FREE HALO: THE FLOOD PDF William C. Dietz | 352 pages | 07 Feb 2005 | Little, Brown Book Group | 9781841494210 | English | London, United Kingdom Review of Halo 2 - ExtremeTech Pocket-lint - For Xbox fans all over the world the wait is finally over. The reason for buying the Xbox in the Halo: The Flood place has a sequel and if the hype has anything to do with it, this is a game that you won't be waiting until Chirstmas to buy. But can Halo: The Flood really be this good? Should it really have made more money than Spider-Man on its opening day in America? We've managed to tear ourselves away from the Xbox to write this review. Power it on and it's just like old days, you're on a spaceship that's under attack, and just like the first game it's all tight corridors, invading aliens and explosions here there and everywhere. The bad guys are still the same, as are for the most part the weapons. If you've played the original title then you'll feel right at home straight away. There are of course minor differences. Your suit has been upgraded, Halo: The Flood that while it recharges more quickly, you don't have the four bars of Halo: The Flood to deplete before you die. This could be a problem for those who were happy with the balance of the old system. However, with checkpoints seeming closer together this time around, it's not as bad as it sounds. The other major difference is the ability to wield two weapons, John-Woo style, and using the left and right triggers to fire in a true movie-styled, gun-toting moment of classic gaming. While enough to subdued any major attack annoyingly you can't use your grenades at the same time. The experience has clearly been borrowed from Unreal Tournament, however it also makes for great gaming in single player mode. Get past the first level and the action takes you to Earth and the surface, here the graphic elements come into their own and large cityscapes and vistas open up before you. Like the first, the levels interlace with open landscapes and interiors, although so far, some 15 levels into the game, the focus seems to be on interiors rather than exteriors. I can hear what you're thinking, this sounds almost identical to the first version, and we have to admit for the first couple of levels we thought the same, then another cut scene started and our mind was changed. It was changed because rather than playing the Master Chief the hero on the human side we were tasked with taking Halo: The Flood a Halo: The Flood within the covenant the bad guys. No sub machine guns, no sniper rifles, just a large alien sword, and alien weapons to master. As a way of bringing new life into the game, it's great and certainly breaks up the story as you switch between parallel Halo: The Flood. Graphics and sound are just as good as before, as long as you can cope with guitar riffs to induce you into a hack and slash running frenzy. It's not just the single player levels that make this game what it is, but the online multiplayer Halo: The Flood too. The first version, pre-Xbox Live! Now with Live! The game supports the microphone chat system so you can talk to or more likely, ridicule others in game as well as more in depth elements of multiplayer gaming such as clans. Official warning over with, just buy another one to stay legit and carry on playing great games like these. Like a great sequel to a movie, Halo 2 manages to not only keep up the pace, but also add to the depth of the storyline without coming across as a mindless cash-in. Yes, for the most part it is more of the same as before, with tweaks, more weapons and more vehicles to master. Bungie hasn't opted for a different take on the classic in the same vein that Aliens upped the tempo on the original film. What it has done is play it safe, not trashed Halo: The Flood original yet not made this version come across as just another mission pack. Had it not been for the online element, we doubt this game would have sold so well. Either way, free of the necessity to Halo: The Flood the platform, the franchise starts here. Why you can trust Pocket-lint. Verdict Like a great sequel to a movie, Halo 2 manages to not only keep up the pace, but also add to the Halo: The Flood of the storyline without coming across as a mindless cash-in. Writing by Stuart Miles. What to Do After a Flood | Repairing Your Flooded Home By entering your email address you agree to our Terms Halo: The Flood Use and Privacy Halo: The Flood and consent to receive emails from Time Halo: The Flood about news, events, offers and partner promotions. Thanks for subscribing! Look out for your first newsletter in your inbox soon! When video games are described as cinematic, it often means players should expect to be led around by the nose and be ready for lots of wooden dialogue spouted by stiffly rendered animated figures. That it does so in a format that will take most folks at least 15 hours to complete is more impressive still. Propelled into stores by a marketing campaign worthy of a big-screen summer blockbuster complete with Mountain Dew and Burger King tie-insHalo 3 has a plot more creative and engrossing than a video-game story line about space marines fighting genocidal insects has any right to be. Everything that made the first two games into monster hits—incredibly smart enemies Halo: The Flood computer-controlled allies, weapons and vehicles that are ridiculously fun to operate—is brought back and amplified times five. The multiplayer features that were instrumental to the success of the original Xbox games have been enhanced, with features that let players archive Halo: The Flood gameplay moments and mute trash talk Halo: The Flood obnoxious opponents or teammates, for that matter. Pick up Halo 3 for the plot-driven single-player game, and you basically get a blue-chip multiplayer game for free—and vice versa. Go to the content Go to the footer Close Worldwide icon-chevron-right Worldwide. Time Out Worldwide. Get us in your inbox Sign up to our newsletter for the latest and greatest from your city and beyond. We already have this email. Try another? My Account My Profile Sign out. My Account. Halo 3. Film Recommended. Time Out says 5 out of 5 stars. Share Tweet. First Look: Halo 3 is Here | PCWorld Too late--your force shield sizzles as you jerk left. Explosions thoom-thoom-thoom somewhere up ahead. An enemy ship swoops Halo: The Flood low on your left flank, tilts open, and spits out reinforcements. Distant beams of pulsing light rise from alien monoliths against a horizon that tapers strangely upward, curving toward a circular zenith like some giant, galactic bracelet. Behind you, Scorpion tanks trundle forward to back Halo: The Flood assault. You scope a group of juking enemies with your battle rifle, scanning for a headshot, waiting, waiting Our hero looks even better on the Xbox In fact, Halo 3 turns out to be so reliably "Halo" in terms of its story and shoot-everything gameplay--even the order in which series hallmark villains appear--that you might imagine Halo: The Flood playing a remake of the original. A really pretty remake, to be sure, and one that manages to finally spill a few secrets some have been waiting six years to uncover, but with Halo 3 Bungie isn't really out to change hearts and minds. This is still the same Homeric shooting gallery you played back in muscled up for a higher- definition audience with some extra toys, overhauled multiplayer, and of course, plenty of "Can you give me a hoo-ah, soldier? The original Halo involved a genetically enhanced super-soldier with two first names Master Chief battling a fanatically religious alien race known as the Covenant over an orbital construct inspired by writer Iain Banks' Culture --a synthetic space habitat cum interstellar weapon shaped like a hoop. The sequel let you again play as the Chief, but also intermittently as his defeated Covenant nemesis, the Arbiter. Their stories dovetailed in a Halo: The Flood to stop a parasitic race called the Flood from spreading while simultaneously preventing the one weapon capable of instantly destroying the Flood but also the known universe from firing. Halo 3 picks up shortly after Halo 2 ends, depositing you as Master Chief on Earth in the midst of a full-scale Covenant invasion. The same epic vehicle battles have made their way into Halo 3. Making your way through the game involves sniping, strafing, slicing, and gun-butting enemies capable of the same and more as you battle through gorgeously realistic albeit one-way jungles with bendable flora, dusty ravines, pine forests, industrial wastelands, military bases, and, occasionally, the insides of glinting alien ships and facilities. Enemies are more engaging than ever, shouting tactics to each other; teasing, "I want his head on a pike," or was it "bike"? Levels, while linear in general, are now broader with multiple attack Halo: The Flood. Fed by the Xbox 's ability to display more objects in finer detail, canopied rivers and ridges become crisscrossing webs of sniper Halo: The Flood as Covenant Jackals perch in enormous trees or Halo: The Flood into distant cliffside cubbyholes that are tough to spot but easy to be hit from.