Halo 2 lasts, and the Doom theory of level design

I have to say, despite the bugs and questionable design decisions, Halo 2 was an all-around improvement over the first game.  Narratively it's a lot more interesting, and it even has cinematic touches with the usual subtitles showing you what you're looking at.  The environments varied a lot, and there was no flood overload like in the first game (although they were still annoying, and not as shotgun-weak as they were last time). 

I find it odd that some folks said Bungie was doing some anti-Islam rhetoric in their game.  If anything, I felt more that it was a condemnation against fanaticism in general, and I personally had a different group of fanatics in mind for the end-of-the-galaxy scenario suggested in the two games. 

I didn't like that it ended in a cliffhanger, but I wasn't surprised about it since I'd heard that it had such an ending when I was trying to avoid spoilers for the game.  Usually I hate spoilers, but something nondescript like that helped prevent any disappointment, and it was nice to know especially since I won't be getting a 360 any time soon. 

Unless I'm mistaken, the lead up to the final level gave me no way to get to the final tower.  I may have just missed that they conveniently dropped a specter for me to pilot up there, but I only found it after many, many playthroughs of me driving my wraith up the sides of mountains...  hold on a sec, these equipment names are really annoying.  I can't keep any of them straight.  And why do game makers insist on calling things scarabs?  I mean, it's great to be sensitive to the plight of the dung beetle, but really.

The faction tally takes a jump up in the game, and I like the machinations of all involved.  The levels are a lot more varied, and very fun to replay even when you're tearing your hair out at how unfair it all is.  The game really felt like an offspring of Doom, and I wonder if most modern first person shooters have a tendency to repeat the trail Doom blazed a long time ago.  Doing things activate other things, so if you step past a certain point a ship pops up and starts shooting at you, or two more ghosts start flying around the corner as if these bad guys were all waiting blithely for eons for you to get close.  For all the badmouthing Dynasty Warriors gets, at least that battlefield has a logic of its own that doesn't need the player to make things change.  In a way, Halo's sort of design is a HYBRID of turn-based and action gaming.  You can stand around for hours doing nothing, and the game waits for you even though you didn't pause (with the exception of timed events), which to me has the thoughtful pace of a turn-based system with packets of action in between load zones. 

The narration, the art direction, and the interesting factions had me much more satisfied this time around.  The combat felt weird in places, and I wish old Master Chief had the wherewithal to lower his hands to his sides once in a while so a good portion of my screen wasn't blocked by the dual wielded plasma rifles.  Dual wielding, though, is great, and makes weapons with overheat potential much more deadly at the expense of a grenade-chucking hand.

I could say more, but I'm not sure anything beyond what I've said could be of interest to anyone who had played these older games.  Anyone with some Halo 1 or Halo 2 thoughts? No?  Ah well.