Anyone want to buy a slightly used copy of Halo 2? I'm completely disappointed with it and would like to cut my losses right now. Why you ask? Good question.
1) One of my friends sent me a clan invite. When I sign in to XBOX live, I get a pop-up saying that I have a new message. When attempting to accept the invite, I get a piss poor error message saying that I have “Insufficient Permissions”. Holy crap. What permissions could it possibly be checking? I paid for this crap?
2) Here's the one that really stokes my fire. I like to sign into XBOX live even when I'm playing single player. That way, if one of my friends want's to play multi-player, I can be notified. Unfortunately, the developers of Halo 2 thought it would be a good idea to ABORT YOUR SINGLE PLAYER GAME when your XBOX live connection is interrupted. Again - Holy Crap! Why in the world would anyone think it would be a good idea to terminate a single player game if an XBOX live connection is dropped. Pop up a freaking icon or play a sound or something if you think it's important that I know about it, but for God sakes, don't abort my game and send be back to the last checkpoint. How did this ever get through testing? Don't answer that, because I already know.
3) After about 30 minutes of playing, I get violently ill. Googling revealed something called “simulator sickness”. Well, that's what I have. I've never had a problem with FPS games before. Only Halo and now Halo 2 induce this reaction for me. If the above two problems didn't exist, I would suffer through it by limiting my sessions to about 20 minutes or so, but it's just not freaking worth the hassle.