Halo 2 was much more cooperative tonight, so I managed to get through one more area (Uprising) without any more Live trouble. This level was actually pretty fun, with a lot of time spent driving a Ghost and blasting the hell out of everything, and the Brutes didn’t seem nearly as annoying as in the last level. It’s when they’re in the tight corridors and smaller rooms like the last level that they’re a real pain.

This was probably the last Arbiter level, since there’s only two left, the next one is a Chief level, and they’ll almost certainly end with another Chief level. I should be able to finish it off and find out tomorrow, anyway.

Another Halo 2 chapter, another “invalid checkpoint” error… I hadn’t fully completed the level when it happened this time, so I couldn’t simply select the next level as the starting point, but it didn’t put me back at the beginning this time either. Instead I just won’t get an achievement for completing this chapter. It was a fairly long one, so I don’t really want to redo the whole thing just to get the achievement right now.

It seems to happen when I lose my connection to XBox Live, which is happening more often now thanks to the mass influx of Halo 3 players. It’s not like the 360 though, where you still get achievements even if you’re offline (just without a timestamp on them); with the PC version, you don’t get the achievement at all if you’re offline at the time.

There were no Flood in this chapter, thankfully, but this was the introduction of the Brutes, and they’re also plenty annoying. They’re hard to hit when they’re in ‘berserk’ mode, and take a ton of damage. There were also a few pairs of Hunters, placed in just the wrong spots as I’d already spent most of my good ammo on the preceding battles.

The level design wasn’t all that impressive either, with roughly three different areas, each of which was made up of fairly repetitive elements. At the end there was one really frustrating room where I had to carefully hit-and-run at the entrance, but the enemies loved to lob grenades, and getting hit with a plasma grenade is instant death, making you redo the whole long, careful slog through the room. I think it took me five or six attempts total.

I completed yet another Halo 2 chapter tonight (four left to go, I think), but after getting the achievement it then told me “Sorry, Please insert the original Halo 2 disc”, even though I thought the activation scheme isn’t supposed to need the disc post-install. Then it dumped me back to the main menu, and when I tried to resume the campaign, it told me that I had an “invalid checkpoint” that did not match the one on XBox Live, and I could either restart the level or continue without achievements. No matter which one I picked, it dumped me back at the start of the chapter I just finished, though. Ugh.

Fortunately, I discovered that I can go back to the main menu, reselect the character profile, and then use the ‘start a level’ option instead of ‘resume the campaign’, and then I can choose the next level. It had me worried for a bit there, though.

As for this last chapter, there was tons of vehicle-piloting, including my favourite, the Scorpion. At one point it wanted me to board an ally’s much weaker vehicle and he’d take me to the next area, but screw that — I stayed on board just long enough to trigger his movement there, and then jumped off and ran back to get another Scorpion again. It only takes two or three shots from its cannon to take down the larger Librarians, instead of the multiple clips of conventional weaponry.

At the end was yet another elevator ride where me and my allies were attacked by waves of Flood. I kept dying a lot as groups of them overwhelmed me, but soon discovered that I could stick to one spot and I’d only have to deal with them one or two at a time, which was easy with a Plasma Sword.

I only finished off one more area in Halo 2 tonight, though it was a bit of an annoying one. Slightly twisty corridor, drop down a level, slightly twisty corridor, drop down a level, slightly twisty corridor, drop down a level… It only got interesting at the end, when bigger firefights erupted in more open areas, though the Flood continue to be annoying enemies.

Oddly enough, despite preferring Covenant weapons and playing as the Arbiter on this level, I found myself mostly using human weapons this time, since there was far more SMG ammo around than anything else. Since you can only carry two different types, I’ve been trying to stick to having one long-range, fast-projectile weapon for sniping and flying targets (e.g., beam rifle, carbine), and one rapid-fire, larger-capacity weapon for general use (SMG, needler, plasma rifle), switching out the long-range weapon for others as needed (e.g., the plasma sword is good against the Flood-infected or Honour Guards).

Tonight is the big Halo 3 launch, so of course, I celebrated it by clearing a couple more areas in Halo 2, and now I’m back to playing the Arbiter again.

I have to admit that the enemy Grunt units are somewhat, dare I say…cute, when it comes to the audio chatter. Their squeaky little voices are perfect when it comes to throwing around battlefield taunts like “Loser!” and “Monkey!”, or when you gather a squad and one goes “Arbiter, our saviour! … Stupid Jackal, say thank you!” They’ve got a whole ton of other funny little quips.

Continuing on with Halo 2, tonight I made it through the rest of the Arbiter’s sequence and through a good chunk of the first area on Delta Halo. I was finally introduced to The Flood, which many people consider the worst part of the original Halo, and they are indeed an annoying enemy. At least they like to clump together, and I think I used more grenades here than in the rest of the game so far.

I also got to (and was forced to) use a greater variety of Covenant weaponry, and a lot of them actually work fairly well, except the still-useless Plasma Pistol. I didn’t really like the sword at first, but later on it became fairly effective against the Flood-infected enemies, since they’d often close to melee range and it was difficult to outrun them while firing back. The Plasma Carbine is nice for longer-range attacks since the bullets are much faster, but it does require reloading a bit too often.

I think the Scorpion is my favourite vehicle so far. It may be big and slow, but the cannon is just way too much fun. Second-favourite is operating the turret on a Warthog, though the AI drivers are often, well, reckless… I haven’t really liked the flying vehicles so far, though. They require way too much quick turning, and I keep triggering a problem where the mouse stops responding if I slide it around too rapidly and I have to fix it by resetting the KVM. I’m not even sure if it’s Halo 2, Vista, the mouse itself, or the KVM at fault.

The story continues to be the weakest part, as it again depended on me having to go seek more information about the plot of the original just to have a clue what was going on.

Only had time to clear one more area in Halo 2 tonight, but I think I might have a new favourite weapon in the Needler. It has a homing effect to it, fires rapidly, and there’s been plenty of ammo around.

The Arbiter’s cloak has been useful in letting me quickly scout rooms and find a good spot from which to start the fight, but otherwise he plays just like Master Chief.

Finished two more areas in Halo 2 today, and was surprised to find that you also play as one of the enemy Covenant characters, with a special cloaking ability. That should prove to be interesting, though the plot hasn’t really advanced much so far. I’ve had to go to other sources for more information on the background that I probably missed out on in the original Halo.

I’m also a bit surprised at the difficulty of it. I’m playing on Normal, and most of the time it’s actually fairly easy, but there are occasional spikes in difficulty that are difficult to predict. It must have taken me four tries before finally defeating the Scarab, usually because I find my shield knocked down way faster than I would have expected.

There’s lots of weaponry, but so far I think my favourites are the Covenant sniper rifle and plasma rifle. There just isn’t enough ammo around for the human weapons, and the other alien weapons just aren’t as powerful or fun to use. There are probably still more types I haven’t seen yet, though.