Halo: PC

[jim g]

got mine this morning from Play and have to say so far so good. It is better the mouse and keyboard IMO

[Valken]

Valken wrote:

'Well either way the game has lost a lot of the impact it had on the Xbox and had aged pretty badly.'

Only in single player - in multiplay it is now so much more

That depends... I *did* comment on the multiplayer earlier in the thread mate... THe new additions are great but on the whole I still feel it's lost that kick.

I guess I'm just spoiled by the more involved teamplay titles that are on the market and many years of Quake 3 etc.

I have been wondering though if most people thought Halo was "the business" so much becuase they had little experience with singleplayer and multiplayer FPS on the PC etc. I've seen so many gamers ask questions about getting HL2 to work etc that it stands to reason that most console gamers aren't as clued in on the PC scene.

I know that's a generalisation but I was thinking about it... I'm not saying it's true.

[H-Man]

I think the teamplay gets as involved as you want it to be. Clan games are gonna be 5 v 5 - assault or ctf it seems. Only vehicles will be Hogs - depending on the map.

I've played with a few clans made up of 'old skool' Q3/UT/RTCW/RS guys - it's pretty intense...and excellent fun. Publics, of course, are pants :/

(It still doesn't compare to RTCW in clans imo [the only online game where success depends soley on teamplay])

[Brats]

Monitor, I would say. Don't mean to sound like a stuck record here chaps, but the TV is immensely forgiving regarding aliasing and textures. To a lesser extent, the pants-effect is viewable on a plasma in 480p mode. Looks lovely on my cheesy telly truth be told, looks righteously awful in 480p with immensely expensive guff.

I have yet to see the PC version, but the textures look great when I display it in 480p. I don't see any drop in quality from 480i.

[Super Stu]

You have a Tosh strata, if I recall. It's still a CRT and exhibits the same smoothing properties as other CRTs.

I was on about 480p on a plasma. I'm happy to take pics, it looks shockingly poor.

[Valken]

I think the teamplay gets as involved as you want it to be. Clan games are gonna be 5 v 5 - assault or ctf it seems. Only vehicles will be Hogs - depending on the map.

I've played with a few clans made up of 'old skool' Q3/UT/RTCW/RS guys - it's pretty intense...and excellent fun. Publics, of course, are pants :/

(It still doesn't compare to RTCW in clans imo [the only online game where success depends soley on teamplay])

Well I'm not for one second saying it's ****... I just thought I'd say that in advance...

You're right that public games are always pretty bad but I still think it's got nothing on many older FPS when it comes to online fun.

[Brats]

You have a Tosh strata, if I recall. It's still a CRT and exhibits the same smoothing properties as other CRTs.

I was on about 480p on a plasma. I'm happy to take pics, it looks shockingly poor.

I've a Loewe Aconda with a VGA card and an XBox VGA box. I also have a Compaq P1100 22" monitor and both display them fine, although both are obviously CRT's like you say.

Personally, I 've never been a fan of Plasmas for these and other reasons.

[Super Stu]

Agreed. If the source isn't top notch, it stands out a mile. This is why Halo stuck out so much, because on CRTs it looks lovely.

edit - Upon reflection, the fact that it's a 43" screen doesn't help either.

[probeater]

I don't rate the multi on the pc that highly, part of the fun with halo is that you have a great atmosphere when you have loads of people crammed round 4 tv's, it just isn't the same on the pc version.

[NeilMcRae]

uhh 480p is just de-interlaced 480i there is no difference in the resolution it just happens that the whole screen is drawn in a single scanline. As Stu says original image is important, applies to CRT's also and remember a large amount of this is subjective, different people have different eyes.

Really its nothing to do with the screen being a plasma, its to do with the size of the screen and the resolution of the screen, if you could get a 42 inch CRT it would look equally as bad, viewing distance also plays an important part.

But in my view HALO on the Xbox looks fine on 480p on a plasma screen, still better than on a CRT because of the size. When I feed the Xbox into my scaler and output it to 720p onto my Plasma then things start to look every so slightly out of this world.

I'll try and pic up HALO PC today and bang it into the Plasma at 640*480 and see what it looks like. If I then up it to 1600*1200 and feed it into the plasma then you'll see the same improvement in picture as using the scaler above to bring it to 720p.

Cheers,
Neil.

[Super Stu]

Aye fair point.

I don't think it's Halo's fault particularly, just that plasmas don't half need good quality sources. SC2 was startlingly crisp @ 720p though, so it would be interesting to hear what Halo is like on that scaler wotsit.

Thing is, 720p on a console takes more whallop innit, and games slow down in 480i/p as it is :/

[angel]

2 days solid pc haloing online and...its a hopelessly inefficient conversion, needs a 1.5ghz processor + high end gf4/radeon 9xxx MINIMUM, itl be (IMO) smoother when its the xbox halo running thro an emulator. but its hilarious online mowing people down in warthogs so thatl do me.

[Uzion]

is it possible to play it online even with a good pc and low detail on 56k?

i mean playable possible

[angel]

yeah but it depends a lot on the map, speed of server, number of players etc etc

[NeilMcRae]

well halo on the PC looks a million times better than the Xbox version, I now seriously wish that had stayed an early release on the PC



Regards,
Neil.