and i even considerde buying one for this game...
though to be honest, I though halo was absolutly awesome.
halo 2 was a bit of an improvement, but you kind of got the feeling that the storyline was a bit, well rubbish... the new guns/two handed shooting and such was good, as were the new enemys...
but compared to halo one, and the buzz that i got from playing that, halo 2 was a disapointment, and I think halo 3 might be the same.
I see it the other way round. I played Halo:Combat Evolved and thought it was great, then thought it was quite good, and then became physically sick of it when I reached the Flood halfway through. The whole game just became tiresome, highly repetitive, boring, and I was literally getting desperate to finish it as quickly as possible in order to justify never playing it again.
Why must I then backtrack through the whole game again, and finish where I started? Plus the ending was poor. The graphics were poor even for the time, the vehicles were horrible (why do I fall out and die with the slightest of turns?), the allied AI was abysmal and the game suffered from the age old problem with FPS games; why am I in a team of about twenty people only to have 100% of enemy fire directed at me exclusively? Why not shoot my team mates once in a while? Plus the final mission just made my blood boil, that nonsense with the Warthog nearly had me break my TV.
I played Halo 2 and enjoyed every second of it. Absolutely everything had improved exponentially including graphics, music, gameplay, vehicle physics, weapons (they were woefully underpowered on Halo original I found), dual-wield weapons, vehicle hi-jacking, actual variety in the environments instead of backtracking backwards through the original ones like in the first game, plus the absolutely amazing multiplayer component. It never seemed half as repetitive or as dull as the original either, every environment was fresh and playing as the Arbiter was a welcome change from Master Chief running through mile after mile of identical corridors vs. The Universe.
I absolutely fail to see how anyone can think that Halo 2 is not as good when, mechanically and technically, it is infinitely better. I have played Halo 3 at my brother's house and I find it to be an improved version of Halo 2 with extra multiplayer options. In other words, it is very very good indeed.