# Halo 2 on PC



## Olin (Nov 6, 2006)

Personally I feel the Xbox version looks better than what I see in the screenshots for the PC version (due sometime after Windows Vista is released).

Some things look better, but then some things look worse. The actual detail is slacking for today's graphics. I really hope there are major improvements before release or I'll be sad.

Anyone here agree? What are your thoughts?


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## Bokracroc (Nov 6, 2006)

My thoughts are Why bother?
The Halo fan-boi/grrls would already have a copy or two for the Xbox. The PC's will can it because, well let's face it, there's tons more FPS's that shit all over Halo.


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## Argon (Nov 6, 2006)

Online patch refused to work, no point in buying the damn thing, annoyed the crap out of me

Referrin to Halo 1 that is... Halo 2 I just don't like at all.


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## Olin (Nov 6, 2006)

Bokracroc said:
			
		

> My thoughts are Why bother?
> The Halo fan-boi/grrls would already have a copy or two for the Xbox. The PC's will can it because, well let's face it, there's tons more FPS's that shit all over Halo.


That's merely opinion. I hated Half Life 2. Doom III was good from what I played, but it's only enjoyable with a good PC setup and surround sound.

I've had my copy of Halo 2 since it came out. It's not that I'm really wanting the PC version, I just felt what they've done to it so far is disappointing.


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## sasaki (Nov 6, 2006)

So? If you're gaming on a PC you're not going to play Halo 2 anyway. There are much better games out for PC.


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## goat (Nov 6, 2006)

sasaki said:
			
		

> So? If you're gaming on a PC you're not going to play Halo 2 anyway. There are much better games out for PC.






fucking agree. the halo games are probably the most overrated games of all time


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## Olin (Nov 6, 2006)

sasaki said:
			
		

> So? If you're gaming on a PC you're not going to play Halo 2 anyway. There are much better games out for PC.


I.. didn't really care for input on whether you liked or disliked the game. That wasn't the point of this thread. But seeing as you mentioned "better" games, I will also share my opinion.

Boring.
Boring, overrated.
Haven't played it, but heard it was disappointing.
Hate it, overrated.
Impossible to imagine it's better than BF2, by much.
I want to spoon my eyes out.
Same as above.
And again.


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## sasaki (Nov 6, 2006)

Olin said:
			
		

> I.. didn't really care for input on whether you liked or disliked the game. That wasn't the point of this thread. But seeing as you mentioned "better" games, I will also share my opinion.
> 
> Boring.
> Boring, overrated.
> ...



You have quite the opinion. You're obviously a console gamer. Go get a mac. 8)


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## CyberFoxx (Nov 6, 2006)

Personally, I'll play Halo 2 on the PC when they release the Linux port. Till then, I'm happy with playing it on my XBox. ^_^


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## Olin (Nov 6, 2006)

Linux port? Somehow I find the thought impossible. You'll surely be stuck to the Xbox version then. ;P





			
				sasaki said:
			
		

> You have quite the opinion. You're obviously a console gamer. Go get a mac. 8)


I hate Macs. Some of the games I enjoyed immensely on PC are as follows.

Enter The Matrix
Far Cry
Ghost Recon
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Manhunt
Max Payne
Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne
Oni
Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield
Splinter Cell

I'm not a console gamer. I play games I enjoy, simple as.


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## Bokracroc (Nov 7, 2006)

sasaki said:
			
		

> So? If you're gaming on a PC you're not going to play Halo 2 anyway. There are much better games out for PC.


You forgot 
this and these


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## Rhainor (Nov 7, 2006)

Attempting to get back on topic here...

IIRC, all the maps and models are exactly the same in Halo 2 for Vista as they are in the Xbox version, although the H2V team _has_ gone through and overhauled the textures (for more detail) and some of the effects to take advantage of the extra graphics power most PCs have these days.

In one of the Bungie News articles, Frankie or KP said that H2V looks much better in action than it does in screenshots.

Plus, since it's being ported in-house this time, instead of being outsourced like Halo 1 (which was ported to PC by Gearbox Software), it'll be a much better port than Halo 1 (which was a rather crappy port).


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## Olin (Nov 7, 2006)

That gives me a lot of hope. >:]

And thank you very much for your contribution to the topic.


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## Span_Wolf (Nov 7, 2006)

Olin said:
			
		

> Linux port? Somehow I find the thought impossible. You'll surely be stuck to the Xbox version then. ;P
> 
> 
> 
> ...


You do realize that a majority of the titles you just listed were console games that were ported to PC right?


