Halo 2: Uncut - Rebalance-vamp mod for Halo: The Master Chief Collection

CHANGES OVERVIEW

PLAYER CHARACTERS (ARBY 'N' THE CHIEF)

TOTAL AMOUNT OF HITPOINTS HAS BEEN INCREASED (100 -> 170, holy moly!). Goodbye squishiness. Each character now has a more unique feel:

Chief has a 70 Shield / 100 Health build, giving you that tasty CE health you know and love. His shields don't recharge faster than Arby's, but his health sure does. Gotta love that built-in medi gel!

Arby has a 100 Shield / 70 Health build, reminiscent of those pesky elite shields that never seem to pop. His shields recharge faster than the Chief, but his health recharge is a lot slower. Use that camo wisely!

SHIELD RECHARGE DELAY REDUCED (5 Seconds -> 2 Seconds). A controversial change, perhaps, but at the end of the day, my goal was to reduce the amount of time you spend waiting behind to jump back into combat. You'll also be able to use less safe cover that would have been suicide with the old system, expanding your options. And the Gunnery Sergeant isn't a big fat liar now too, that's good, right?

YOU GET A HEALTH BAR! YOU GET A HEALTH BAR! Tucked away nice and neat under the shield bar, just like CE. Now you can make more informed decisions regarding when to press the attack and when to retreat.

MELEE DAMAGE INCREASED. You're a super soldier and a scary alien man, you shouldn't be tickling enemies to death. If you feel the need to punch or swing your weapon around like a crazy person, it's going to hurt.

NEW DUDS. Chief has been gifted a new coat of paint, in an attempt to more closely resemble his E3 counterpart. Shiny!

ENEMIES

GLOBAL CHANGES - Enemies have had their rates of fire increased on legendary, in addition to having better responsiveness and damage on every difficulty. They also, in most cases, possess the same weapon buffs available to the player, so watch out!

BRUTES - Aggressiveness increased. Focussed mostly on weapons and Melee attacks, which now deal more damage. Don't try to hit a brute unless you know what you're doing!

ELITES - Aggressiveness increased. Focussed on evasiveness, which means they will make themselves harder to hit. The bug which caused Plasma Rifle wielding elites to do extra (read: FATAL) melee damage has been removed, so get in there and start boxing like it's CE!

FLOOD - Weapons have been toned down, specifically human weapons. The dreaded shotgun flood can't one-shot you from across the map, and smg/pistols are fired in shorter, less annoying bursts. Health is now standardized across difficulties.

HUNTERS/JUGGERNAUTS/ENFORCERS - Overall aggressiveness increased. Hunters have had a slight health increase.

SENTINELS - Evasiveness increased. A potential bug has been fixed regarding their unique firing pattern not being set on 'Sacred Icon', in order to ensure consistency across levels.

SNIPER JACKALS - Hate that you exist and will attempt to delete you as quickly as possible; it's the Halo 2 Way! I have NOT re-instated the terrible 1-shot kill, but they will 2-shot you quite fast, especially in groups. Remember that your shields recharge delay is reduced, so you can try to pop out from cover to retaliate more often.

BOSSES

HERETIC LEADER - Weapon tracking significantly reduced. In light of the plasma rifle projectile speed increase, I had to make him dumber so you can actually FIGHT him, as opposed to merely get slaughtered by him. There's also enough chaos going on with all the other enemies in the room.

PROPHET OF REGRET - Weapon aggressiveness increased. No big secret here, he's just got a palette-swapped hunter cannon, so I've merely made him fire it as often as hunters now do, which seems to be quite a bit more.

TARTARUS - He'll always be a derpy boi, but now you can deplete his shield with any weapon; his secret weakness? The slow blade penetrates the shield! Dune fans rejoice as melee attacks, while far riskier, will do bonus damage to his shield. In addition, the derpy boi is now more aggressive, and as such, his melee attacks will not 1-shot you, but expect to have the absolute minimum amount of health on legendary from 1 hit.

WEAPONS

BATTLE RIFLE - It's just not a battle rifle without a 3-shot burst. Mirroring the multiplayer beta, unscoped is a burst, scoped is a higher-dps single shot. The magazine is still 12 shots though, so expect beefiness, especially if you doubleshot. Scoped fire rate slightly reduced, projectile damage slightly increased. Make each shot count!

BEAM RIFLE - Damage reluctantly increased so jackal snipers do in fact 2-shot you on Legendary. Can now body-shot minor enemies with more consistency, just like CE.

BRUTE PLASMA RIFLE - Completely reworked; Now fires the unused vanilla turret projectiles. Raw, unprecedented power at the cost of terrible accuracy, still-fast overheating, and a smaller battery. Is now more effective against brutes, to give the player an addition option to deal with them.

BRUTE SHOT - Not much here, just a slight rate of fire increase and a new material effect when a shot hits a surface, borrowed from the plasma grenade. Enjoy.

CARBINE - I like the fast-firing alpha carbine, I like the 2-shot burst beta carbine; why not both? Primary fire is now a fast moving, fast firing projectile that can shred at close range, but for gosh sakes watch out for that recoil. Scoped fire is the 2-shot burst, a higher-damage, faster travelling (but still not hitscan) shot that will give you CE Magnum nostalgia, at the cost of lower DPS. Ammunition capacity is also slightly increased.

ENERGY SWORD - Damage increased for players and enemies alike in order to maintain deadliness.

MAGNUM - Look how they massacred my boy. NO LONGER! Shot damage has been nearly doubled, in order to make this rare-appearing weapon a treat to pick up. Ammunition capacity has also been increased, so that you'll burn through your ammo a little less lightning-quick.

NEEDLER - If it's going to fire faster, it's should supercombine faster. Supercombine delay cut almost in half, so that you're not waiting around for them to be polite and explode, already.

PLASMA PISTOL - Another CE fall from grace. Pitiful vanilla damage has been more than doubled, in order to get a powerful feel that dominates at close range, but doesn't step on the plasma rifle's toes either. You can't fire it as fast, and it's not quite as accurate as its blue brother, but at closer ranges it will shred much faster. Charged shot AoE has been reduced, as it was insanely large, but now it deals damage, another CE throwback. Be the sigma scrub and fire dual-wielded charge shots, you know you want to.

PLASMA RIFLE - Projectile speed increased, to give it more reliability at range. Hopefully you will feel it has a unique enough role to justify its existence.

PLASMA TURRET - Damage increased to mirror its new (old?) GMPG brother. Worth picking up now.

SENTINEL BEAM (yellow) - With all these newfangled Sentinel beams in play, the baseline model needs a tune-up. Overheats less quickly, consumes battery slower, but has a bit of recoil, so you actually have to aim, lol.

SHOTGUN - No longer shoots cotton candy. Range increased, damage slightly increased, ammunition capacity increased. Is now just as good of a flood-killer as the sword. If you can believe it, I decreased the damage it does to elite shields, so that it's not completely busted.

SNIPER RIFLE - The power creep is real. If the beam rifle is going to do slightly more damage, the sniper rifle does now, too.