Making a two year old Xbox game the first Vista only title was probably one of the most bizarre decisions made by Microsoft lately. First of all, Vista is supposed to be a next-gen operating system, so using a game that barely has any DX9 functionality is kind of dumb. Secondly, from the millions of gamers out there the majority of those who wanted to play Halo 2 already did it on the Xbox. That leaves a relatively low number of PC only gamers as potential buyers, but even then only a fraction of them are running Vista. So what was Microsoft thinking I ask you?

Defending the planet Earth

With only two titles released and a 3rd one on the way the Halo universe didn’t have much time to evolve. That didn’t prevent it from being one of the most widely known game worlds ever created though. The first Halo game only scratched the surface of it – it introduced the Covenant, the flood and protagonist - Master Chief. All of it was well thought out, but fairly generic al the same. With Halo 2 things took a turn for the better. Although most of you know the story of the sequel by heart now I’ll still refrain from spoiling it for those few who are yet to experience the game. The game picks up right where the original ended, with the destruction of the big halo. This time around the game doesn’t focus just on Master Chief though, as roughly half of the storyline follows an Elite. To be more specific, it gives us the chance to see the downfall of the Elite who commanded the entire Covenant army in the first Halo. The story starts pretty slow, as the first few hours see us defending the planet Earth from an unexpected Covenant attack, but thanks to the parallel storytelling of the Arbiter’s progress (the Elite I mentioned) things remain interesting. Most of the story is told through in-game cinematics, though large chunks of information get revealed during the levels. For the most part this means intercepted transmissions and radio chatter.

Afraid to blink for fear of getting ripped to pieces

Back on the Xbox Halo 2 was an even bigger success than the first one. There are a number of reasons for that, but mostly it’s just that Halo 2 refined the original formula, threw in some new features and dropped most if not all of the shortcomings the original had. My personal favorite is that Bungie implemented dual wielding. It sounds cool on paper, but in reality it is even better. The system took some time getting used to on the Xbox, but on the PC it works just perfectly. The E key is used to pick up weapons and use buttons while the Q key takes care of weapon switching. If your currently equipped weapon is a single handed tool of destruction and you are standing next to another one hand weapon pressing and holding down the Q key will make your character (both Master Chief and the Arbiter) grab the second weapon and start dual wielding. When this happens the left mouse button controls the left weapon while the right mouse button, you guessed it, controls the right weapon. To make sure you have the initiative to use only one weapon as well the authors decided to prevent you from throwing grenades when you have two weapons equipped (with only one weapon the right mouse button takes care of grenade throwing). Outside of that not much changed about the controls. On the PC the aiming is still a bit slow when compared to other PC shooters, but it is miles better than it was in Halo.

Having a decent weapon system isn’t what made Halo 2 so great though. It was the almost perfect gameplay tempo. Sneaking, one against a million missions where every step had to be carefully considered were usually followed by a tank trip where dying was next to impossible and the adrenaline was pumping like mad. Throw in a couple of squad based confrontations and some one man in the middle of a war situations and you can see where the Halo magic was coming from. Thanks to all the PC gods out there none of the above got lost in the porting, so gamers can expect some amazing battles, entire levels where you are afraid to blink for fear of getting ripped to pieces and moments where you are just awed by the amazing vistas the game throws at you (perhaps this is the reason the game requires Vista to run). The fact that each of these mission types control and play as if entire years were put into making them work makes the whole thing even more amazing.

I keep speaking of missions and levels, but if truth be told the game doesn’t have any of that. In fact, except for the loading times where the game jumps from one end of the galaxy to the other there are no loadings at all. You move from a lush green lagoon into an underwater temple and then back out without seeing a single loading screen (at least on fast machines, on slower PCs you might see a “loading” prompt appear on the screen for a second or two). Admittedly this isn’t such a big deal, but being able to play for up to two hours without stopping once helps make the Halo 2 world come to life. Seeing a huge monument in the distance only to enter it an hour or so later without a loading screen is just amazing, especially when most of today’s games tend to prefer smaller but more detailed levels.

Speaking of smaller levels, those of you who played the original Halo will remember that the game tended to use the same room over and over again (remember the Library level?). This made the levels last longer, but also made the whole thing very repetitive. Halo 2 does a better job with hardly any recycling of environments. You’ll still come across repeating rooms, but usually it will only be a room or two unlike the 10 or more identical rooms you had to wade through in the original.

A guitar riff can be heard in the background

Keeping in mind that the game engine is over 2 years old it comes as no surprise that Halo 2 isn’t the prettiest game available right now. This doesn’t mean that it looks bad though. All right, I’ll admit that the human models (except for one or two of the main characters) look like something out of Quake 2, but other than that the game manages to look surprisingly good. The Covenant warriors aren’t exactly teeming with polygons, but thanks to some smart pixel shading they do look convincing enough. The same goes for the environments. Games like Far Cry have terrain that looks far better, but because of good bump-mapping and some amazing dynamic lighting the overall impression isn’t half bad. Unfortunately the game does require a pretty beefy machine to display all of this. Playing on a Core2Duo E6700 with an X1950XTX powering the graphics enabled me to enjoy the game at 1920x1200, but trying it on an X1650XT yielded poor results. The fact that other than changing the resolution and AA levels you can’t control the looks of the game didn’t help either. That said, Microsoft still managed to make this port better than the original Halo port (which was a complete catastrophe)

The sound of the game is where Halo 2 truly shines though. The sound effects and voices of all the characters are top notch, but even that pales in comparison to the amazing music! I cannot overstate how much the perfect music score helps with the immersion and overall enjoyment of the game. To give you an example, roughly in the middle of the game Master Chief walks into a huge confrontation and is advised to just sit this one out. At that precise moment a guitar riff can be heard the background, shortly followed by a great rock tune. Believe it or not, because of that song I just couldn’t stand being a bystander anymore and charged in, guns blazing. I died of course, but that didn’t prevent me from doing the same thing a couple of times more.

Live!

Even today Halo 2 is a very popular online game on the Xbox (and the Xbox 360). To try and make it as big as a success on the PC Microsoft decided to incorporate the Live! online system into it (so far this was an Xbox exclusive). Unfortunately for all it seems that so far Live! hasn’t caught on, as the number of people playing the game online is low. This isn’t helped by the fact that it is possible to play the game with a gamepad. Why would this be a problem you ask? Because even though the game has flawless gamepad support it also enables auto-aiming the moment a gamepad is used for playing. In the singleplayer mode this is a welcome addition, but online it makes the matches very uneven. That said, the multiplayer is fun and the game browser works well.

Conclusion

On paper Halo 2 for Vista is probably one of the worst ideas in history. Porting a two years old game and making it require a brand new operating system is just stupid if you ask me. But for some reason I still enjoyed every minute I spent in the game. The AI of the enemies was still just as good as it was back on the Xbox and the huge temples just as awe inspiring. At a HD resolution a lot of the engine quirks are a bit more noticeable on the PC, but not enough to detract from the overall enjoyment. If the multiplayer catches on the game could deliver a solid online experience (let’s not forget the map making tools available for the PC version). As it is, Halo 2 is an excellent title that missed the first, second and probably even third train – it might be late, but it’s still an awesome fps. With the current PC gaming drought playing a 2 years old classic isn’t as bad as it sounds.