A Look at HALO 2 - AI

HALO had a very distinctive feature when it came to the enemies: it was their intelligence, it stood out above all the other shooting games out there. Enemies would wait for you, duck, jump and recharge their shields. That hasn't changed, but what did is the enemy's ability to recognize your position. Maybe Bungie wanted to balance the new enemies a little, maybe they thought it would be too tough on the player. Since they made the shields stronger, gave the enemies a huge number of different weapons, they decided to make them blind? You are practically able to walk up to an Elite who is hiding from you behind a rock from the side and stand there for a good minute or two trying to decide the best way to end his life. The cool part about the new AI, though, is the fact that NPCs all finally passed their road tests and can now drive all the vehicles. Sometimes doing a horrible job at it, your allies do help by either driving you or giving vehicular support at times, which is a major improvement by itself.

Your allies are a lot stronger in HALO2 and no longer useless cannon fodder. They help you fight, kill the enemy and still drop some nice wisecracks here and there. Shooting up a squad of alien scum-–45 minutes; a fellow marine asking you for an autograph afterwards--priceless.

The enemies seem more aggressive this time around, where the small grunts actually try to shoot you down instead of running away screaming for help. If you watch, on some levels when you take too much time in a battle, the enemy will send for reinforcements, so be quick. Although this time enemies are very smart and always ready for battle, their AI could have been tweaked just a bit more in my opinion. I would love to see them actually chase you around the map and have some peripheral vision.

Next: The Weapons >>
 

More Gaming Articles
More By Alex G