User Reviews (1 - 11 of 59)

Show these reviews first:

Highest Rated
Lowest Rated Newest
Oldest Most Helpful
Least Helpful

INTEL MAC OWNERS BEWARE!!!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 6 / 8
Date: January 06, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I just purchased this game after getting my new 24" Intel iMac (dual 2.16ghz, 2gb RAM w/ 256mb GeForce GT 7600 upgrade) and I am very disapointed with the Intel port (2.0). On my monster machine it runs at 15-20 FPS on nominal graphic settings, even at 800x600 with all textures on normal. I don't know what MacSoft did with the 2.0 universal update but it runs like an absolute dog on my high end iMac.

To put this into perspective: DOOM 3 maxes out at 60FPS (and 60FPS is the built-in limit for DOOM 3) for 95% of the game on the same machine. Oh, and that is running at 1920x1200 on the highest possible detail, so it's not 'lacking the grunt' so to speak.

My friend has a Powerbook G4 1.5mhz with a 32mb video card and Halo 1.5 (PPC) runs faster than it does on my new high end iMac... So if you're planning on buying this to play on an Intel Mac DO NOT DO IT, YOU WILL BE VERY DISAPPOINTED.

Major problem

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 12
Date: May 12, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Lets see on a top of the line mac this game is very choppy. I can't run at full screen mode 1600x1200 with hi res graphics. Very, slow. Under 5 frames per second. So I bumped it down to 800x600 medium graphic and got choppy but ok game play. Like playing a new game on a 5 year old system. In a word bad.

UT 2004 looks great, plays great at 32bit color, 1600x1200 with full graphics. This game won't even play well at the low end of the settings. (...)

Oh, the full system was Dual 2 Ghz G5, 1.5 GB RAM, ATI Radion 9800 128 MEGS ram.

Ho Hum

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 24 / 43
Date: October 30, 2004
Author: Amazon User

As Penny Arcade put it, Halo has become a "cultural phenomenon", perhaps of a level nearing the phenomenon that was Half-life/Counter-strike. When one is confronted by a game that consistently scores 5/5 on most review sites one would expect the game to be revolutionary.

Halo is, however, anything but. The enemies are stupid (i don't mean that their AI is lacking, but rather, that they are programmed to be invalids and cowards) and excessively numerous. There were many times where I found myself in a gun turret, with my hand off the keyboard, holding down the fire button and leisurely offing fifty or sixty enemies.

After you've gunned down about a thousand incompetent fools who yell "run away, he'll kill us all!" things start to get a little boring.

Halo lacks interesting level design, an interesting story, interesting weapons, or even interesting gameplay. The things that would be "revolutionary" about Halo would be the use of vehicles during combat, and the occasional squad-based skirmish. However, Battlefield 1942 has both of these factors, and in greater amount. There were about five different vehicles in Halo, and there are forty plus vehicles in BF1942.

The worst part about Halo was the massive onslaught of weak enemies. Instead of battling a few, well trained enemies that would offer some kind of challenge, you fight against seemingly endless waves of pitiful enemies.

Perhaps the only thing I found of value in the game was the tactical use of grenades, and the ability to only carry two weapons. The latter would have been much more limiting and interesting if there were more than seven or eight weapons to begin with.

Bottom Line: Halo leaves much to be desired. If you're looking for a first-person shooter with a variety of vehicles, look to Battlefield 1942. If you want squad-based or tactical/realistic action, Counter-strike will leave neither you nor your wallet hungry. And if you want an action packed blow-em-away multiplayer game, they you should look no further than the Unreal Tournament series. If you want unispired level design, a weak story and microsoft (re: really, really bad) physics, than grab yourself some halo.

