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Only for very small kids

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 8 / 18
Date: February 07, 2005
Author: Amazon User

In one of my frequent internet searches, I read something about a game called Halo. The screenshots seemed good, the text described it as the Nirvana of all games. I became really interested, so I kept searching for more info on the web. It seemed good, so the following day I bought it for about 30 dollars.

I laughed at the minium requirements; They were so low that I would be able to play it even on my old PC. I was surprised, however, to see that it didn't work on my new, 3.6 Pentium 4, Windows XP home edition, 160GB hard drive space, 512MB of Ram, with a top-of-the-line Ati Radeon Ultra 9600 (The name might be wrong), even setting the graphics to 'medium', I couldn't play it for more than 15 minutes without experiencing a crash or some kind of bug. Weird, I thought, because the newest games like Half-Life 2 or Far Cry work nearing the maximium graphics settings.

However, I still got to play it for about 30 minutes or less. I was utterly shocked; People considered this a revolution in gaming?

Having played the old Jedi Knight series (So old that instead of cutscenes, there were REAL PEOPLE acting), Deus Ex, Starcraft, Diablo, Monkey Island, Operation Flashpoint, and Half-Life, I didn't see any revolution. All I saw was a cheap game with biblical advertising. I'll explain why.

There is no plot. The kid who can consider it one, has obviously started playing video games a couple of months ago. Linear, predictable and yamn describe it perfectly.

The graphics are very, very outdated. Obviously these 5 stars rewievers have never played Far Cry, Half Life 2 or Riddick: Return to Butcher's Bay. The poor, flat graphics of Halo pale in conparison to these games's.

Level design, as other users have mentioned, is simply terrible. The people who did this were obvously lazy or very short of time. The only difference between going backward and forward is that ahead of you there are no bodies of aliens, and forget about interacting with your surroundings; In Medal of Honor, a so-so game, you could at least shoot the spotlights, and destroy most of the things in the rooms, like equipment, boxes, etc. Here, the only thing you can do is to walk forward and massacrate more and more mentally challenged aliens.

The AI (If you can call it one) reminded me of the Jedi Knight AI. Enemies stand there, shooting at you, sometimes moving to the sides in a very scripted -and predictable- bullet dodging move. Example: Stand between two enemies. they'll try to melee attack you. Just move out of the way and they'll hit themselves or any other alien nearby. Fun? No, sad.

The gameplay: You move down the only and most obvious path, across the same rooms and hallways, while the computer throws more and more aliens for you to exterminate, without having to use you brain, just aiming and clicking. You go like this for about 15 minutes and you reach the end of the level. A cutscene plays, and you do the same thing again. You might get a vechicle, but since the allied AI is too stupid and can only be gunners in the back of the vehicle, you have to drive around the aliens, waiting for the stupid gunner to finish killing them. Fun for the first 10 minutes, then repetitive and boring.

The multiplayer? I thought that, after seeing terrible lagfests and connection problems in Battlefield 1942, it couldn't get any worse. It did get worse. In fact, even with the bugs, crashes, connection & compatibilty problems, lagfests and etc, I expected the game to be worth getting trough all the truoble of downloading patches and calling tech support, but instead, I get a game where whoever shoots more bullets in the shortest time wins... no teamwork, just plain, wild, childish, shooting. Ok, bloodbaths would be fun, but only 16 people can join a game. Battlefield 1942 allowed 64 people!

Conclusion: As other person stated, this game is for very small kids and people who like games that have to no depth. If you have a very small cousin, nephew, son, or maybe even grandson, I recommend buying it for him/her. Don't worry about what computer she/he has; When a game is so badly programmed, even if you have a computer the U.S Army envys and wants to use as a hi-tech spy plane, Halo won't work well on it. Poor programming=Bugs and crashes. The computer doesn't change that.

This worries me a lot. Tommorrow, microsoft changes the name, characters, weapons, and levels of Halo, and release it saying it's the new Nirvana. The kids will throw Halo away, will play this game, then switch to next one. For those that know what I'm talking about, it's like the spanish colonizers selling good-looking mirrors and cheap stuff to the indians at astronomical prices: Computer gaming has sunk to a new low.

Come again?