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## PhoenixDragon (Nov 7, 2006)

Span_Wolf said:
			
		

> Olin said:
> 
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I counted 4 out of 11 (GTA:VC, GTA:SA, Manhunt, and Splinter Cell) that were made for the console and later ported to the PC. I don't think that makes a majority.

For the rest:
Far Cry exists only on the PC (Apparantly... Though it did spawn some follow-up games for the console).
Ghost Recon, Max Payne, Max Payne 2, and Rainbow Six 3 were developed for the PC and later ported to consoles.
Enter the Matrix and Oni were developed simultaneously for both platforms.

So no


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## sasaki (Nov 7, 2006)

PhoenixDragon said:
			
		

> I counted 4 out of 11 (GTA:VC, GTA:SA, Manhunt, and Splinter Cell) that were made for the console and later ported to the PC. I don't think that makes a majority.
> 
> For the rest:
> Far Cry exists only on the PC (Apparantly... Though it did spawn some follow-up games for the console).
> ...



I think the point Span_Wolf was trying to make was that they're available on consoles and PC. It's very likely that Olin played _a lot_ of those games on a console.


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## Span_Wolf (Nov 7, 2006)

PhoenixDragon said:
			
		

> Span_Wolf said:
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Enter the Matrix was developed on the Xbox and ported to the PC.  And Oni was Devloped for the PS2 hardware and released on the PC.  Even if they were launched at the same time, the development was done for the console versions and then shoehorned onto the PC.
That makes Six which is in fact the majority.


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## goat (Nov 7, 2006)

so pwnage haha


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## Span_Wolf (Nov 7, 2006)

PC Gamer said:
			
		

> "For performance reasons," Jarrard tells me, "we had to tone it down [on the Xbox] and use a lower-level detail model, for example, or lower-res textures.  But in Halo 2 for Windows Vista, We can just kick it up to its highest original state, which includes re-creating some textures from scratch-although most of the game held up really well, we found there were some things, that once you looked at them at 1920x1280 resolution, didn't quote look as good as we needed them too.


The game is not only in a higher resolution on PC, but also has more detailed models and textures.  I think it is safe to say that it will look a fair bit better than the original Xbox version.  They even said it looked MUCH better than the game being played on 360 which increases the resolution and ads 4x FFAA.

Now about the original complaint about the game slacking in the graphics department, well it's already a couple of years old, of course it's going to look a little worse than it could if it was A. Developed exclusively for the PC and B. not an old game being ported to a PC several years after release.


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## Olin (Nov 8, 2006)

What was the point of pointing out that a lot of the games I listed were also available on consoles? If you're trying to say (not making assumptions, but in the event you are) I'm a console gamer because I played ports to the PC then that's exactly like trying to say I'm a PC gamer because I played console games ported from the PC.

Oh well. Again, I play games I like on the systems they feel best on to me. I'm entirely neutral.


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## Bokracroc (Nov 8, 2006)

The PC had FarCry, the Xbox had FarCry Instincts. 
PC FarCry and Xbox Farcry had a common theme (the islandy setting) but a simliar yet different story. I feel Instincts has the better game.
Ghost Recon was made for PC while the second leant toward the Console (as are most Rainbow Six games are these days).
GTA is console exclusive because they get/got extra $$$ from Sony for it.

In the end, the whole list has ended up on consoles. Not saying they're bad games (The only ones I don't like is Manhunt and Raven Shield) but you lean to the console. Which kind of makes this topic strange because Halo 2 is going to be slaughtered when it step onto PC land, it's not really top PC FPS material.


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## PhoenixDragon (Nov 9, 2006)

Bokracroc said:
			
		

> I feel Instincts has the better game.



Really? Everything I've heard was that Instincts had simpler gameplay and more linear levels without the degree of free-roaming you had in Far Cry?

And... The GTA series isn't console exclusive :>

(Don't even get me started on the latest R6 games... So much hate...)

Definately agree about Halo 2, though, it's going to get creamed. When I heard they were going to release it for PC, the only thing I could think was... WHAT? Makes no sense. Maybe if they did it back when it was originally released, but I just can't imagine it doing all that well now...


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## Bokracroc (Nov 9, 2006)

Far-Cry was vanilla shooter. With bloody annoying mutants with rocketlaunchers making the end-game near impossable :reallyreallymadface:



> And... The GTA series isn't console exclusive :>


At least 7 months on PS2 only before the Xbox/PC release? That's (PS2) exclusive.
GTA3, VC and SA all did this (LCS and VCS don't count )


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## PhoenixDragon (Nov 9, 2006)

Bokracroc said:
			
		

> Far-Cry was vanilla shooter. With bloody annoying mutants with rocketlaunchers making the end-game near impossable :reallyreallymadface:



Yeah, I couldn't get past the next-to-last area without doing a bit of exploiting (Pushed a chair halfway across the level to keep a door wedged open). I don't think I could have done it legitimately...



