Louis Wu at HBO called 1UP's Broken Halo article a broken record by a whiny writer, but myself I find it hard to shrug off all of it's criticisms, even if they are old hat by this time.

Respawn Of The Devil

In Halo 1, weapons respawned on timers. In Halo 2, they only respawn on a timer after a drop. All other things being equal, this gives players who grab power weapons early a significant 'first-mover' advantage that doesn't exist in Halo 1. I think Bungie did consider this, and thought that the disadvantage a player gets from carrying an empty weapon just to keep it from the enemy would be more punitive-- but in practice, it isn't. In fact, in many cases it's worth it to give the power weapons to a weak player and tell him to hide, just to keep it from the enemy. While there are lots of empty complaints about how Halo 2 doesn't require any skill (oh, don't I wish that were really true) there are many methods by which a less-skilled team can level the playing field-- perhaps a few too many.

Baby You Can Drive My Car

Calling a rocket-launcher-toting Spartan in a Banshee 'unkillable' on Coagulation is certainly going too far. SMGs, LAAG guns and Gauss cannons all work pretty well on Banshees, too. The author's assertion that some of the weapon/vehicle balance is upset a bit by the way weapon respawns works is also spot-on.

Dual Of The Fates

Regarding dual-wielding, it seems the author just doesn't like it. He refers to the plasma rifle and SMG combo as an "I Win" button (I think he really means to say plasma pistol) and also calls the Magnum "nerfed" (when it seems clear all that happened to it was making sure that headshot damage only occurs, you know, when you get a headshot and not all the time). When the author suggests that "Rebalancing the dual wielding from top to bottom and making it less of a 'this combination beats this one' situation would be a good start" I have to wonder what he's getting at. If it's not a question of which combination beats that one, then essentially all the combinations are the same and the differences are only cosmetic. Surely, no one wants that.

Is That A Plasma Pistol In Your Pocket?

On the plasma pistol, the author wants the overheating restored to tone down the power of that weapon in combinations. I find it hard to disagree with that. The combo could still be pulled off by two players working in tandem, which is something that is just so cool to see that it's worth getting killed for.