Overview

Guess which game

Editor’s Note: As with our Halo PC Preview, we experienced a small error with our screenshot utility and Halo; where the Windows mouse cursor was caught in every picture even though it was not visible on the screen. Our apologies for the inconvenience.

Halo has finally made it to the PC, and poses an immediate dilemma for this reviewer. Do I compare to Halo Xbox? Do I compare it to other PC shooters? Do I focus on the fact that there is, inexcusably, no co-op (no matter what Gearbox and Bungie say, the game shouldn’t have gone gold without it), or do I point out that Halo is perhaps the most definitive singleplayer experience since No One Lives Forever, if not Half-Life itself?

What can’t be ignored is that two years is far too long to wait for a port to come out, and not even be fully featured. Heck, it doesn’t even run all that well. One would think that a 2GHz P4 with 512MB of DDR and a GF4 4200 would be capable of performing at least on the same level as the Xbox version – but, alas, it cannot. The game has been delayed so much already for the PC, a few extra months to code in co-op and some performance enhancements wouldn’t kill anyone.

Please ignore the mouse cursor, it is a HyperSnap artifact

Close plasma combat

I sux0r at Halo

And really, I could spend the rest of the review dissecting Halo’s problems and shortcomings – because there are many – but I could spend just as much time focusing on what it does right.

For example, no matter what anyone says, the AI is the best in the business. Covenant and marines work together. While the simple-minded may comment that the AI is nothing but the Skaarj from Unreal, that’s a gross oversimplification. The Skaarj didn’t take shelter, they didn’t interact with each other, and they certainly didn’t have the kind of terrain obstacles and challenges to deal with as Covenant and marine forces do.

Look at that ragdoll physics

I'll give you hell alright

Hallo!

Take one of the early missions where you end up gathering three groups of marines from escape pods. In one of those, the marines are holed up in a small outpost, with several waves of Covenant troops coming at them. The Covenant soldiers try to keep the humans pinned down, while navigating rough terrain and attempting to get into the outpost via several ramps. Perhaps they’re not as coordinated as real soldiers would be, but then that wouldn’t give much of a chance for the player. At the very least, however, they’re as competent as a good set of players on a CS server.