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 6
Date: January 03, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Halo rocked our world when it reared its covenant-slaying head and gave some gamers thousands of hours of enjoyment. It came fully packed and ready to rock with four difficulty settings and a totally awesome muliplayer mode. The only glitch:
It was for the Xbox, and only for the Xbox.
Finally it has landed with almost all the features and more on your local PC and is ready to entertain you almost as much. the basic IDEA of playing Halo without burning a one hundred eighty dollar sized hole in the gamers wallet may excite some, and not others.(Expecially the Xbox owners.) There are some drawbacks, though. the graphics can be pretty, but turn out to slow your machine worse than a 56K modem is on the net. You can turn them down, but then they are not so pretty and smooth. Even though the PC version concentrates on multiplayer, the CO-OP mode was removed and replaced with things that the net can support. This is a crippling blow to the game, but it wouldn't have worked well and was never going to catch on with lower powered connections. You have to watch out for online chat, though. swears and bezarre coversations can take place. (can you spare me some digital lasagnia?) Also, the team slayer thing REALLY gets out of hand when the people like my brother (0001 or 1110) ignore safe distance and go next to a team mate and fires his rocket launcher or heavy weapon. if there is none, he throws a grenade. people are truly wierd in some cases and will attack anyone they see. just avoid team play as much as possible and you can enjoy this experience. (note: you can turn off friendly fire in your own game, but nobody seems to do it.) Its all in the multiplayer.

Marathon Infinity +1

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 6
Date: December 18, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Others have already described the plot and story of Halo in detail, so I won't be redundant here. Bungie make great shooters and have always been pioneers in the industry, having been the first to produce not one, but an entire series of FPS games (Pathways into Darkness, Marathon, Marathon 2: Durandal, Marathon Infinity) that actually have a plot and a story beyond the usual Doom-style "go here, kill this, open the door, lather, rinse, repeat". In this arena, Halo succeeds marvelously. The game's strength is in the story. I bought it expecting a great game with a plot and purpose, and that's exactly what Bungie delivered.

The weapons are well designed and very satisfying to use, though the assault rifle seems a bit underpowered (three to five clips to kill an Elite trooper?) and the sniper rifle should have a built-in silencer option (that IS the purpose of sniping, innit?) and greater ammo capacity. Even the modern Barret .50 carries 8 rounds. The alien weapons are just plain fun, and fortunately there are always enough lying about after a battle that you can always find another to reload with. And the most realistic feature is only being able to carry two weapons at once. I always wondered how, in other FPS games, the characters are able to wander around with a pistol, chainsaw, shotgun, 6-barrel gatling gun, plasma rifle, and missile launcher on their person and still be able to move.

The music is top-notch as usual, and does a great job of setting the mood and heightening the tension at appropriate moments. One of the chief complaints about Marathon 2 and Infinity was the lack of background music, and it's good they fixed that in Halo.

The aliens are vicious, devious and cunning, though I think they could have done better with the voices. In the original "Marathon" series, the aliens had their own language and every time I walked into a dark room and suddenly heard chittering from a darkened corner it gave me a shock. I just can't take the Grunt voices very seriously. The Hunters, though, are just nasty! Keep well away and stay behind cover.

The vehicles are a blast to drive, particularly the Scorpion tank. Only quibble - why does it have an open driver's seat? The driver of a tank should be completely protected by the armor. Aside from that though, its main gun is pure devastation compared to anything else on the field. I've used it against tanks, aircraft, Hunters, and formations of troops with ruthless efficiency.

The marines are much improved over the "Bobs" of the original Marathon series, though their life expectancy isn't much better.

That's the good - now for the bad.

Most of the actual work seems to have gone toward plot and story development. The graphics are what Marathon Infinity should have been, 6 years ago, when Quake II was released. Interior textures are bland and repetetive, making it hard to remember where you're going and where you've been, and the outdoor vistas just aren't up to today's standards. Quake II was much better on that score (though its plot left a lot to be desired) and Unreal has since set the standard for detail, atmospherics and smoothness of play.

The PC version runs well on my Toshiba Satellite laptop at 1.5 GHz, 256 MB RAM and a 40 GB hard disk, but still gets a bit choppy and slow when there's a lot of action. Once again, Unreal Tournament has the edge here. Besides, it's a PC port of an XBox game. Since Bungie cut their teeth on the Mac platform and Halo was originally written for Mac, I'd expect the PC version to be choppy. After all, Macs are better at graphically intense functions than are PCs.

