Halo PC: First Impressions
 

Working for a gamestore brings upon quite a few privileges, namely the free store copies of particular 'hot' titles. Recently I got the Halo press Beta and so here is my 'review' so to speak.

Not ever having played Halo on the X-box I wasn't sure what to expect, most ports are half-arsed cash-ins and are ridiculously bad, so my expectations were leaning more towards that.

Anyway, I popped in the game expecting to be amazed at it's brilliance on my new FX 5900 but I was deeply underwhelmed. Sure the game is years old, it's dated, but quite simply it just doesn't look good. And while I'm talking about the graphical aspects of the game I have to say that the FPS were horrid, even at 800x600 whereinwhich the game looked like tetris. Oh, and FSAA is not allowed. Ok, so it's a Beta, but it's a PRESS Beta, it's supposed to make GameStore owners and Magazine writers go "Oooh!," and "Ahhhh!".

So basically the graphics were sub-par.:(

Now the gameplay, woo, ok so the controls are fine, in fact they're quite solid (but it doesn't really matter at 10 FPS). What bugged me the most was the enemies, they were some of the most poorly designed alien/monster things I have ever seen! You've got your blue Covenant people who are ok, but then you've got a red one, oooh! Because he's red it must mean he's much stronger than da blue one! :rolleyes: And those short-guys fall under the same plight "I'm red and short and tougher than my yellow counterpart!". :cool: Plus there are far too many enemies everywhere and they are too easy to take down, no strafing or hiding behind walls necessary.

The 'scripting' was quite nice though, I very much enjoyed how parts of the ship would blow up and how the good guys would be participating in gunfights down hallways. :D

The hero of the game whom naturally is the person you play as seems terribly cliched (from what I played). Hardened armour wearing military personel that has a voice to rival the guy who does the narration on most film trailers. I'm guessing that at some point in the game he'll remove his helmet melodramatically and it'll be a woman, or an alien, or he'll have some terrible scar from when he fought in 'Nam. You see, the helmet makes him a mysterious bad ass. ;)

Audio, something that hardly ever gets mentioned in review or first impressions, is standard in this game. The music is what annoyed me, the track would just end and then start up again for no apparent reason (this wasn't a technical fault, it was scripted intentionally). There are also times when a tragic violin/bass note is struck and carries on for ages, it's the kinda music note you'd expect to hear when you die in the game. Sound effects weren't impressive enough to make you want to pump up the volume and feel the subwoofer shake the ground when you fire your machine-gun (heck, even Quake 3 does that!).

Unfortunately I am not impressed with this game at all, and though I will not say it outright sucks I will say it is not good. However when the final version (non beta) is released I'll ammend this post or thread with a concise report.

In the meantime, I'll stick to waiting for PC born FPS games like Call of Duty, Jedi Academy, Half-Life 2 and DooM3.:):cool:

Um...is this Beta 1.5?

Or Beta 2?

Because beta 1.5 is like...two months old. Therefore the graphics aren't all that great right there.

And if its 2...try and get me a copy? ;)

Halo was "promised" to the PC crowd like 2 years ago. I'll wait until it's out and some reviews are out. I don't give in to the hype about any games. Dare I mention the turd that is MOO3? It's now selling for $20. Duke Forever? Doom 3? HL2? Please.

What do you mean by that?

HL2 shall be great...and it's almost about to be released. It's not going to be delayed like Duke Forever. Meh.

And Halo is fun. Yes it is.

And, actually...it was promised to the MAC crowd first...

damn it... that's disappointing.

The screen shots I've seen looked amazing.

I'm still going to get it though on account of "it's HALO"

I was worried about the exact things you were saying. I'm very convinced that Halo is a console FPS that simply wouldn't feel right on a PC, just as a lot of PC FPS don't feel right on consoles. You should try the XBox version.

IGN had an article a few months back asking the overall question "is Halo going to be too easy with a keyboard and mouse?" By what your experiences say, I fear they're right. :(

-Lasereth

As far as performance, the game is much better on ATI cards. You're not the only around here with priveleges ;). The DX9 and Pixel Shader 2.0 implementation gap is starting to show.

Well it's only 4 years overdue.

I am sorry for my ignorance but I have seen this quite often here on TFP and elsewhere but I have no idea what it means or stands for. Can anyone tell me what "meh" means. Thanks

Meh, means sucky, or shite, or poo.:)

I'm still gonna give Halo a whiz when it comes out for retail but at the moment it's a little disappointing.

