Review by Junkie

"Best. Port. EVAR!"

If you own Halo for Xbox, you definitely need to buy this. If you don't own Halo, still get it. If you've never played it before, get it. Even if you hate Halo or Microsoft or Bungie, STILL get it!

That sums up my overall thoughts on Halo for PC. Taking one of the best (and hyped) FPS's and putting it on a PC with added online multiplayer and much easier modding and ''hacking'', this was done very well. Although it wasn't made very efficiently, most decent boxes can play it fine.

Gameplay: Although for Xbox the controls were near perfect, they become even more perfect. As you may already know, FPS's were made for a keyboard and mouse. The controls are all defaultly grouped fine and you can switch them very easily to match how you like them, including using a PC controller or joystick if you want. My only complaint is this: even at the highest sensitivity, I still think the mouse moved too slow, but that's just me.

Story: I never really noticed that this story makes so much more sense when you read the 2 pages in the manual that explains the story. The story going on is quite good, like a decent science fiction novel, but with action and guns ^_^. Basicly, it's a few centuries from now, the earth has unified under 1 government, colonized other planets/asteroids, and has a new foe: the Covenant. You start off as Master Chief, the last remaining SPARTAN-II, a super-human cyborg. From there, the story unfolds as you battle your way through the ring of Halo and a few other ships nearby.

Graphics/Sound: The graphics are about as good as the Xbox's when put at the highest settings, but to run them like that you need to use 800x600 usually. The sound and music was superb; don't get me wrong, but the graphics could've done some work. They had 2 years to fix any graphical bugs and optimized it for PC, but they didn't really. If you have an nVidia card, use the parameter -use11, because they can't work with 2.0 (which is default, and if you keep it at default, you'll be wondering why your superb box is being choppy). Some things look a little more jagged so to speak, but overall, that is basicly because you are less than a foot away from a high-resolution monitor, yeah?

pir8 or buy: Definitely buy this, it's worth the $40-$50 you spend on it. If you can't afford it, go ahead and find it on the high seas, but you should definitely get a legit copy. ;)

Overall, just go buy it.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10 | Originally Posted: 10/06/03

Submit Recommendation

Got Your Own Opinion?