HALO MAC HOPELESS WITHOUT GAME PAD SUPPORT

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 2 / 21
Date: January 12, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Now as a great Halo fan, I was looking for to this for months. The graphics are perfect and fabulous but as virtually everyone buying this is used to playing it on Xbox, MACSOFT never told anyone that they couldn't be bothered to add GAMEPAD support! Of course the pc version has. It would have taken them an extra day to do it but didn't. SO until they do this is a MOST USELESS game to play as using a mouse and keyboard require 17 hands and two sets of eyes just to get some basic gameplay, SO until they deal with this SERIOUS issue do NOT BOTHER WASTING YOUR MONEY as they may NEVER release the patch to allow GAMEPAD support. best Barrie Roness

Mediocre

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 7 / 12
Date: December 19, 2003
Author: Amazon User

With all the praise that preceded the Mac release of Halo, and having only very briefly played with the Xbox version, I eagerly awaited my chance to see what all the fuss was about. Sadly, my only reaction has been one of disappointment.

Once the technical novelty wore off, the single player missions quickly became tedious and repetitive, the plot - supposedly a highlight - unengaging and banal (even by game standards). I could barely bring myself to finish the game once, let alone consider playing it over again.

Multiplayer fares slightly better - vehicles in particular are a novel and welcome addition, creating an interesting multiplayer dynamic. However, at the time of writing I've stuggled to find a decent server playing something other than boring 'Slayer' deathmatches.

Performance wise, Halo is reasonably playable at 896x600 with medium detail on my 1.25GHz PowerBook G4 (1GB RAM, Radeon 9600), but is nevertheless somewhat sluggish compared to other similar Mac games such as UT2K3 and America's Army.

If You Love Mediocrity, This Game Is For You!!!

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 4
Date: February 26, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Halo for the Mac is an okay game if you like repititious single-player games reminiscent of the very first Doom. The multiplayer is very buggy despite the 1.0.4.1 patch which should have allowed me to play with PC-users...NOT!!! But not all is bad, Halo is a beautiful game, especially if you have a 64Mb or higher graphics card, and the story is decent being flavored by hard science-fiction elements like the halo itself (aka Larry Niven's RINGWORLD) and the in-game physics of running and operating are very realistic!

However, if you're looking for heart-pounding, adrenaline-inducing, edge-of-your-seat fragfest multiplayer action, I highly recommend Unreal 2k3 and 2k4, or wait for Doom 3 if you're a purist for single-player shooter games.

eh...alright....but...

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: March 20, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Eh, this game was ok. It became a little repetitive in the story mode, what with swarms of covenant attacking you. And yet...the AI was a little buggy....most of the time, they did not even notice that I was there. But, the best thing i have found is the Multi Player. Multi player is probably the best thing from the /entire/ game. But other than that. eh...it needs some work. Halo 2 was suppost to fix this, but it left people still wanting. I would still play Unreal Tournament 2K4 than Halo. Unreal looks better, playes faster on my G4 Al Powerbook (VRAM + RAM maxed), and has faster game play. Overall, it is a good game, but it still needs some fine tuning.

Decent, but Xbox is definately the best platform for halo

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: January 10, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Alrighty, I see some of you folks playing this have really souped up macs. Well I'm on a Powerbook G4 (laptop) for school, 867 MHz, 256 MB Ram and in order to run the game period, I have to set all the display settings to their lowest or turn them off. The game looks like crap, yes, but I enjoy it so much I could care less how it looks. If you are knocking the game because you don't have a good enough graphics card, get a life. Yes, it lags (especially for me) but what do you expect? It's a good game, and it's best on XBOX so if you have the choice, play it like that. Otherwise, quit complaining.

Things to know before you buy Halo for the Mac!!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 13 / 17
Date: January 07, 2004
Author: Amazon User

To play Mac Halo you need two things:
1. An unbelievably fast computer (preferably with an ATI Radeon 9600 card or newer)
2. An unbelievably fast internet connection

Anything less will lag you out and frustrate you. Especially if you're used to the lag-free world of Xbox Halo. Yes, this game has some steep requirements to get it to play smoothly. (The proper video card alone costs more than an entire xbox console and Halo game combined.)

Halo on the Mac is fun, of course Halo in any carnation is fun, but Mac Halo does have it's downsides - especially when compared to the console version.

Halo Mac does not support FSAA (full screen anti-alliasing) which means the graphics have bitmapped edges that are coarse. Xbox Halo does support FSAA.

Halo Mac does not currently support gamepad use. The PC version of Halo does, but Mac does not. So you'll need to be quite familiar with mouse/keyboard play.