Still didn't answer meeeeeeee.

Is it beta 1.5? or 2?

If it's 1.5...

Wanna play multi sometime? :)

have to say i agree with you. played it on the xbox. totally overated shit.

uhm halo was originally supposed to be a pc title until bungie sold there soul to the devil.
;)

Actually, it was originally intended for the Mac, then PC, that's where Satan's Lawyers... I mean Microsoft saw it and said "X-BOX!" and the rest is history.

It's Press Beta 1.5, we're apparently getting another Beta soon but I'm not sure if it's Beta 2 or another Beta 1.5. As for multiplayer, I'd love to but the game runs like crap, sorry man, maybe when it comes out on retail :)

Game runs like crap?

Runs alright on my system...

Played against my friend for a while on 1.5 a little earlier.

But oh well.

Definately when it officially comes out though. :)

Halo, a sour taste in the mouth of many who were there when it was first announced.

For those who know of Bungie, it's got a very very large community.. Or maybe a very very small Tight community. Many "faithfuls" or people otherwise feeling very close to Bungie and the games they develop. It was a sad day to hear that someone else would be porting Halo (back to Platform as originally intended). I'm not going anywhere big with this. I'm still one of the bitter people.

Anyway, I look quite forward to Halo on the PC. A new multiplayer game (that I know I will pretty much like, through time spent on an Xbox at my parent's) to play will be quite enjoyable. Plus, I will get to drive the jeep around on my computer. Yee haw.

What it was originally planned for and what ended up happening is completely different. The game was redesigned for console. I'm not arguing that it was designed for console first, I simply mentioned the fact that it DID come out on console first. This something that rarely happens. Most games come from PC to console, not from console to PC. I'll make my decision when I see the official reviews. It sounds like Mr. Deflok's experience was soured by technical problems mainly, which is NOT an issue on the console version. I also believe it's bullshit to say Halo "sucks" after playing the PC version without playing the XBox version. The game was fucking revolutionary and the absolute best of its kind. Anyone denying that is denying reality. There is a reason Electronic Gaming Monthly gave its Platinum award to it (10, 10, 10, 10), there's a reason why it still holds the number 1 position in IGN reviews with the highest score, and there's a reason why it still costs $50.00 at most retail stores. The game was a masterpiece on XBox. If it sucks on PC, so be it, but you can't say it's a bad game because of it. The XBox version wasn't a technical difficulty or a cliche FPS. It was an experience; an experience that shouldn't gain a bad reputation simply because the PC version isn't as good.

-Lasereth

i can say its bullshit if i choose, and i do own the xbox version. could not make it through the whole game is was so dull and repetitive . Im sorry i so insulted the holy grail of fps games /sarcasm. if you dont like contrary opinions perhaps you shouldn't read messageboards. give me doom and quake 1 over this game any day of the week. :rolleyes:


anyways there are alot better fps games coming out for the pc imo. to name a few: call of duty, half-life 2 , dues ex, and doom 3.

I'm not arguing that the PC version is good, I'm arguing that the XBox version is good. I'm not expecting the PC version to be that great. You must hate console games if you didn't like the XBox Halo. People are acting like Halo is some brand-new FPS that is supposed to dominate the PC market. Remember, this isn't a new game. It's a PORT, and a port of a game that came out years ago. You can't expect it to be on par with current games. No one said this game was going to be revolutionary on PC; it's simply trying to expand the audience of a game that was only released on XBox. IGN explains it very well: ARTICLE Revolutionary? Halo 2.

-Lasereth

I'll just re-iterate that I'm reserving judgement for the PC version, after all, it's a little silly to judge a game based on a Beta.

Especially such a crappy beta.

1.5 isn't nearly finished, like I said. Its a few months old.

2 is more close to the finished product. And has multi in it. Well...regular multi. You can still have multi in 1.5...just have to rig it up a bit...heh.

Yep, I got that beta also... I'm not gonna lie and say I work at a game store though. I downloaded it like everyone else. Personally, I think it looks pretty good. There's a hell of a lot of errors in it (phantom BSPs, bugs, etc) but the game itslef looks pretty good. I had never played it on the XBOX, but I had heard the hype and had my doubts about it. I can say that this leaked beta has changed my mind.

Oh, and poo-poo on you for bitching about performance on a leaked beta. What do you expect, seriously? Here's an article from gearbox just for you.

