> I have no doubts that Halo 2 is far superior to
> the first game.

Yeah, well, it's superior, but not far superior. It's a sequel. Graphics wise it's the same as Halo. Halo though didn't use the machine as "efficiently" as Halo 2 does. Halo had nice detail textures, nice everything, there was no Dreamcast-10-feet-in-front-of-you-blur. Lots of mip map levels and the LOD blended in really well, you never really saw it switching. Everything was bumpmapped as in part 2, high res models, all this. Halo 1 looked more polished than Halo 2.

Halo 2 has more blur in its textures, in fact even close up to the screen it could look as bad as Zelda 64 sometimes depending on what you're looking at. Sometimes it's an error in the rendering engine! Same with LOD, sometimes you're looking at ugly-ass models, and there's a lot of pop-in. They also have noticable fade-in in this game, you walk 10 feet away from a wall and a light fixture will fade out into oblivion. All the screenshots you see are doctored, everything's at the highest detail all the time. In the real game shit starts to look like ass as you walk away from it. Up close shit looks a lot better than in the first game, though. I guess it's a trade off, but I would not say Halo 2 looks better than Halo. In fact I think that the distractions take away from the game. I prefer it if I'm not paying too much attention because of gunfire, but when you sit back and look at it, it's a bit of a disappointment because of how they built it up in the screenshots.

The levels are also cut up more due to an increase in detail and scripting. The loading is shorter but more frequent, and you actually leave areas and can't backtrack as much as in the first game, that really sucks. Parts of the game are shorter than you expect sometimes, it's kinda disappointing.

Now the gameplay itself is a LOT better. The levels are more varied, they're better balanced and well paced, and have cooler shit for you to do. The enemies are more varied in actions and a lot smarter, Legendary difficulty is just a lot more fun because of this. The weapons are almost perfectly balanced, much more so than in the first game at any rate. The multiplayer maps are more detailed and varied, although they aren't vastly superior to the first game. They fixed bugs that plagued the first game and allowed shit like walking without making a sound, and dumbass shit like that.

Still, if you had your fill of Halo 1 and only dusted it off out of excitement for Halo 2, and you wouldn't have played it otherwise, then you won't find too much replay in this game. You'll beat it and then maybe play a little multiplayer but the excitement will wear off a lot more quickly than it did with the first game. The flaws also make the game seem rushed. Halo seemed rushed too because of the level design. I guess it's a curse. At least this time overall it's a more enjoyable and immersive experience.