> At least 7 months on PS2 only before the Xbox/PC release? That's (PS2) exclusive.



Oh, exclusive release. Sorry, thought you meant they were -only- on the console.


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## CyberFoxx (Nov 9, 2006)

Olin said:
			
		

> Linux port? Somehow I find the thought impossible. You'll surely be stuck to the Xbox version then. ;P



Well, there is a rumor floating around that Gearbox did start on a Linux port for the first Halo game. Either MS told them to can it, or they themselves did, not sure. Would be nice to see just how far they got though.

It would be nice to see more games ported to Linux, but until the frameworks get on par with DirectX, that's not going to happen. Sure, SDL, OpenGL, OpenAL, etc are all good, but they can't compare to the ease of use of DirectX. The only thing that SDL/OpenGL/OpenAL/etc have over DirectX is that if your game/media program/etc uses them, it's easy to port to other platforms.

Anyway, back on topic...

Yeah, all those "High-res Textures" and other stuff they'll be adding to Halo 2 Win32 do sound nice. But they wouldn't really apply to me. Even if my comp would/could run Vista, I'd still play the game at 1152x864 max. I just don't see the point of running a higher res than that. (Plus, my monitors don't go higher than that without going to a 60hz refresh)

The only advantage that I can see that Halo 2 will get when brought to the PC, is modding. That's about it. Sure, the XBox version has quite a bit of modding behind it, but you can only do so much. The PC version "should" let you do alot more.

Besides, XBox + 16:9 over S-Video Cable + TV Card + Interpolation + Fullscreen window at 1152x864 == Pretty decent graphics. ^_^


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## Killy the Fox (Nov 9, 2006)

Of course it'll be spiced up quite a bit to fit today's needs more so that it'll look better and be tweaked a bit in overall seems obvious.

My only grip with Halo 2 is not about the game itself but with Microsoft and the entire Vista only thing. They are hoping to get you to buy there new OS asap. Not only that but to get all the nice interacting features with your 360 you'll need to buy the Ultimate edition of Vista. Thatll be quite expensive no matter if its from an upgrade box, OEM, normal retail or upgrade anytime service that come with Vista if you have a "lower" version of the OS.

All in all they'll try there best to get at your wallet for being a good Halo fan and force there new OS on you.


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## sasaki (Nov 13, 2006)

Killy the Fox said:
			
		

> My only grip with Halo 2 is not about the game itself but with Microsoft and the entire Vista only thing. They are hoping to get you to buy there new OS asap. Not only that but to get all the nice interacting features with your 360 you'll need to buy the Ultimate edition of Vista. Thatll be quite expensive no matter if its from an upgrade box, OEM, normal retail or upgrade anytime service that come with Vista if you have a "lower" version of the OS.
> 
> All in all they'll try there best to get at your wallet for being a good Halo fan and force there new OS on you.



*Partially off-topic:*

Fortunately, if you're making a new box now, you can get Windows XP Pro SP2b OEM with an upgrade coupon to Windows Vista if you buy it by 11/14/06. Too bad thats tomorrow. :lol:

I agree though. The fact that DX10 is exclusive to Vista kinda pisses me off. That means if you want to get the full potential out of a NVIDIA 8800 GTX or GTS you'll need Vista as well. The nice thing about DX10 is the fact that supported cards will behave more like a fast floating point coprocessor instead of a pure GPU, taking a load off of your CPU. 

I don't know about the rest of you but after seeing Crytek's CryENGINE 2 and Epic's Unreal Engine 3, I'm excited about next-gen PC games. Everyone is jizzing over Gears of War (yes, I'm aware that Epic is responsible for this title), but wait till Unreal Tournament 2007 and Crysis come out! 

Crysis and UT'07 will run on both DX9c and DX10 (I don't know if Halo 2 is DX9c compatible). If you're not sporting a NVDIA 8800 GTX, stick to Win XP. That is unless you're looking forward to the Vista Experience.


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## Bokracroc (Nov 14, 2006)

Crysis will rock (well, at least it will rock the Graphics sector, it still might suck on Gameplay). Problem is, do we really need DX10 yet?


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## goat (Nov 14, 2006)

pffft why the fuck not?