Perhaps you should read all of the posts in this thread before making such a bold statement. I work for EbGames New Zealand and we got the Press Beta's a couple of weeks back, I only got to test it out this week. I did NOT download it. We get tonnes of Betas and promo copies of upcoming games, the reason I don't start threads about them is because most of them aren't exactly highly anticipated like Halo is, in other words people aren't gonna give a shit if I start threads about them. We were playing a relatively final build of Rise of Nations 3 months before it was released for sale, same goes for MechWarrior 4: Mercenaries and Fligh Simulator 2004, I'd list the rest but there isn't really a need to.

The fact of the matter is that this was still a PRESS Beta, it's supposed to be polished to a certain extent. And no amount of tweaking is going to fix the fact that the game does not look good, unless you go and rebuild the engine.

Also, if you read the above posts you would have seen that I have pointed out several times that I am reserving final judgement for when the game goes on retail.

Yeah i downloaded it my self, seems nice, i like it, ive only got the beta version, so some on the mulitplayer stuff isnt avalible like maps, and online gaming. Oh well ill just have to wait.

The online gaming works...

Just have to rig it a little bit...

Okay, fine... I believe you. I just found it ironic that you started this thread very shortly after it was publicly leaked. As a matter of fact, I was about to start a similar thread when I noticed this one... but that's neither here nor there.

I dunno man... I find it hard to believe that it will make anyone really say "ooh and ahh" because it is a two year old game. Its "ooh and ahh" days are long gone. I think the novelty of this port is that its a great game that all of us non XBOX owners can now enjoy. Perhaps all the hype has given way to unrealistic expectations.

You all are forgettting the main thing that made Halo such a great game. The experience. The gameplay is not the only thing that made Halo good, although it certainly didn't hurt.
The music made a great impression. Who can forget the Halo theme? But most importantly, the story. I don't really like FPS games, but when i got the controller in my hands to play Halo, I knew I was playing something revolutionary. The story beats many games on both the PS2 and XBOX. For a FPS, this is phenomenal.

Halo PC is junk. Why didn't Bungie port it themselves, well besides being busy with Halo 2. Why is gearbox is still in business? Someone must be buying their crappy ports. Halo is overrated IMO. I guess it's the best fps that consoles have. Oh well we got superious versions of HL2, Deus Ex 2, and Doom3 to look forward to.

its been my experience that most people i know that think halo is the greatest fps. it usually is the 1st one they have ever played. not always but it seems to be that way about 80% of the time. as for the music someone posted about. i turn the music off in everygame i can. music is useless in games imo.

AxByC, nothing wrong with something being the first game a person ever played. Heck, my father is fifty and I was somehow able to get him to play GTA: Vice City; that's his first game ever. Gotta start somewhere.:)

I enjoyed it on the Xbox, but I do think a lot of the interior level designs were pretty damn repetitive. I liked the exterior environments though.

The music was lush and beautiful. It felt nicely cinematic without being totally overblown. Sure, it wasn't hard pumping beats to go with caffiene and counterstrike at 2am, but not everyone wants that in a game. I always felt the music scripting was pretty appropriate for what was going on; heck, maybe I've forgotten the parts where it didn't really work out but the overall impression was good.

I agree that the humans' ballistic weapons were mostly underwhelming in sound quality. I figure they ripped off the pulse rifle from 'Aliens' in almost every other way, why not do a good job at sampling the unique sound it made; or even decide to be orginal in the first place.

The 'sound' of the covenant weapons worked because you had continuous tactile feedback from the controller to go along with the noise they made. You coundn't get this from a standard mouse and keyboard combo.

Halo may be the best fps for a console, but when it comes to the pc, it's just one of many, and not all that revolutionary. And nobody can ever convince me that a game pad is as good as a mouse when it comes to fps's.

i stillcan't wait to play it

Bungie was not finished with Halo when it was released. Electronic Gaming Monthly had their Afterthoughts section on Halo after it was released and the Bungie developers commented that Microsoft MADE them release it at launch so the XBox would sell better. The later levels in the game are simply recycled previous levels because they weren't designed yet. You can't blame Bungie for being forced to release Halo unfinished.

No one's trying to.

-Lasereth

LOL

I'll definitly give it a shot once the full game comes out.

If I don't like it, I'll just sell it to one of my friends :)

Well, I don't have to worry about it anymore...

I just won a copy of it!

And maybe a Sound Blaster Audigy 2.

WOO!

hehe