades explode quicker, and the melee is more powerful. (Halo C/E anyone?) I'm sure most players interested in the skillful aspects of the game are thrilled with these changes. The buzz on the forum is that the H2 noobs are quite upset - don't be surprised if we go back to 1.0 after Bungie finds out they have disappointed the most “precious” portion of their market. The only major downside we see so far to the update is the greatly weakened pistol. It seems Bungie just can’t hide their deep seeded animosity for pistols.

The update is definitely a step in the right direction; however, one can’t help but notice that all the good changes simply make Halo 2 more like Halo 1. So, if Bungie fixed every mistake in Halo 2, we would essentially be left with Halo 1 on XBL – oh what a dream…

Another $20 anyone?

"Unfreaking Believable!" (No allusion intended of course)

I am still working to get more details on this story, but the latest Bungie scandal to hit the reels is the extremely controversial Map DVD. After Bungie made promise after promise to give us Downloadable Content (DLC) through XBL, they went ahead and said, "Hey, why not break our promises and make more money?" It worked great for them last time - "Earth will never be the same!" - why not do it again? So, now instead of 9 maps for free (free as in pay $50 for XBL free), we, or at least those "silly" enough, get to pay another $20 for what should have been included in the game in the first place to help make up for its mediocre game play. Hooray for Bungie!

Expect a talking point or a more detailed analysis of this story to be posted soon.

Search Engine Exposure

Updated 3-27-05: I have recently learned that Links from other sites to our site will also increase our search engine rank. If you have a website that you can place a link to our site on, please do so. I would be more than happy to trade links with like-minded sites.

The more people that can find our site - the louder our voice will be heard. We are currently around the 275th site to come up on Google if some one searches: "Halo 2 sucks". I submitted the site/domain to the search engines months ago, the code is efficient for search bots to crawl, and we have appropriate meta tags. From what I can tell, we just need the words "Halo 2 sucks" on the site more often. So, I would like to start an initiative to have everyone put the words "Halo 2 sucks" (with spaces) in their forum signature. If you don't want to inlcude this text in your signature, no big deal, but I think this could really help us out with our search engine rank.

New Site Design

As I am sure you have noticed, the site's design has changed quite a bit. There are less images, so the site should load and run quicker. The layout and font types should also make it easier to read. If you have any serious issues with the new design such as browser incompatibility or screen resolution conflicts, please let me know. Enjoy!

New Slogan

After receiving many emails and PM's asking for a slogan change and seeing as how our original slogan - A site dedicated to figuring out why Bungie ruined Halo - is now pretty much self-explanatory, I decided it was time for a change. Bear in mind this was difficult for me since the site began with that slogan, but when the new slogan came to me it was all so clear, so simple, so... perfect... "Halo 1 > 2" The paradoxical mathematic expression is just the icing on the cake.