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BASTA Microsoft...!

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 51 / 53
Date: June 29, 2007
Author: Amazon User

The Original Halo was a ground-breaking title. The expectation for HALO2 was so great that Microsoft decided to greedily milk its own users...
PC users have been waiting for HALO2 to be released for Windows for over 3 years. Now is too little, too late. Not to mention the shameless WinVista promotion.

All these years Microsoft was dragging its feet. Why? The release of (compatibility-hell) WinVISTA was coming - and HALO2 was planed to boost sales. Then WinVISTA got repeatedly delayed - and so was Halo 2.
RESULT: In 2004 the graphics were cutting edge, in 2007 they are just presentable. Even though the game requires an above average (and quite expensive) Hardware configuration, it actually looks worse than UNREAL TOURNAMENT 2004.

QUESTION: why is HALO2 only compatible with WinVISTA since it does NOT take advantage of DirectX10?
ANSWERS : (1) let's help sell those WinVISTA finally!; (2) there are hardly any affordable DirectX10-compatible video-cards available; (3) let's charge the users for playing OnLine with WindowsLIVE!!

The gameplay and overall presentation is not that different from the original Halo. Sure, surfaces got better textured, shiny reflections got added and now (limiting and clumsy) dual-yield is available - but do these actually make a difference to a real gamer?

It is truly a shame that PC users get exploited in such shameless way. After all, HALO3 is getting released for X-BOX.
Wow! We get the privilege of playing the previous generation game! Aren't we lucky...

You need a WEI of 5 to run it! (Plus, the technical specs that are missing...)

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 50 / 65
Date: June 22, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Until a really stable and easy to install patch comes out, this will only work with Vista, and a really good video card. (I'm sure that sometime this year we will see a true patch that will allow you to use it on XP, but then...)

According to the cover box and Microsoft website, your video card must be "NVIDIA 6100, ATI X700 or above." That leaves a lot to interpretation, and nowhere does it state the minimum technical specs required to run the game. So, here it is:

Video memory: 128 Megabytes or higher required
Supported pixel shader version: 2 or higher required
Supported vertex shader version: 2 or higher required

Copied from the game install warning screen:
"Halo 2 for Windows Vista is designed for computers running Microsoft Windows Vista with an overall Windows Experience Index of 5 or higher." Hmmmm, one would think that the requirement of a 5-rating would be in bold type somewhere on the box, especially since the majority of the mass-market computers sold off the shelf are well below 5.

I have the minimum requirements for the video card and 2Gig of RAM (in my Gateway MX6453 laptop)and it runs HORRIBLY, and, at times, not at all.

Make sure you have a really good video card, or else you will suffer.

Almost too little, too late

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 35 / 53
Date: May 29, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Halo 2 is considered to be one of the best games ever made for Microsoft's original XBox, and became a smash hit back in 2004. Now, after numerous delays, Halo 2 has finally made it to the PC for Windows Vista, and it's nearly identical to Bungie's original game. However, this is both good and bad, and if you've never played Halo 2 before, playing it now may make you wonder what all the fuss was about. First off, Halo 2 on the XBox is what helped make XBox Live what it is today thanks to it's fantastic multiplayer options. Halo 2 for Vista shines in this department, offering great multiplayer variety and a welcome map editor to allow players to get creative with the battlegrounds. The 23 included maps are a smash as well. The single player mode was the console version's biggest flaw, and not much has changed in the translation to Vista. The single player campaign is incredibly short and concludes on a hair pulling cliffhanger and features a storyline that, looking back on it now, is rather lackluster. Not to mention that the visuals, while still good, have been outshined by more modern PC shooters to come out in recent memory as well. The game also features support for the XBox 360 controller as well as the standard mouse and keyboard, which can lead to some unbalanced moments of advantage in multiplayer as well. All the flaws aside though, Halo 2 for Vista is a more than solid shooter for the PC that manages to deliver most of the goods that it did so notably three years ago on the original XBox. However, if you've played at great length any recent shooters like Stalker or Half-Life 2: Episode One, you may be left wondering what all the fuss over Halo 2 was about in the first place.

A huge let down

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 15 / 18
Date: June 05, 2007
Author: Amazon User

My wife originally ordered two copies of Halo 2 from Amazon for me and my son for fathers day. However, while at Walmart I decided to get a copy of the game instead of that power washer I've been wanting. :) I got home and we (my son and I) started to install the game. First there is not option for custom install. You can only play the game while installing. I don't really care for this as I like to install my games to one folder, not all over my hard drive. So okay, we waited a little, while it was doing it's thing. I tried signing up for live using my account and had a hard time getting it to log me in... or even finding the place to log into live. The buttons on screen for navigating the menus are the A,B,X,Y buttons you'll find on the XBox controller. Not very good if you ask me. I like PC games and steer away from consoles. This game definately has a console feel to it. So we move on.... Videos are good, graphics are pretty good... game play.. well it feels like a console. The aiming system has too much compensation built in. Here's the short story, I was let down as this game feels like a console game and the menus are hard to navigate. Bungie and M$ didn't do much in the way of making this a fun game for the PC. Rather just made the console game play on the PC. I will be returning my two copies already in shipping to Amazon for a refund and I'll stick to playing the original Halo.

