Halo 2 for PC - PC Gamer review

[FrieChamp]

The same is true of the enemies who are fighting you: by the end of the game it's a case of ordnance-spam attrition. Can you pump out more grenades and rockets in the first few moments of the fight than your enemy? Good, then you'll reach the next checkpoint. It's boring. Halo 2's fighting is soulless and tiresomely predictable. It's boring like tidying your house is boring. Pick up some shoes, wash the dishes, bazooka the conveyor-belt of linear monsters. Halo 2 has no puzzles that I can recall, no notable physics events, a handful of interesting scripted scenes, and no memorable emergent glories at all. It is repetitious shooting that leaves us feeling, at best, sad and unfulfilled.

The score - 66%

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/ar ... 6&skip=yes

Discuss.

[Sentura]

it's true. halo was and always will be shit. i would have said the exact same thing, except i wouldnt rate it that high.

[Defrag]

I've only played it a few times at a friend's house, but I found it utterly monotonous. My friend then bought HL2 and didn't play Halo2 again

[KungFuSquirrel]

Ok, so I don't know how good the port job actually is, and Halo 2 wasn't as solid as Halo, but I have a serious issue with this:

Halo 2 has no puzzles that I can recall, no notable physics events, a handful of interesting scripted scenes, and no memorable emergent glories at all.

This reads like it's written by the guy that did the HL2 review that also did the Q4 review and seems to have a little checklist of arbitrary buzzwords and bullet points to use to demonstrate how every game he plays isn't HL2. Yeah, Quake 4 was mediocre and bland, but knock us for being mediocre and bland, not our lack of Combine (plus, while we deserved the 70 we got, the review the guy wrote read much higher than that, go figure).

I mean, Halo is a straight-up shooter and about as simple as you get in that regard without turning to the extreme Quake 4 got shoehorned into - we had "solve puzzle" and "defeat boss" buttons ffs - why should it be arbitrary expected to deliver "physics events?" Why do we need to find the "emergent" buzzword somewhere inside? And what does this guy expect from scripted scenes? By my recollection there were plenty... Any more and he'd probably be complaining the game was too scripted.

It's perfectly fine to not like Halo, and a bit more fine to not like Halo 2. But come on, don't give me this "oh, it doesn't have physics puzzles" BS, at least complain about stuff like "The narrow FOV and slow player movement is a chore for those expecting familiar PC FPS control" or "There's still a lot of copy/paste level design which, while the areas are still fun, still gets old after a while." Or whatever. This habit of attaching checklists to games based on achievements of other games is really lame.

[insta]

I've played it a bit on Xbox360 and I found it boring as well.

[Furyo]

Well, Halo already was a shady port of a hugely overrated Xbox game, so this isn't a surprise. I'm more surprised that they would ultimately get it out, especially when Halo 3 is so close around the corner. Yes that can boost sales, but in this case it can only deter them.

Halo's greatest achievement was to be the first FPS to actually play OK on a console. Besides, it was the one of a handful on the Xbox anyway. When you go over to the PC, you definitely need more than that, the competition is steep.

[Zacker]

Furyo pretty much said it. The game was not particularly great on the xbox and ports usually doesn't help the quality.

[FMPONE]

Halo 2 was a very poor game. It completely lacked variety in gameplay and most of the events that took place in the game were just the same as Halo, fighting wave after wave of the same generic enemies in the same boring manner. While he might have written a shitty article I completely agree with the gist of what the guy was saying.

However I found Halo 2's multiplayer exceedingly solid.

[ReNo]

I really enjoyed both Halo games, for all their flaws. The basic feel of the gameplay and the health/shield mechanic just worked so well IMO that I was having a great time playing it despite the obvious shortcomings. Plus split-screen coop is always fun, particularly on Legendary difficulty It is an overrated game in a lot of ways, but I think that leads many other people to swing a bit too far the other way and hate it by default. Then again I can appreciate why it might not be for everybody, because the "feel" of it is quite different to a typical FPS. I'd probably give both games 8/10.

Wouldn't really care to play either on the PC though - Halo suits console controls, it's movement style just doesn't really sith with the speedy mouse/keyboard combo.

[Psy]

It's an FPS which is set in a futuristic setting and you have to shoot everything that moves.

You can't get any more original then that!

[D3ads]

Halo was fun to play at a friends back in the day but not something I'd buy as a product, never bothered with the second one at all. Not surprised by that review, they DO compare everything to HL2 and it's bloody stupid because the latter title is far from perfect.

[Fletch]

It would have sold better if MS didn't make it Vista only. I still can't understand the rationale behind that move.

[Grinwhrl]

Halo sucks, especially number 2

[Warby]

there is nothing original or especially well done in halo 1 or 2 (except the music) ... i really don't understand why everybody buys it...

[Izuno]

It would have sold better if MS didn't make it Vista only. I still can't understand the rationale behind that move.

It was because people in suits (er...khakis and polos perhaps) think "killer app" and hope every gamer who's heard of Halo will rush out to buy Vista just to play Halo2 on PC. Obviously Vista has it's own problems but that's for another thread.

Just to throw some numbers which you may or may not find useful:

(US market estimate only, does not include worldwide estimate)

(click image for larger version you can actually read)

Since the first Halo, the PC genre has evolved in technology and gameplay considerably. Halo2 is not hugely different from the first Halo, so by today's standards Halo2 on PC is not going to be as much fun as it would have been had it been released back in 2001...er when original Halo :roll: you get my drift...

That said, I got bored of Halo2 much faster than I did of Halo (i finshed Halo but not Halo2).

I didn't enjoy the Xbox version of Halo2 as much as I enjoyed Halo on Xbox keeping them in context for their release periods. Let's pretend someone re-released 1993's original Doom on Vista...the score would probably depend more the reviewer's personal bias/memory of Doom and how much he/she wanted the world to play and appreciate the new release. I mean, Doom has no physics, friggin sprites, really no puzzles other than key/door finding, shitty pixelated graphics, midi soundtrack, repetively repetitive shooting of the same enemies over and over and over... but I bet if Doom were released with viable Mouse/KB controls and not pure KB only or some bastardized Mouse/KB combo, I gaurentee a lot of reviewers would declare "OMG it holds up after 14 years and is beyond awesomely awesome retro fun."

Hmm...I'm in the mood for some original Doom on PC....mmmm....