My last quibbles concern realism and science. For a ringworld to be really useful and comfortable to the inabitants, it would need to be very large - figure about 1000 km wide and at least 1,000,000 km in diameter. That gives us a surface area of 3.14 billion km. Figure about 60% water, that leaves about 1.5 BILLION km of usable land area.

So where are all the people?

Granted, most of the action centers around the control facility/temple of the ring, but what happened to the original inhabitants? You don't build a ring just to build it, you build it to LIVE on. And people wouldn't abandon a ring without good reason.

Also, you wouldn't build a ring and put it in orbit around a planet. If the ring is as large as I've suggested, then the planet it orbits would have to be gas giant-sized. A planet that big has a HUGE gravity well that would create immense tidal effects on anything orbiting it. The drag induced by gravity would very quickly destroy any ringworld structure in orbit.

Finally, I haven't actually finished the game yet, but are there any night-time battles? It would only make sense; half the ring is shaded from the sun.

Overall, I have to give Halo four out of five. It actually deserves 3 1/2 (due to the science problems) but I'd rather round up than down. It's a fun game that does what I'd been hoping for since I finished Marathon Infinity - continue the series using more advanced graphics engines.

Plot = 4/5
Story = 4/5
Play = 3/5
Realism = 3/5
Overall = 4/5

Great for Multiplayer only..........

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 9
Date: December 31, 2003
Author: Amazon User

For the most part I enjoyed this game. I gave it a rating of 1 star to get your attention and to point out that this is only HALF a game. It offers both single player and online multiplay.

If you love multiplayer games and have a broadband connection...this game is awesome. WARNING - Most of the Halo Multiplayer servers, groups and games I played were filled with immature 14 year olds that curse 4 letter words at you and accuse you of cheating all the time because they can't shoot straight. I prefer more mature surroundings!

If you are looking for a great single player experience...forget it.

First of all the graphics are pretty...but dated. Look at UT 2003 on a high end vid card and compare it to Halo. Halo is bland, the levels are redundant. The outside levels are pretty but nothing impressive.

Even on the hardest settings this game is way too scripted, the enemy AI is pathetic and predictable. It is not intelligent AI. All the programmers did was setup scripted actions and triggers to generate hoardes and hoardes of enemies to come at you at set intervals as you proceed through a level.

Want to beat them easily? Say your in a level exploring...just walk slowly until you trigger some enemies to appear, back track a bit for protection and keep your back to a wall. Kill the enemies as they approach, then step back to where you triggered the enemies, see if you can trigger more and repeat these instructions until you are clear. Proceed and investigate further until you trigger more enemies. Repeat this strategy throughout the level and the rest of the game.
If you get into a heated, heavy battle, just use cover...pop out, shot some aliens and duck again. They almost never pursue you. Only the weird, mutants chase you. Just shotgun them. Nice and simple.

There are some tiny little parasite style aliens that are more annoying than dangerous. Don't waste your ammo on them, just let them crash into your shield, let your shield recharge and proceed. PIECE OF CAKE. I walked through this game on the hardest settings, without breaking a sweat, the AI is disappointing. Not horrible, but very PREDICTABLE.

Online Multiplay is where this game shines...the weapons are so-so...but having vehicles to drive around is a blast.

If you are thinking of buying this title...I would wait. February 3rd, 2004 is the release of Unreal Tournament 2004.

************ Unreal Tournament 2004 **********
It has vehicles, awesome weapons, a huge online following and BOT AI that will bring you to your knees. I have sampled the beta versions of it and all I can say is WOW!!!!!!!!!!!

For years I wondered what the fuss was about. Shouldnt have bothered...

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 5 / 9
Date: July 15, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I hate Halo. The reasons are long and complicated. Let's start from the beginning:

This game was developed for the XBOX and got a rather large fanbase. I heard nothing but good things about it for several YEARS. Not liking sports games and already having several computers to mess around with Linux on, I saw no reason to buy an XBOX. I really didnt want to buy this game because I do NOT like console FPS controls. When the PC version was announced, I got a bit excited. I finally got Halo as an OEM disk with the Creative SoundBlaster Audigy 2.