Vista only, but no DX10!

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 22 / 33
Date: June 03, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Against better judgment, I bought Halo 2 for Vista and a few days later I am still disappointment, despite the fact that screen shots already gave it away that this is not DX10. In fact, even for DX9 it's a relatively poor effort. Environments look bland and textures are very low resolution. As much as this may be the "best" for a massive online multiplayer, but it's disappointing nevertheless.

Enemy AI is plain dumb and you often have to literally run into them to get noticed. Overall it's very scripted: Pick the "right" path and it feels responsive; take an alternative route and you're virtually invisible. The story is relatively lame, though I didn't expect much, but my memory of Halo may be fading since I am starting to believe Halo 2 is even less interesting. To extend the pain, cut scenes are numerous and often long enough to make you wonder if you're already watching the final. Multiplayer gets all the hype, but I am old-fashioned and prefer to have at least the illusion of a purpose. The user interface is terrible (straight conversion from XBox?), and not very comfortable to use (nor intutive) with mouse and keyboard.

The hype around the Halo merchandise will carry this title enough to make sales figures decent, but I sure wish I could have my money back. Halo may be great for multiplayers that crave instant and intense action without the burden of actual plot, but the singleplayer experience is hardly average and --considering the requirements-- certainly underwhelming.

So here I am with Vista, Opteron 185 cpu and HD2900XT graphics card, but feel cheated since I don't care about the "Live" service and was hoping to get something out of my "investment". I mean, I have the stage set for DX10, and here is a game that requires Vista and it doesn't even use it.

I would totally be okay with giving Halo 2 only one star, but in recognition of the multiplayer component (that some people seem to love), I gave it two stars. Generous, I know. ;-)

Promotion for Vista

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 15 / 20
Date: July 20, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This game was only released to promote Vista. Microsoft needs to get back to its roots, and gain customer's loyalty. Microsoft could of made the game much better if they only they tried. I would not recommend buying this game. The game (F.E.A.R.) has much better artificial intelligence with an overall better game engine. Please support the game companies that support gamers with high quality titles.

Disappointment

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 11 / 13
Date: July 03, 2007
Author: Amazon User

There was a lot of excitement about this game. I was excited too. Unfortunately the game is mostly a disappointment. I guess I thought because Vista was required that there might be something new in here. This is not the case. This is simply a port of the Xbox version. The graphics are years out of date and look pretty clunky. It is not DX10. The highly touted "Game for Windows" that was supposed to let us play with Xbox users does not. You can only play with PC users, and there aren't many of those. Maybe "Games for Windows" will be fixed in the future, but as it is now I find it very disappointing too.

This whole experience has been a disappointment all the way around.

Halo 2

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 13 / 19
Date: July 24, 2007
Author: Amazon User

With AMD dual processor 6000, 2 nvidia 640 mb video cards, 4 gb memory.
The game will not run. Keep getting message "Halo 2 has stopped working."
Can't find patch or help any where from Microsoft. Don't waste your money on this game

Sort of Halo

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 8 / 9
Date: September 10, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Others are right, you will be playing an out-dated game, if you're not already manipulated into buying Microsoft's X-box to keep up with Halo then you must buy Vista to play Halo 2. Otherwise nobody really needs Vista that I can see, unless they force it on the market (and MS will).

I did a dual boot system with XP, because Vista won't run all my software or hardware yet, mainly to see what Halo 2 would be. Make two partitions for dual boot or use two drives, and wait until Vista is compatible with all it left behind, to fully switch to that OS.

As to the game, it was somewhat disappointing by comparison to Halo 1. Very artistic graphics are an improvement, but seems to have been the priority, along with many more weapons. But they're stuck in half sized campaigns that aren't so distinctive. I got lost in circles a lot, looking for the next segway, because cloned graphics made entrances and exits look much the same. Still, finished the whole game on the first day I loaded it. Definitely not like Halo 1 there. Not such an epic adventure as Halo 1, with the ending pretty much saying buy Halo 3, to get any real ending.

There are good new features that made some sense. But some came with annoying key location changes if you played Halo 1 a lot. You also spend half the game playing as an Elite, not just the M.C. It reveals a lot more of the story line, which is not such a good thing if you really think about it. Best not to.

Really disappointed in some of the audio. MOST of all I miss the grunts amusing chatter and voicing, funny enough to overlook aliens speaking English even to each other. I imagine doing that particular voice was difficult, so they apparently did them with a pitch shifter to create the grunt high pitch, and they sound synthetic and characterless as a result. Over all, this really wasn't worth waiting years for IMO.

WASTE OF MONEY

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 18 / 31
Date: June 17, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Do not buy. It installs... somewhere on your harddrive. You have to sign on to something called "live" to get updates, and everytime I set up an account and try to log on it says I have no account, and THEN when I try to set up the account again it says that account already exists.

You CAN'T SAVE. It has "checkpoints" along the way, and when you start the game it is SUPPOSED to go to the last checkpoint, BUT IT DOESN'T. Several times now it has taken me back about an HOUR of gameplay.

I HATE games that don't let me save and create save points.

I wish I hadn't bought this game, I am not finishing it.

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