First of all I loved Halo, its one of my favourite games ever. But the sequel Halo2 for me was a big let down! Im not saying its a bad game by any means (8 out of 10 for me) and the reason for this is cuz of the online mode.
I've played Halo 2 online a few times round my friends and whilst its terrific fun, I much prefer a gd story on the one player mode.

I think that bungie concentrated far to much on online, which resulted in the one player game became undernurished. Imagine how gd it could have been if they released the online mode as a seperate pack and concentrated on the story

This is why I prefer Half life 2. for me theres not better fps. All about the story, and all the better for it!

I dont own either, but I have played both. I would have to agree.

totally agree with you, i played both halo and halo 2, but it never really interested me, Half-life and half-life 2 are in this case so much better than halo and halo 2 now, giev episode 2, kkthx

The story (among the other things) is the exact reason I prefer Gears over Halo 1/2. Haven't played halflife, but from what I've seen, the story is very cool, as I learned the entire storyline over at wikipedia one night when I was bored. Does the game have much information about the 8 Hour War? or is it all fan fiction? IMO, we need more real ballsy sci-fi and otherwise games telling a story that the developers actually give a crap about. One reason I'm psyched for Mass Effect :)

They focused on multiplayer because they realized that was the key to permanent success and they were right. By the way Gears of War has a much worse story than Halo 2 and that is a massive understatement.

Half Life 2 and Halo 2 aren't really in the same category...Half Life is an amazing PC shooter, great story, ground-breaking visuals...Halo is a fun console shooter for those who never got into PC gaming...that's my opinion anyway. Anybody play DM, CS, DoD or other mods? I still play them once a week it seems.