My first stumbling block with Halo was the sleeve it was packed in. On the back, there was a label keeping the flap down to seal the paper and plastic enclosure. Just along the bottom of the flap was printed my CD key. This is the WORST place to put a CD key, because it will be RIPPED. After carefully working around the key, I got the cd out and installed the game. It ran rather well at high detail on my then videocard, a GeForce 4 Ti 4400. I played through the first portion of the game. I felt it was alright, but nothing groundbreaking. Then I tried multiplayer. The update system was severely flawed, and took forever to retrieve small files. When I managed to successfully update (after consulting the official website), I entered a server.

First of all, multiplayer is VERY laggy, no matter what. EVERY server I have ever tried lagged horribly. On top of that, it just wasnt fun. After playing for about 20 minutes, I grew tired of it. Im the kind of guy who can spend a whole Saturday playing any (or all if I want some variety) of the Unreal Tournament games. I LOVE a fun, original FPS. Halo did not satisfy that love for me.

About 6 months later, Halo 2 was about to be released. I got into an argument with about half the people at my school as to how decent a game Halo is. I came home one day and began searching for the CD key to install the game. Sadly, it is lost. Being a resourseful nerd, I exported a registry key from a 2ndary computer that still had the game installed. Success! I began playing each evening after school. All my friends noticed what I was playing on Xfire and asked me why I was playing the game I loathed so much. I was determined to play through the entire game to see why anyone could love it so much. About 8 days later, I completed it. Including messing around in multiplayer (painfully), I completed the game.

It was a poor FPS.

Let me give the reasons for my extreme disdain for Halo:

1. The enemies are really weird and dont feel original enough. They dont seem to be the kind of thing that would represent a threat to earth. Besides, whats up with the 2ft tall guys that cant tell which way theyre running?

2. The weapons are standard FPS guns. A pistol, a shotgun, a repeating machine gun thing, and a few neat ideas that werent that cool. The "sticky" weapons were neat, but could have been cooler. Nothing felt very "real" like the weapons of a better FPS would. A sniper rifle should feel like a sniper rifle. Enough said.

3. The vehicles are clunky. The warthog slides around too much and flying vehicles should be able to do more than jump. The ones that DID fly were just plain hard to control.

4. Arent there enough games that focus on shooting zombies/mutants with a shotgun? "House of the Dead" action doesnt work well in a scifi FPS. The whole chapter where the Flood are introduced was too similar to House of the Dead and DooM.

5. Anyone who has played the Metroid series through (not counting the 3D ones) will notice a DEFINITE influence here. Does anyone see the resemblance of the "Elite" units to the Space Pirates of Metroid? Anyone else wonder about those little creatures that latch onto your head? Make them translucent and what do they resemble? And does anyone notice a certain similarity in Master Chief's visor to a certain bounty hunter's helmet? Oh, and anyone who has finished any of the Metroid games will know EXACTLY how the ending goes. Its no different.

I realize that most people will click "No, this review was not helpful", and I respect that. I don't know very many other people that have my same oppinion on this subject. However, if you want to play something original and unlike any other game you have ever played, look elsewhere.

Why????????

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 6 / 13
Date: December 06, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I bought this game with the notion that it would be as fun as Halo for xbox. Be warned, DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME. While it is fun for a while, by the third or fourth level, you will be asking yourself what makes this game worth the money. The controls are a pain to set up and will have your hand going all over the place. With normal games, your right hand is on the mouse and the others on the left side of the keyboard. Halo has such a problem setting up controls, that i ended up playing not even watching the screen so i would press the right buttons. Another thing, while playing online there is NO VARIETY. Im running a p4 w/3.2ghz, 1gb ram, cable connection, and a radeon 9800pro. Online, there was no ground and weapon models were as bad as an old NES game. Granted in one player the weapons were fine, but that doesn't explain the shuddering movements and terrible resolutions. I played this game for hours upon hours on the big green box and this disgraces the name Halo. COMPLETELY A WASTE OF 50 BUCKS!

umm...

