Legendary? No, merely heroic...

I played Halo 2 last night, but bumped up the difficulty level from "Normal" to "Heroic". There are quite a few things that I noticed right from the get go. Listed, in no particular order, here.

• I can't find ammunition anywhere. In the normal game, all you have to do is run around a room a little bit, and you'll pick up assorted goodies: ammo, different weapons, grenades, etc. Not the case with Heroic.
• The CGI Marines are relatively ineffectual. On normal & easy, the Marines tend to take out a good portion of the baddies for you. Not on Heroic. They spend most of their time talking trash and getting killed. Worthless.
• The Covenant is much more organized. On the lesser levels, they seem to just come at you with no real tactics. In a Heroic game, they plot and scheme, work together, and generally just make the alien-killing experience much more difficult.
• When I shoot aliens in a Heroic game, they don't damage as quickly, and it seems like there's more of them to begin with.
• I miss having a sword. In all of the group games I play (Oddball, King of the Hill, etc.) we have a sword as a secondary weapon. I really, really miss having it now. I feel like I'm more skilled with the sword than any of the other weapons.

So let's recap: tougher Covenant(and more of them, at that), not as much weaponry, more organized tactics from enemies, less help from CGI Marines, and weapon-of-choice MIA.

It's a good deal harder than the normal game, so it's a nice, renewed challenge, but it can also be a little frustrating. I'm not even through the first level yet. In fact, I'm just now past the hangar where you encounter a lot of Covenant storming in from ships docked with the station (it's the hangar where you hear the CGI Marine say "We won! They're retreating!", and you just keep telling yourself what a dumbass that guy is). I died probably 7 or 8 times in that room, before I developed a reasonable assault tactic. First, I run in, kill the plasma cannon gunners, then take out the Grunts and Jackals on the ground (if you can take a few swipes at the Elites, that's good too). After doing some minor clean up downstairs, I headed upstairs to the plasma cannons. This made it easier to pick off the Covenant coming in through the airlock, and gave me an edge up on the left over Elite on the ground. This was a difficult task - since they have personal shielding similar to Master Chief's, you have to take them out quickly, or they'll hide & regenerate. This was a game of patience. I eventually prevailed, only to go down into the tunnel and meet a super Elite (he's gray - those dudes are tough). I'm still thinking about a strategy for him. It may take me a little while, but I'll get him.