- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
Heyyo,
I've decided to drop my 2c on this cause after a few posts this just became a flaming battle.
First off, I agree with that 1 dude who said gearbox did a crappy job of porting Halo from xbox to pc. What gearbox did was just rebuild a whole new engine... Bad move, cause it turned out worse, and just made the PC version take longer to get completed. Due to this error, you need massive cpu specs to run it. I believe there are some other xbox games that converted to PC nicely. I think that the Riddick game will do fine. If you get HaloCE, the netcode n' frames/seconds do improve, so that's nice. But still not fully optimized... it still feels overwhelming on my comp. My comp's stonger than an xbox (check another one of my post for specs), but then again, xbox's need less power to run good anywho. Tv rez's are 512x320 or something. Gearbox remade some textures for pc, which's good, but some they diddn't bother to upgrade. Most noticably MasterCheif's textures...
And yes, halo was first being made for PC, then M$ came along with their big wallet n' then halo became an xbox exclustive game to help promote xbox. Clever marketing strategy, but pisses off us PC owners cause now we get a less grander version of PC cause it turned into a xbox-focused game...
The netcode for Halo also ain't the best, BUT, it ain't the worse. Far Cry has gotta have the worse netcode ever. If you get a bud to stand still, n' snipe him? sometimes it won't even work. The Beta of Far Cry actually had better netcode... lol... sad eh? Another great example was me bud playing online. Him and another guy pulled out knives n' started going at it, n' then the other guy sweeps around the back of my friend, but he keeps swinging... n' kills the guy... without turning around... explain that eh? lmao, was funny, but messed up. I think his ping was 112 or so... That's the only part I've got against Far Cry, the netcode, everything else is great.
As for the lack of coop on PC version? it's not cause "the ai's too advanced" as gearbox said. Far Cry has more advanced ai, and it has a coop mod. Gearbox probably just said that probably to focus on the other coding. If sacrificing Coop to pump out a pretty decent conversion from xbox? then it's ok...
The fuel rod n' banshee? I agree, bad addons. Both too strong. N' for weapon respawning? they should have the prolonged respawn time, not the snipers. Sniping's pretty hard in halo cause you have to aim ahead of where they're going. Flamethrower's also a little too much. BUT, The rockethog was a nice addon, not the most accurate, but you get 3 rockets per clip (or whatever word you wanna use) and you need skills to use it efficiently.
Also, the lack of shield colorations (jackals, n' stationary) is a little upsetting, but I can live with it.
Overall, I love Halo PC better than xbox despite these flaws cause there's still the fun of gaming with friends cause of multiplayer, and the new maps, and using Teamspeak (like someone else mentioned. And if you're typing ingame and die? It's your own fault I say, lol.) I also use xfire so me n' me buds can just join eachother's game with a push of a button.
I've played the xbox version of Halo, n' it's easier to kill due to more accurate n' deadlier weapons, n' the slight autoaim (You know it's there, the most obvious example is when you go to melee, your aim spins itself a little).
I just hope in Halo 2 they take into account some of the downsides to some of the new features in Halo PC (Banshee, fuelrod, and flamethrower too stong). If not, then I'll probably be a little hesitant on getting Halo 2 for PC (IF they even intend on making it for PC... at this rate m$ will keep it as xbox exclusive...)
PS, has anyone played halo on mac? how'd that turn out? cause most mac's have lower sys specs than PC's..
[Edited on 10/13/2004 12:24:48 PM]