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: October 05, 2003
Author: Amazon User

ok, this will be short and sweet.

should you have to spend an hour or more downloading new drivers and tweaking a game for max performance? no.

can most people fix their PC Halo problems by doing that? yes.

with a p4 2.5ghz, 716 rd ram, and ati 9800 pro card, this game looks SICK. i love it. with high res and details, i'm getting 70+ fps. no problem. just be sure to turn vsync on (under the Options menu of the game).

i turned everything down the first night due to lag issues. the next night the dedicated server patch was released and i was able to run the game maxed out once again. just play on a dedicated server. it's that easy.

sorry for folks who have to run the game at lower settings, but it still looks good (a lot like the xbox version). but if you have a fast machine, just grab the latest drivers for your card and you should be set.

and the online play? all that and some apple chips. plus tax. warthogs hauling *** everywhere (with one of more folks inside. one of the best aspects of this game is having two teammates ride along and shoot everything around you as you drive), non-stop gun fire, massive explosions all around, Banshees crashing down from above, and the Scorpion tanks! mad chaos. and hey, the vehicles never take any damage (so you can shoot a Banshee out of the sky and hop right in). using the mouse look makes driving a warthog as easy as breathing. that's a BIG plus for the PC version. the new weapons are also a welcome addition.

what more do you want? the single player game looks amazing and the online play is all kinds of fun. the new maps are perfect for the kind of vehcile-based action you want out of this game. 'nuff said.

no graphics problems, great fun

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: October 07, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I've got a very old system: 1.0GHzAMD, Nvidia Ti4400, 768 MB RAM and the game runs as smoothly as anything else I've played. (at 800*600).
That havign being said, how long to game graphics really hold your attention after the first ooh aahhhs are over? about 5 minutes. And then it back to the basics: If a game isn't engaging, well written, well paced nothing can save it.
Halo is all that. The Graphics and sound are icing on the cake, and the icing here is good too.

Too good to be true...

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: November 20, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I had played the X-Box version with friends and enjoyed it even though I dispise the X-Box controller. I guess I expected too much from Gearbox (incase u don't know Gearbox had a hand in Half-Life) because upon my second week of owning it I hated this game. To sum up Halo: ALL FLASH, NO SUBSTANCE. This game has great graphics but nothing new besides. The lack of a console (~ in game menu) was just another nail in it's crappy-ness coffin.
Play this game before you buy it. Especially play it online!
I will now break down what I like and don't like:

What I Like about Halo:
+ Awsome Graphics
+ Good Single Player (for the most part)
+ Simple & customizable controls (a little to simplistic)

What I hate about Halo
- A lack of good servers online
- Multiplayer game-modes suck
- Nothing new in the way of game play
- Needs some MOD-ing or something
- Controls are a little too simplistic

My recommendation:
1. Buy Half-life with Counter-Strike.
2. Call of Duty.
3. Medal of Honor Allied Assault and all the expansions.

Final thought:
Good but there are much better games (see above).

An excellent game if fun is your priority

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: December 17, 2003
Author: Amazon User

After watching my friends play Halo on the XBox for an eternity, I eagerly awaited the PC version. I was pleasantly surprised by the results. Halo is fun to play and had me glued to my monitor into the late hours of the night. Some notes on the game:

-Audio: This is where the game shines. The music, sound effects, and character/creature diagloue is amazing. The music is well conducted and is so impressive I bought the soundtrack.

-Story: The story is mesmerizing - simply finding out what was behind the next corner kept me playing the game. Some parts of the game are repetitious, but it is intentional - who would expect a Library to be a dazzling work of art with dizzying amounts of different architecture?

-Graphics: The graphics do a great job of conveying the storyline and atmosphere of the game. Since this is a PC port of a console game that has been out for a long time, the game engine is a little out of date - so if you're looking for amazing 3D textures and powerful rendering, you're going to be disappointed. I personally was too busy annihilating bad guys to notice.

-Gameplay: Halo does a great job of making the combat more akin to real combat - you can only carry two weapons at once, and while standard weapons can be reloaded, alien ones can not. This is refreshing - the story implies that mankind cannot figure out every alien technology and just has to use weaponry it finds. This adds an extra element of realism. And as someone who has major issues with the klunky console controllers, I loved being able to use the keyboard and mouse to dispense misery on the bad guys.

This is a great game, and I still enjoy playing it even after beating it on the hardest level. My only complaints are that DX9 still seems flaky and that the online gameplay is a little less than robust, but this should improve in time for Halo 2.

5 stars.

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