4/5 ★ – Pixelguy9's review of Halo 2: Anniversary.

[Campaign Review] Halo 2 Anniversary is everything you could want from a faithful remaster of Bungie's classic; updated visuals, sound effects, music, bonus features, and cinematic cutscenes remade from the ground up. Halo 2 Anniversary, unlike Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, manages to almost entirely take the original vision of the game and make it look like a modern game while still retaining the feel of the original experience. The only complaints I really have with the visuals are the brightness of things like plasma grenade explosions and muzzle flashes, which can be a bit of a problem in darker missions like Sacred Icon and High Charity. Although the gameplay is unaltered, the sound design is enough to make the game feel brand new, although some of the sound effects lack the identity of their original counterparts. The remastered soundtrack, while not as strong as the original score, is still fantastic and worth a listen, after all, it's still Halo music. Like Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary and Halo 4 before it, Halo 2 Anniversary features hidden terminals for the player to discover across the levels, but unfortunately, the quality of these terminals has only improved slightly, still maintaining that same strange, ugly, and very cheap looking animation that has inexplicably stuck around for three games and a movie. Thankfully, the contents of these terminals makes for a far more interesting watch than the painfully boring Combat Evolved shorts, with interesting insights into the history of the Covenant, the UNSC's past experience with Thel 'Vadam, and the origin of the heretic faction on Threshold. Finally, it is impossible to talk about Halo 2 Anniversary without discussing the incredible work Blur Studio put into remaking Halo 2's iconic cutscenes. It's honestly kind of hard to go back to the original cutscenes after watching Blur's interpretations. The fact that Blur Studio has only worked on a handful of Halo projects is criminal, and their work needs to return to the series. I really don't have the words to talk about how good these cutscenes really are, so I implore you, go watch them if you haven't already. Halo 2 Anniversary offers fans of the original to relive one of the greatest FPS games of all time with a new coat of paint. It is clear that the people behind Halo 2 Anniversary loved the original game as much as the fans, and we can only hope that the same level of care continues into the franchises' future.