Halo is a lot better console shooter than a PC shooter. That aside, I enjoyed Halo a lot more than I did Half-Life 2. However, I never played it on the PC and I heard the transition between a console to PC shooter was bad.
But, if you haven’t played Halo, it’s worth doing it. The story isn’t very deep, but it’s good. The action is great, and even though it does get repetitive I still had fun with it because I enjoyed the gameplay. It’s much more fun on co-op, I’ve played through co-op with just about all my relatives and friends. However, this is concerning the Xbox version.
For the PC version, I really don’t know. Multiplayer, I heard, was pretty fun.
Play Halo on the X-Box with a friend or don’t play it at all. Renting it for a weekend should be enough to finish it. Coop really is awesome fun: I love how generous the game is with ammo and especially grenades, even on Legendary difficulty. It’s about 15 hours of you and your buddy blowing shit up.
The PC version of Halo lets you use a mouse and keyboard, but the Xbox version ends up being more playable because it supports coop. Overall, I think Halo does a marginally better job of explaining why you should follow the linear path from point A to point B. Of course, maybe that’s because I was partly drunk while playing HL2 and insisted on conducting “crowbar science” during all of the explanatory cutscenes.
That because on Legendary, most of the enemies carry (and use) plasma grenades. Interestingly, they are more difficult to obtain in the easier modes.
I don’t care for the PC port of Halo at all. The Xbox version is much superior IMO. I replayed it last fall after Halo 2 came out and probably enjoyed it more than I did the first time so I say its definitely worth a playthrough.
Never personally played the PC port, but I can say that the XBox version if co-op is hysterical fun. Definitely second that opinion.
Just a quick work about Half-Life 2. I have to say that I’m fairly unimpressed. Great atmosphere, but some of the levels just go on forever. The gravity gun is neat at first, but I get really tired having to use it to build make shift bridges across areas. And whoever thought it would be good to do a little squad action needs to be confronted. I actually thought about killing my own squadmates to stop them from blocking me in the narrow hallways, but I figured I might need the ammo. Same goes for the bugs you control. Not only do they get in my way, they make it so I don’t even have to really play for long stretches of time. Eh…
you’re all out of your 'effing minds. The game was wonderful and it’s still a very satisfying experience (the final Warthog scene is still one of the most memorable moments in my gaming life). If you can find a server with players who’ve made it past puberty the MP is quite a bit of fun as well.
I’ve played Halo on the Xbox a bit but bought and played through the entirety of the PC version. Ackowledging the flaws in the game (thoroughly discussed already), I enjoyed Halo for these reasons and recommend it for the same:
The “you only get two weapons” dynamic. While it may have been a way to streamline controls on the original console version, limiting the player to only two weapons at any time (but allowing the player to choose which ones) really brought the game alive to me in terms of tactics.
Best implementation of grenades in any shooter I’ve played. Always great fun to use, especially combined with the decent physics that sent Covenant flying.
Well-made cutscenes that don’t drag on, voiced by actors who don’t regularly embarrass themselves.
Until UT2004, the best-handling vehicles in a shooter (again, based solely on what I’ve played). The warthog is still a ton o’ fun to bomb around in. The vehicles also featured in another strength of the game: being able to work through the set pieces using a variety of approaches.
Decent and engaging enemy AI. From the easily-panicked grunts to the use of cover, supression and flanking, the AI is well ahead of many other shooters. It’s not perfect, of course, but what is? (answer: pizza, but that’s neither here nor there)
Music. In most FPSs, one of the first things I do is turn off the “Whoa, I’m a 15 year old headbanger, duuuude!!!” music (sorry, Dave Long ;)). Halo features music that plays at key moments in the action, is mainly orchestrated and was enjoyable enough for me to buy the soundtrack on CD.
No “figure out the trick to defeating the final boss” ending. One of the few FPSs that had a satisfying finish.
I don’t deny any of the game’s weaknesses - notably some very repetitive level design and floaty mouse control (that can be fixed via the command line), but overall I think it’s one of the best shooters for any platfiorm that we’ve seen in the last five years.
Since everyone’s pitching in, count me among the Far Cry haters. Great tech, amateur-ish game. However, I am looking forward to Crytek’s sophomore effort under the guiding hand of EA. Providing it’s not called Far Cry Street Extreme 2.
I’ll never understand what it is about the PC version that people hate so much. I played through most of the game on the PC and the entirety of it on Xbox and both were just as thrilling. It’s a great game and it’s easy to see what it was the Xbox’s biggest draw for so long.
If you don’t have an Xbox or want mouse/keyboard control, the PC version is just as good.
I’m not a big Far Cry fan either, but to call the game amateurish is crazy.
Dude, the design was really amateurish. I’m not sure if it was Crytek’s first title, but it felt like some new designer’s first game. Or like something by a company who knows tech but doesn’t know gameplay.
There was very little sense of personality; the plot, setting, enemies, and weapons were as derivative as you could get; the game progression was totally bonked with a difficulty level that spiked all over the place; the multiplayer was sadly underdeveloped; the way stealth and AI were implemented was inconsistent; the pacing was erratic; the save game system was really poorly implemented; and the final third – as others have mentioned – was absolutely unreasonable. All of which says to me ‘amateurish’.
Those are many of the reasons that I didn’t exactly love the game either. But those are problems that many games suffer from and I wouldn’t call them amateurish either. And while the game had its problems as you mentioned, it had a number of perks too, like wide open envrionments conducive to solving problems in many different ways, kick-ass vehicles that were a blast to control and so on. The basic control… the running and gunning were quite satisfying too. That’s a huge factor IMHO. If they got that part right, they aren’t amateurs. :wink:
EDIT: Let’s just say the game had some problems. I just can’t see it being termed as amateurish though.
Halo PC is very good single player. Multiplayer is weak. For me with FPS singleplayer games the biggest issue is are the firefights fun and dynamic. That alone will determine if I like or dislike a game. Halo does firefights very well. They are dynamic and action packed and very well paced. There are some bad parts, such as the first level, but overall if you like fast paced dynamic firefights Halo is great.
For the record I have never played Halo on the Xbox so I can’t compare.
Because of how I value firefights, I consider Farcry the best FPS of 2004. Things like story, difficulty consistency, generic weapons, etc, don’t mean much to me. Its great if they are well done but without the great firefights none of that will matter (see Doom3). I though HL2 was an excellent game and consistently better than Farcry but the highs of the human firefights in Farcry are just that much higher than the highs of any part of HL2, so I simply enjoyed Farcry more.
For me the best game experience is far more valuable than the best consistent experience. One of the reasons I still think Vietcong is the best singleplayer FPS to come out in several years and I consider it much better than Call of Duty which it gets compared to alot.
Woah, woah, hold up a minute. Doom 3 did not have a good story or innovative weapons and was much too easy all the way through. I don’t think the firefights were the problem.
