Originally Posted by: Jolly McJollysonOne of my buddies...man, we all hated playing Halo against him...he was a MONSTER with the sniper rifle. He would grab that thing and waste everyone for, like, the next ten minutes.

Then you're really screwed. The plasma-based sniper added in Halo 2 deals pretty similar damage to the original sniper rifle (head=dead, 2bodyshots=dead), but it only has a two round magazine. However, those two shots can be fired as quickly as you can pull the trigger. This means that if you're an accurate sniper you can kill just about anything before it has time to react even if you only clip the subject with the first shot. It also makes it a formidable close-range weapon.

The plasma sniper rifle isn't good if you have bad aim because, as I mentioned before, you get only two shots before zooming out and reloading (and most likely getting countersniped).