The weapon attributes in Halo Mac are not exact to weapon attributes in Xbox version. Below is a list of how the weapons differ from the Xbox version:

PISTOL - Target reticle is way too large - which is annoying, it has a shorter range and it's weaker than the xbox pistol.
ASSAULT RIFLE - Much weaker than xbox version
GRENADES - They don't throw as far as xbox version, you have to look up much higher in order to throw farther
ROCKET LAUNCHER - weaker

The only weapons that seem unchanged are the alien weapons, the shotgun and the sniper rifle.

Halo on the Mac seems less competitive, most servers are filled with noobs who do nothing but team kill. It's hard to find a good CTF or slayer game. The browser for finding servers lacks interface options. No chat rooms, no server invites, etc. It is possible to find a good server with good players, but you'll have to be patient.

Halo Mac doesn't allow for co-op playing in the regular game mode unlike in the xbox version. This time, you'll have to go it alone.

Some of the mulitplayer maps you've come to love have been altered slightly. Sidewinder for example - the teleporter in the roof section of the bases now is a two-way porter. Meaning you can go through it and come back through it. This changes things dramatically for CTF strategy on this level.

Too many vehicles:
Some levels, in default mode, include new vehicles as well as the old vehicles. Everywhere you look there are vehicles. Blood Gulch starts to look like a parking lot. It's a little ridiculous. Thankfully you can create your own games and specify how many vehicles you want.

NOW FOR THE GOOD THINGS ABOUT HALO MAC...

The reason I bought this game was to play on the new multiplayer maps. There are 6 brand new maps (along with all your favorite maps from the xbox version). The maps are:

-Death Island
-Ice Fields
-Timberland
-Gephyrophobia
-Danger Canyon
-Infinity

Of these new maps Death Island and Danger Canyon are my favorites. All the maps are really cool and provide for the development of new strategies and tactics to make the most out of them. I have not been disappointed with any of these levels and you won't be either.

New weapons:
There are 2 new weapons in Halo Mac, and they are both pretty cool.
Flame Thrower - fun weapon to use, good for guarding a flag with
Fuel Rod Gun - almost as powerful as a rocket launcher, except with rapid fire - deadly weapon

New vehicles:
-Wart Hog with a Rocket Turret
I still like the orginal warthog better (don't worry, it's in this game too.) This new Hog has a rocket turret, but the rocket shoots really slowly.
-Banshee
Halo Mac allows you to fly the Banshee, a Covenant ship from the single player game. The Banshee is a tough nut to crack when one is attacking you. This is a favorite vehicle for new players because they can take off and avoid death more easily.

Easier multiplayer access. Halo Mac allows you to hop into games with other players quickly and easily without having to hook up 6 xboxes to each other or without having to play online via XBconnect or Gamespy. However, the lag can be intolerable if your computer isn't up to snuff. I like that I can now get into games quickly.

Overall: Halo Mac is a great game and certainly better than most games out there. The new multiplayer maps alone are worth the purchase. Halo xbox LAN games are still the best for insane multiplayer, but Halo Mac is pretty good and really fun too. Halo Mac is a good appetizer until the main course...Halo 2...hits shelves this Spring.

Great Game If...

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 10
Date: February 01, 2004
Author: Amazon User

For those of you who don't know, Microsoft bought Bungie, Halo's manufacturer, because they liked Halo. Halo was going to be released first on Mac, then PC, but Microsoft decided they wanted Halo as their flagship X-Box game. But 2 years after Halo's X-Box debut, Microsoft came through with Halo for Mac. Better late than never, though. Unless you have a G5 or Panther, you cann forget about Halo. The system requirements say 800 MhZ, but I have a 12" 867 Powerbook with Jaguar, and I had a lot of trouble. With lots of people around, the game freezes up a lot. Multiplayer is good usually though. I reccommend setting the Halo resolution low, like 800x600. Also, change the graphics quality to low and all that stuff. I am kind of tired of Halo now, but that's just because I'm, stuck in the single player campaign. So unless you have a G5, DON'T BUY THIS GAME!

Review Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 Next 

Actions