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## Bokracroc (Nov 14, 2006)

How shallow can you get?
Check out the new MS Flight Sim. No consumer PC can play at max detail because the hardware wasn't been released for the people yet. When they do release it, you'll have to buy it. Then a new game will come out 2 months later and then you'll have to upgrade yet again. And again. And again. For the same game, just with prettyier pictures.


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## CyberFoxx (Nov 14, 2006)

Bokracroc said:
			
		

> Problem is, do we really need DX10 yet?



Na, better question, do we really need Direct3D? ^_^


(Answer: For the "lazy" programmers who don't want to futz around with OpenGL, sure. And by "lazy" I mean they're only given 2 days to write the graphics engine. *Sigh* The days of writing everything in ASM and the SDKs were sparse to non-existant.)


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## sasaki (Nov 14, 2006)

Bokracroc said:
			
		

> Crysis will rock (well, at least it will rock the Graphics sector, it still might suck on Gameplay). Problem is, do we really need DX10 yet?



Considering how good FarCry was, I doubt that Crysis will suffer in gameplay.

About needing DX10? The answer is NO. It'll be a while before DX10 becomes standard. A lot of people will stick to Windows XP/2000 Professional because they still work. Most copies of Vista sold will be bundled with new PCs.

More likely then not, DX10 will never become standard so long as it's not available to XP/2000/etc..


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## Bokracroc (Nov 15, 2006)

We don't need it anyway. We barely know what to do with DX9 still.


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## Udedenkz (Nov 20, 2006)

They better NOT jack fuck the system requirements to insane proportions. It better run on 60fps on a 1.5Ghz P4, 512 ram, and a gfx 5200... It gets me sooo mad when they port something with 10x hardware requirements of what it originally ran on. Xbox is like a 733 mhz P3 or something similar...

Just wait till some 1337 haxxor makes it work on the XP... Vista is teh sux...

I will get the demo first thou... I highly doubt that H2 is good after all, I have given up in H1 after 30 min for it was such shit... >.>

For now moar CSS maddnezz... W00t for 130 FPS on all maxed on on Scoutzknives W00t W00t


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## Rhainor (Nov 21, 2006)

Udedenkz said:
			
		

> They better NOT jack fuck the system requirements to insane proportions. It better run on 60fps on a 1.5Ghz P4, 512 ram, and a gfx 5200...



Windows Vista itself requires a minimum of 800MB of RAM.  Not news.


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## Udedenkz (Nov 21, 2006)

Rhainor said:
			
		

> Udedenkz said:
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there is no such thing as 800 megabytes or random access memory...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vista#Hardware_requirements


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## Twile (Nov 21, 2006)

Udedenkz said:
			
		

> They better NOT jack fuck the system requirements to insane proportions. It better run on 60fps on a 1.5Ghz P4, 512 ram, and a gfx 5200... It gets me sooo mad when they port something with 10x hardware requirements of what it originally ran on. Xbox is like a 733 mhz P3 or something similar...



First off, the P3 is faster per MHz than a P4. Second, they optimize the hell out of console games and they know exactly what is faster and what looks best. With PCs when you have varying hardware sets you can't do that.

Halo did have obscenely bad performance though. Other games would be 80+ fps and Halo would chug along at 30 or less. Sad.


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## Aquin (Nov 21, 2006)

Ahh.. another topic to hate Halo in. I honestly dont see whats so great about this FPS. Having played the game at a friends place for 5 to 6 hours and not being at all impressed is pitiful. Why get Halo when F.E.A.R. is a better game by far?


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## Twile (Nov 21, 2006)

Aquin said:
			
		

> Ahh.. another topic to hate Halo in. I honestly dont see whats so great about this FPS. Having played the game at a friends place for 5 to 6 hours and not being at all impressed is pitiful. Why get Halo when F.E.A.R. is a better game by far?



Why do one instead of the other? I'll do Halo 2 and 3 whenever they're on PC because I liked the dynamics in Halo 1, and the game was fun.


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## Rhainor (Nov 22, 2006)

Udedenkz said:
			
		

> there is no such thing as 800 megabytes or random access memory...



It's not an amount that someone could exactly meet, no, but that's what I heard.



			
				Udedenkz said:
			
		

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vista#Hardware_requirements



...And apparently what I heard was wrong.  I retract the statement in question.



			
				Twile said:
			
		

> Halo did have obscenely bad performance though. Other games would be 80+ fps and Halo would chug along at 30 or less. Sad.



As I've said (I think), Halo 1 was ported to PC (poorly) by Gearbox Software.  Halo 2 is being converted into a Vista-PC game by Bungie and Microsoft themselves.


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