Fun game, poor conversion. (Halo 2 (PC))

Member Name: illogicology

Product:	Halo 2 (PC)
Date:	12/01/09 (4 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good continuation of the Halo series, good plot, excellent weapon choices

Disadvantages: A poor port, inferior to the xbox version, not-so-subtle advert for microsoft's "Games For Windows"

Halo 2 is one of the most succesful games on the original XBox Console, to this day it is one of the most played games on Xbox live. However, PC gamers should beware, this port is really just clever marketing.

For those that haven't played the Xbox version or the first game, Halo 2 stars an armour clad soldier at the forefront of earth's war with The Covenant, a highly religious collective of alien species. The Covenant believe humans to be heretics and much of the action takes place on a giant ring shaped space station named Halo. The surface of the station is like an artificial planet and so there are beautiful roaming landscapes dividing up the usual claustrophobic scenarios so common to first person shooters.

While certain elements of the plot will be missing to those who haven't played the first, Halo 2 is worth playing for fairly fun level design and an interesting choice of baddies and weapons. However one should be careful to avoid the Halo series hype. Much of its success is due to the fact that if was one of the earliest first person shooters to work well on a games console. On a PC this advantage is lost and the games lose this distinction but is still perfectly playable. If you haven't played it and enjoy shooters then you shouldn't be particularly let down.

There are issues with the Pc release however. Firstly, the Xbox version of Halo 2 was released in 2004. With the sizable gap between releases very little has been done with the game. This includes correctly optimising the game to run on current machines. People who read my review will be aware that I hold performance in high regard, frankly for a game released in 2004 to suffer from shakey animation and a poor framerate on my medium-spec 2008 machine should be illegal. Had the game been subject to a significant uphaul in the graphics department then I could understand. It hasn't and I don't

Secondly, the reason that this game is such a bad conversion is that really very little attention needs to be given to it. It is a title that microsoft knows will sell purely on a name. Conveniently locked to only run on Vista despite the fact that the game can be cracked to run on XP, this is a very obviously rushed release to advertise microsofts disappointing "Games For Windows" platform.

If you don't have an XBox or Xbox 360 then buying this version of Halo 2 will at least allow you to play a popular and entertaining game.
If you do have an xbox or xbox 360, the original version are superior and probably cheaper.

Summary: Get it on the xbox if you can