I am a gamer geek. I bought Halo 2 the day it was released (Now 9). I got the last copy they had at Target. My copy was the 100th copy they sold. This was my first time buying something on the day of its release.

The first thing I did when I started up Halo 2 was try out the single player campaign. I like the new weapons, like the battle rifle, and that covenent sniper gun. The human sniper rifle now has a cool effect where you can see the scope while the gun is not zoomed in. Far Cry has something similar.

There were quite a few anomolies with textures switching, mostly in the cut-scenes. It's harder to notice when you're in battle.

The objectives seem more action packed than in the first Halo. There is greater sense of teamwork amongst the AI players. They say a lot more stuff, some of it's in Spanish. It's a nice touch. It would be cool if they released an expantion pack to add new sayings to the AI characters.

So far I am at the level after the 'Oracle' level.

After a few hours of single player mode, I got online. I tried to join a game and it was taking a while trying to find matches. Eventually it connected and I was playing. Halo 2 is considerably less laggy than Unreal Championship. In fact, I didn't notice it lag at all during all my gameplay. Hooray for good network code. The voice chat can now be played through the TV speakers. It's pretty cool, it should have been in all the first xbox live games. I was wearing my xbox live communicator, and Dani asked me what it was for. She has asked me several times about it. I said it's for talking to people in the game. She looks at me like I'm a total geek weirdo for using voice chat in an online game. Now that the chat can be played through the TV, she can hear that some people are actually talking on there.

You can now wield two weapons at once. When playing online, I would often pick up a second sub machine gun. Firing both at once produces a lot of recoil which makes it a lot harder to aim.

Your online character can be customized. There are primary and secondary suit colors, and you can choose an elblem for your suit. I am using a green suit with a yin yang emblem.