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My Halo For PC Review

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Foxie3a

Normal Member
Joined
Sep 7, 2003
I just finished playing Halo for the PC, and I decided to write a review on it. I’m hoping this thread will encourage some discussion and your thoughts of the game so others who have played it can see others’ opinions, and for people who have not played it yet, they can see if it’s their type of game. I am going to do my best not to ruin the storyline, I hope everyone else will try to also.

Halo is made by Microsoft, it was originally for their Xbox, but now is for the PC too. It’s only on one CDROM, so it is very convenient, not like Far Cry with 5 of them. Windows is showing that it is taking up 1.45 GB of space on my hard drive.

I am not sure of the official system requirements, but my system was able to play it fairly well. I forced my drivers to run on complete maximum quality settings. At stock when there is a large firefight I might see the frame rate go down a bit too low. With my 3.0C at 15x240, and with my 9800pro at XT speeds it was nice and smooth. Of course if you have a lower end system, you can run it at the appropriate video settings.

I’ll start off by saying the game is unlike any other. Its appearance reminded me a little of Unreal Tournament 2003 at first, but it is very different. It is a first person shooter. You are human I believe, but have a very unique set of armor, and do not have a normal way of keeping track of your health. Your health is measured on a bar. When hurt, it goes down. Overtime it slowly goes up though. Once it goes all the way down, it refills itself and uses up one of about 8 little box like things below the bar. Once those are out, you are dead. You can refill them by finding a med kit. I’m still not quite sure on the health thing because I only died when I was standing on top of a grenade, which unfortunately happened several times. I never died from normal gun fire. There are also special pyramid shape objects you can pick up that give you special abilities like a shield, or invisibility.

Now for the levels. I found this to be one of the worse parts of the game. There are many times when around each corner, is the exact same thing as what was around the other corner, except with a fresh batch of enemies. I do not know why they couldn’t be a little more creative, it would have definitely helped my overall opinion of this game. You go from inside close quarters, to outside with a vast area to fight. The inside areas, with monsters remind me of Doom 3. They were both the same thing over and over again. The outside was fun though, and that is why I kept playing the game.

There were a few levels in particular that I thought were really fun, or really unique. At first the game’s graphics look different and fun, but it gets too repetitive, so the fun goes away. The end was a fun level because it was so different. But my favorite level is when you’re in a jungle environment. You have your gun, your flashlight, some ally soldiers, and enemies coming from every direction. The fighting was definitely unique. The game likes throwing tens of enemies at you at a time. Even though it doesn’t take much to kill one, there are hordes of them. Because of this, it gets your adrenaline pumping more than other games, even Unreal Tournament. I’ve seen jungle fighting in Far Cry, but that’s trying to be realistic, this is just a frag for all. That’s probably how it sold so well, especially on the Xbox.

Enemies. You practically start the game in a fire fight. Right away you meet your first enemy. Get used to shooting at them, it’s what you’ll be doing the whole game. Later you come across another race which is a lot tougher in my opinion. The monsters are pretty unique though. My favorite are in the 2nd race. There are tiny things like the head crabs in Half-Life, except when they hit you, they disappear. My favorite are the ones who carry them in a huge sack that is their head. When they walk you can see them wobbling inside of the sack, and once shot they explode releasing the little guys. The explosion is extreme, if there are grenades lying around they will explode, that is how I died many times. Once I got up in a high part and watched these guys keep appearing and fighting the first race. It was hilarious to see them blow up, and the pressure from the explosion would make other enemies be blown across the battlefield, and they kept doing this. Definitely one of the funniest things I’ve seen in a game. There is another funny enemy who is in the first race. They remind me of turtles on their hind legs. They run around kind of fast saying things in English. They are almost completely harmless with their tiny alien pistol, but there are many of them, and they can mount large weapons which are very deadly. What they say is hilarious. They’ll see you and run away screaming in a high pitched voice “Enemy!!!”. I forget the other things now, but it was funny. I was in a room looking into the hallway, and I saw one running by screaming enemy, and a creature from the 2nd race was chasing it from behind. Very funny.

The weapon system. My favorite weapon system is the Half-Life style. You have different classes of weapons, like melee, side arm, machine gun/rifle, heavy weapons, throwing weapons, ect… Far Cry isn’t too bad because they give you 4 slots to put whatever you want. Halo allows you TWO slots. You can pick up anything you find and discard whatever you want. They give you big weapons like a sniper rifle, and rocket launcher, but I found it not to be worth carrying those. I found the secret to survival as being switching weapons with ones on the ground every chance you get. Your human weapons use ammo, and need to be reloaded. They are powerful, but they swarm so many creatures on you that reloading means your death. The energy weapons have batteries, and once the battery is used, the gun is useless. When carrying the rocket launcher, and you see a whole bunch of enemies coming at you at full charge, and you look at the ammo of your energy weapon, and it is at 2, you are in a lot of trouble. You won’t be able to kill them to take their weapon, and the rocket launcher is almost useless in this situation. So like I said, know what weapons you like, and if you see one on the ground, pick it up so you are always full of ammo. Ammo goes very quickly. The energy weapons might say “20” for ammo, but you can get like 4 shots per 1 unit on the battery. So 20 are more like 80. But it still goes very quickly.

Because of this, you never get the chance to use different weapons since you should always be switching to keep your main weapon fully loaded, and have your backup just in case. You also can’t pick up ammo for a gun that you aren’t holding. They give you some grenades also. They come in very handy when there are swarms of enemies in close quarters, just make sure you don’t blow yourself up in the process. :)

Now onto the vehicles. The vehicles were my favorite part of the game. The 1st person shooting was too repetitive. With vehicles you were outside. I think there were 4 different vehicles. Two ground, and two air. Driving them is a little weird. You can only go forward or backwards. The side arrows do nothing, except for one vehicle. Moving the mouse will change the camera angle, and the vehicle will go wherever it is pointed. I like doing many things at the same time. I would enjoy being able to look around with the camera, while using the arrows to drive. My favorite vehicle was very easy to destroy unfortunately. The main vehicle is a ground one, you can drive, get in the passenger seat, or mount the 50 cal in the back. If you’re driving, you better have someone on the 50, or you’re just a sitting duck… or moving duck.

