Halo 2 - For PC (Vista)

[MarioMark]

I dragged myself away from Forza 2 to have a couple of hours on this last night. I won?t concentrate too much on the game itself because we?ve all played it, I?ll just tell you about the differences.

As expected it?s Halo 2 but in mega high res. Graphically it?s not improved that much, but that?s not too much of a bad thing because it?s still a great looking game today (it?s nearly 3 years old already!), but for a PC game it lacks in terms of visuals these days.

The game overall runs good but with minor frame rate issues, and I know my rig can run this game well without sounding big headed. The problem is when walking, if you look at the ground you notice a slight consistent judder every 1 or 2 seconds, hopefully this will be patched and it only really bothers me if I try and lookout for it.

The controls are great, it?s the usual keyboard layout for a first person shooter, but you can plug an Xbox 360 pad in, and it controls just as good as playing Xbox Halo 2 on your Xbox 360. It even uses Xbox 360 button icons in the game to help your way, also the headset connection on the Xbox 360 pad works for online!

It?s fully Xbox Live with your console account, you just press the ?guide? button on the Xbox 360 pad, or ?home? button on the keyboard to bring up the Xbox Live interface. The game has achievement points too, the usual 1000 like a retail Xbox 360 game.

If you?ve not played Halo 2 or you fancy playing it again then I?d say go for it. But an RRP of ?29.99 for a 3 year old game that is a bit broken is some parts is a bit steep.

[Jebus]

So, with my 360 gamertag, I can play Halo 2 on vista and get the gamerscore on this...would that gamerscore and the game show up on my 360 achievement list, ie if you went to compare games would you see "Halo 2 Vista" etc?

[MarioMark]

Yeah, just look at my profile to see.

[VR46]

Worth pointing out that this only runs on Vista. Thanks MS.

EDIT: just noticed Jebus almost said the same already, doh.

[Silvergun X]

I'd surely be interested in this as I sold my Halo 2 collectors edition after finding out it wouldn't update when using a VGA cable, so I pretty much couldn't play it on live as I don't have composite cable!

It does sound like a fantastic thing though, it makes me wonder if they could've patched the Halo 2 xbox so that it allowed achievements if used with the xbox 360?

[Jebus]

Your hatred of Halo would overwhelm you before you got the 1000 points

It's a tricky one Yosh I must admit...I guess it boils down to whether or not I'm enough of an achievement whore to play a game I don't like...the 1000/1000 for Fusion Frenzy on my profile says that it's a possibility.

It does sound like a fantastic thing though, it makes me wonder if they could've patched the Halo 2 xbox so that it allowed achievements if used with the xbox 360?

I was talking to a mate about that actually, we came to the conclusion that they couldn't do it because the 360 literally runs without the guide when you are in back-compat mode, and no guide = no achievements/gamerscore/popups etc...? Just a guess but there ya go.

[El Leone]

It's a tricky one Yosh I must admit...I guess it boils down to whether or not I'm enough of an achievement whore to play a game I don't like...the 1000/1000 for Fusion Frenzy on my profile says that it's a possibility.

I think you'd probably be able to put up with the game while getting the achievements. Bungie has some philosophy to achievements where they like them to be generally enjoyable, easy and not conflict with the game in a negative way (like what GOW's achievements did in the mutiplayer). This is reflected in Halo 2 Vista, where most of them look piss easy tbh.

http://www.xbox360achievements.org/achievements.php?gameID=198

Yeah, eaassyy.

[ChrisF]

Worth pointing out that this only runs on Vista. Thanks MS.

EDIT: just noticed Jebus almost said the same already, doh.

I thought someone had bought something out to let you play this on XP?

here: http://www.prleap.com/pr/77567/

[MarioMark]

I thought someone had bought something out to let you play this on XP?

here: http://www.prleap.com/pr/77567/

Yeah it's inevitable that this will happen.

[MarioMark]

lol nuff swords!

[Mofoman]

This game is just amazing on Vista with a good GPU, it's amzing playing Halo 2 in high resolution with some great frame rates when playing with tonnnes of people on some of the superbly man made levels that have been made using the editor.

It's just pure classs playing the game with keyboard and mouse, and making your own multiplayer level's and playing on some of the better one's is pure and utter class.

The only pity is that they didn't add some DX10 effects to the game, would have made it more sensible then to be VIsta only.

[chopemon]

Getting some thread necromancy all up in here.

I have been playing this recently but my hard drive unexpectedly died and I wasn't able to get any data off it and so I have lost my save. Does anyone know if it possible to use someone else's save game? Or does it conflict with your GFW Live profile or count as cheating under MS's eyes?

Cheers!

[mekanor]

as far as I know, no, or it wouldn't be straightforward if you could. There is an exploit that you can do however where you make multiple copies of the intro level (which is just a skippable cutscene), rename them as level 1, level 2, level 3 etc and replace the originals. You could skip through the levels you've already played that way. If you want I will try and find a link to a guide or something but you should be able to find it easily enough through google.

[chopemon]

Thanks very much mekanor!