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| HALO |
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Review: Lee "Zerodamage"
Dickey Halo for PC, what more is there to say. I played the X-Box version a couple of years ago when the console first came out and I have to admit that the game blew me away. A very unique experience at the time coupled with stunning visuals and audio. I had always felt the storyline would make a great film with a good Hollywood director in the driving seat. Many of us have been waiting for a couple of years for the port to PC. Was this to be a high quality revamp taking advantage of the more powerful PC based hardware or another nasty “console port” with terrible control the likes of which we are beginning to see all too frequently? First the problems After I first installed this game, it took me nearly 3 hours to find out how to get it running correctly on my system comprising a Barton 2500 with 512MB PC2700, and ATI Radeon 9500. I normally keep my Direct3D settings on the “Quality” settings vs the “High Quality” settings. However, you need to have MIPMAP setting on “High Quality” or there is major texture corruption in Halo. Took me a little while to figure out that one – quite frustrating indeed.
Upon delving further into the settings there is also an issue when changing the resolution from within the game. Doing so results in the game locking up on a black screen. In order to fix this, you need to set the games resolution within the game's shortcut. This is what my current shortcut looks like: "D:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Halo\halo.exe" -vidmode 800, 600, 75 -use20 -nojoystick What those settings mean is this. “-vidmode 800, 600, 75” is to play the game at 800 x 600 resolution at 75 Hz refresh rate. The “-use20” tells the game to use Pixel Shader 2.0 versus the 1.x versions. “-nojoystick” tells the game that no joy stick will be used which also seems to improve game performance. Now it took me a while to get these settings to work and that should not be necessary. These types of issues should have been fixed in bug testing before release or at the very least via a patch. I can not say if these issues exist on nvidia video cards. I am sure some of you are asking me why is my resolution at only 800 x 600. Well the game is a beast and requires lots of food – im also pretty sure with some extra work the developers could have optimised the performance alot better. Ideally Halo requires a super fast system with a high end video card to run any higher at a reasonable framerate. My system isn't a slouch nor is it the fastest but I should be able to play this game at 1024x768 2x-AA/8xAF with playable framerates – many other games in this vein back up this statement ! I've heard reports from those frame rate junkies who have the fastest Athlon 64 and Pentium 4 w/HT partnered with an Nvidia 5900 or 9800 pro that even they still have to play the game at far from top end resolution and eye candy settings. This is should not be the case and it is my hope that Microsoft looks into this, especially for any possible future game releases which may use a variant of the engine. Ive been noticing many guides on the net to help users get every little extra fragment of possible performance from this game. Edit: This review was done using Omega's 3.9 ( http://www.omegacorner.com ) drivers and after having installed these drivers based on the Catalyst 3.10, the game runs much smoother and the frame rate is significantly higher. I am now getting over 100 fps in 800x600 with maxed out settings. Turning on AA and AF impact your framerate as though they should be working, yet they do nothing. Here is a screenshot without AA or AF turned on.
See any difference? How about on the
side of the mountain on your left? How about the ground? How about AA?.
Well this is where it gets interesting.
As you can see, lots of jaggies there with a framerate of 74 fps. How about with 4X AA
turned on (below)
The story of Halo is very cool. If you haven't heard or played this game yet, then you need to crawl from your cave and get with it !. With the above issues resolved, this is one of the funnest and coolest games I've ever played on the PC. The story line gets better and better as you go along with unexpected twists and turns that will throw you for a loop. Did I mention the vehicles yet? Near the beginning you are given a warthog to drive - this is a futuristic jeep with a heavy duty machine gun on the back. Lets just say that driving a vehicle in a game has never been so easy and so much fun. Just point the mouse where you want to go and it goes there. It is that simple. There is nothing cooler than the first time you jump the warthog and the marine on the back yells “Woo Hoo” and throws his arm into the air – I got a great deal of satisfaction playing with this vehicle. The AI in the game is really good. The Covenant who happen to be the enemy coalition of aliens yell for help, scream for their lives, and sneak around you when you least expect it and the icing on the cake are the Marine counter parts who are fairly intelligent. I just wished that one idiot would stop running in front of the tank ! ;-) Controlling the game is simple enough. I knew how to play and use my controls in the first few minutes. Some people might argue the XBOX pad aids the control, but personally I preferred the PC control system. The in game sounds are amazing. The music is intense - bordering on perfection (if there is such a possible thing as perfection in a game!) . You always know when you are at an important part of the game and it is either kill or be killed from the music. You can hear the aliens scream in fear or yell that they've seen you. – I was also impressed with the weapon sounds, nice n meaty. Just be sure not to set your sounds too high or it will hurt your framerate even more. Multiplayer If you thought the one player on X-box was lacking due to no network support, then you will love Halo on the PC. You can have up to 16 players on a server with multiple game types. You can play king of the hill where one team has to control a single point and prevent the other team from capturing it. There is slayer mode where the point is to slay the other team or each other. The most popular is capture the flag mode. There are also a couple of bonus weapons in multiplayer like the “Fuel Rod Gun” which happens to be the best gun of them all. Did I mention this gun is great against enemy vehicles?
There are plenty of different game types and map types to please everyone. There are a couple of things I hope get fixed in a future patch the main one being the in game server list, you have to keep populating the list each time you accidentally join a full server or when you leave a game. It would be nice if the list stayed there until you forced the game to do otherwise. The other thing is the need for in game commands of some sort, either some common commands and requests like many games have or voice communications. Unlike the game engine optimisations the game's net code is excellent. I rarely have a ping over 240 on my dial up and I do not feel the ping at all. I still rack up the kills despite my being the only one with dial up most of the time. A satisfying change ! Conclusion Buy this game, even with all the problems I mentioned getting the game going and running at a nice framerate (You shouldn't have these problems now that you've read this review) this game is a must have – along with a fast system to pump out the 3d engine at a decent frame rate. The one player is immersive, enjoyable and a fun experience, it also helps that the controls are straightforward and intuitive. The jewel in the crown is the multiplayer which adds a playability not found in many first person shooters and it doesn't feel like an "after-thought" like many games. Even with the high system demand and the few problems initially, this game is worth the money. I am absolutely hooked on the multiplayer which means a lot coming from a 56ker. Do yourself a favor and pick up this game as soon as possible. I want to thank Amy Styers
and Lila Yee at Microsoft for their assistance and
for sending me this game for review. I also want to thank Zardon for
giving me the opportunity to do this review.
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