Halo 2 Single Player Impressions

Released way back in 2001 as one of the launch titles for the first generation Xbox, Halo was a milestone in gaming for Xbox owners everywhere. Sure it was a killer game but it wasn’t anything PC gamers had not seen before as a result of which they weren’t as impressed as their console brethren. Developer Bungie quickly followed up with a sequel in 2004 that fared even better than its predecessor in every which way firmly establishing Master Chief as an iconic figure in the video game industry. And now in 2007 we have Halo 3 that’s all set to dominate the Xbox 360 charts once again but that’s really not what this article is about; we’re here to talk about the PC version of Halo 2 which as you all know is a launch title for Microsoft’s latest Operating System, Windows Vista. So is the game worth the time, money, energy, patience and not to mention upgrade? Bwahahahahhahahaha… hahahahahahahahaha!

All right then… now that I’m a bit composed let’s take a minute and analyze the situation here to find out what caused this hysterical outburst. For starters, the game’s 3 years late in coming to the PC; sure the game was a rage back in the day but after PC gamers have been spoilt with stuff like F.E.A.R. and Half Life 2, how can you expect to impress them with such a mediocre port? Next, the game looks pretty bad as compared to current games in the market and even though they had three years to polish this game, we only get a little aliasing, sharper textures and higher resolutions. And finally, the only way you’re going to be able to play this game is if you upgrade to Windows Vista (the cheapest version costs Rs. 6,000). Oh and I almost forgot, co-op which was an integral part of the Halo 2 experience for the Xbox IS NOT present in the PC version (just like they did for Halo). So in conclusion we have a three year old game that doesn’t bring anything new to the table and forces you to upgrade to Vista; still think I’m crazy?
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Don’t get me wrong though; I’m not here to convince you not to play this game, I’m just giving you the lowdown on what to expect so you don’t get too disappointed if you go in for this game which is what we’ll talk about now.

Halo 2 takes place immediately after the events of Halo with Master Chief receiving a Hero’s welcome aboard the Cairo Space Station. Unfortunately his ceremony is cut short by invading Covenant so it’s time for him to kick some ass and chew some gum… once again. At the same time Covenant Priests aren’t too pleased with the Humans destroying their sacred Halo so they persuade one of their elite soldiers called the Arbiter (torture can you do wonderful things) to make up for his incompetence by fighting and dying for their noble cause (since it was his screw up that allowed the Chief to destroy the Halo in the first place). From there on you have a liberal amount of cut scenes taking the story forward and you’ll constantly oscillate between the Arbiter and Master Chief through the relatively short single player campaign. I for one got a bit bored with all the gibberish since I’m not a big Halo buff but if you like all things Halo, you’ll lap up every ounce of blah thrown at you.

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The first thing that catches your fancy as soon as you boot the game up is the sparkling new Tray and Play option. This option has been designed to make PC gaming feel a bit like console gaming since you can start playing the game while it installs. It’s a pretty cool mechanic but unless you have a beefy rig you will get a bit of stutter while traying and playing; other than that I hope more games use this since staring at the Installation menu isn’t horribly exciting.

Since you will play the game as both the Arbiter and Master Chief you’ll get to use a variety of Human as well as Covenant weapons all of which can be dual wielded. Master Chief kicks ass courtesy of his wicked, revamped arsenal while the Arbiter has his ultra cool invisible camouflage and his bad ass energy sword and even though the whole dual wielding mechanic may have been a rage back in the day, it’ll probably not impress you terribly now. The game does fare a bit better with the mouse and keyboard but for some reason the Chief’s movements are downright slow and sluggish on the PC.
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Halo 2 was a fun game to begin with and even though it was a pretty linear experience it’s still fun to play and for some reason if you’ve not played the Xbox version, you’re in for one solid gaming experience. You have everything from intense shootouts to an epic soundtrack to an intricate (yet boring) plot to vehicular combat sequences made popular by this series itself (hijacking an enemies’ vehicle never gets old). AI, both friendly as well as enemy has always been good in Halo games and it doesn’t disappoint this time either; only problem is that you may not be terribly impressed with it after playing games like F.E.A.R. and HL2.

Now you may think that I’m being a bit harsh on a three year old game but keep in mind, the game is being sold at full price and requires Vista to run and for all those hardships we get an archaic looking game that doesn’t offer anything new. If you can look past all of that you will enjoy this game since it is the same Halo 2 the world fell in love with three years ago; if only MS had not delayed it so much or used it as a Vista launch title, perhaps people wouldn’t feel all that cheated and betrayed.

The reason I’ve called this a Hands On Impressions and not a Review is because I’ve not had the chance to have a go at the game’s Multiplayer Component which is the game’s strongest point so reviewing the game without it’s MP wouldn’t be fair to the game itself. Halo 2 for Vista will be launched in India officially this week (or so we’ve heard) so expect our in-depth review, MP et all then.