The story, and progressing in the game. It never occurred to me what Halo meant. I love the main menu, in the background it has “Halo”, a big ring floating in space. You spend the whole game there, or close by it. This is in no way a Role Playing Game, your character never advances. There are no skills or traits. They’ll give you a new gun every now and then, but you have to find it laying on the ground by someone who has died. It’s not very rewarding to continue playing the game. It’s all the same thing, for hours on end. I do have to say, there are more movies in this game, than I have ever seen. They aren’t too great, but it adds a little diversity. The ending is pretty disappointing. There isn’t a final monster or anything. It’s one last intense level, that’s a little different than before. You get a final movie, which isn’t even the longest one in the game, then it takes you to the credits, then the main menu again.

Conclusion. I wasn’t keeping track of how long I was playing, but thinking back it must have been around 9 hours. You run around with a gun shooting things, or drive a vehicle shooting things, in between watching some movies. The graphics and sounds are decent, but nothing special at all. The game never gave me any stability problems, even with a 600mhz overclock. Sometimes it wasn’t too clear where to go next, or why, but it’s pretty easy to figure out. There are no puzzles to solve, you just shoot your way through the game. If this is your time of thing, then definitely check it out. I think of it as being more of a console game(it’s for the Xbox). There are good parts in it that I’ve talked about, but overall it’s not too great. It’s playable, I’ve had some games where it wouldn’t even run on my system(Tribes 2, UFO Aftermath), and I’ve had other games where I couldn’t understand the interface, or didn’t want to. I was able to go all the way through the game having fun. I would look into Halo 2 to see what they did differently, and if they fixed some of the things that I don’t like in it.

I am going to rate different parts of the game, 1-10, 10 being the highest.

Sounds – 5-6/10
Graphics – 6-7/10
Interface – 6-7/10
Fun – 7/10
Storyline – 8/10
Game Stability 10/10

If I was giving this a grade like in school, it would probably be a C+.

Let me hear what you think of the game. Please point out anything wrong in my review! I’ll correct it. I’ll even help you in the game, if you contact me through PM. :)

I am going to host two pictures to show you. They will not be there for very long, so if you are reading this after it’s lived its life on the forum, the pictures probably won’t be viewable. I couldn’t find a macro to take a screenshot, so I had to hit the print screen button, then go into paint. Because of this I only took about 5 screenshots. These are my 2 favorite ones. In the second one, if you look carefully you can see that the horizon is nothing but a white line. It’s funny how good something so simple looks. And of course the pictures have been saved in a much less quality than they originally were, I did this for respect out of the host.

http://www.teamteaspoon.com/imagegallery/data/media/1/Halo_1.JPG

http://www.teamteaspoon.com/imagegallery/data/media/1/Halo_2.JPG

Enjoy! :)
 
thanks for the good review, but by now most people have played halo, the PC version isnt that different from the xbox version which is kind of old now.

Thanks for the work writing hte review though


I like halo, a lot, its just starting to get kind of old
 
next step...play online :p

theres two online versions the regular halo and halo ce. CE allows for you to play user made maps, although there is no automatic downloader for maps you dont have...not really a problem though, head over to the ocg site and they have map packs you can download or links to them...single player was fun but multiplayer was a blast :)
 
Agreed. The multiplayer is what made Halo great. If you didn't get into the multiplayer, then you're definitely selling the game short by not experiencing one of the best parts of it. Go hit up the OCG site for custom maps and download the Halo CE client. I'm sure the OCG Halo boys would enjoy some new cannon fodder. :D
 
Just the one thank you made the whole review worth it. :)

Is there a Halo 2 for PC? Is it still fairly modern?

I can definately see how multi player, outside, would be a blast.
 
as far as i know they havent even announced that they would make halo2 for pc :/

and trust me play with the ocg guys it is a lot more fun to play with people that will work together as a team, if you just join random servers it wont be as fun
 
Foxie3a said:
Just the one thank you made the whole review worth it. :)

Is there a Halo 2 for PC? Is it still fairly modern?

I can definately see how multi player, outside, would be a blast.

No doubt. Defnitely a good review... well written and it most defnitely shows you put a good deal of time into it. ;)

If you really dug the outside combat, then you'll like several of the multiplayer maps. Death Island, Danger Canyon, Blood Gulch, Sidewinder, Ice Fields, Gephyrophobia, and Timberland all come to mind. They're all larger outdoor maps that support vehicles. If you pick up the Halo CE client and download OCG's map pack, there are dozens of other user made maps that are just as great... my personal favorite is New Mombassa Classic. :clap:
 
YellowDart said:
No doubt. Defnitely a good review... well written and it most defnitely shows you put a good deal of time into it. ;)

If you really dug the outside combat, then you'll like several of the multiplayer maps. Death Island, Danger Canyon, Blood Gulch, Sidewinder, Ice Fields, Gephyrophobia, and Timberland all come to mind. They're all larger outdoor maps that support vehicles. If you pick up the Halo CE client and download OCG's map pack, there are dozens of other user made maps that are just as great... my personal favorite is New Mombassa Classic. :clap:

you forgot Infinity!
 
YellowDart said:
DOH! The one map that none of my aimbots work on! :p Just kidding... ALL 3.48713x10^587 aimbots work on that map. :clap:

you may have aimbots but i got my wall/speed hacks
 
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