While I was busy saving the universe at 15 frames per second, I wondered why anyone would even care to attempt to do so, especially on a world as ugly as the one I was on. But when I found myself sitting back and watching the credits roll for Gearboxâs PC port of Halo, I realized that, despite whatever sluggish graphical performance the port suffers on its introduction to PC gamers, Halo for the PC still retains its original magic that made the Xbox version quite possibly the best first person shooter of all time.
In Halo, you are Master Chief, the last surviving member of a group of super soldiers the human race developed to help fight off the Covenant, an alien species attempting to destroy humanity. You are resting in a hibernation-like state on the starship Pillar of Autumn when the Covenant catch up to your ship and prepare to board it. Captain Keyes, the captain of the Autumn, has you woken up so that you can help the ship fight off the Covenant boarding parties and prevent them from grabbing Cortana, the shipâs AI. And so as you wake up, your adventure in Halo begins.
Halo is a direct port of its Xbox counterpart. While multiplayer now supports online play, and the control system is now mouse-driven (though the game supports game pads and joysticks as well), the game is essentially the same. This, as with most ports, is both good and bad.
Halo run at its highest detail settings looks the same as the Xbox version other than for the fact that PC Halo at high resolution looks extremely crisp. You wonât find, however, anything like improved textures or better special effects. Fortunately, that doesnât mean Halo looks like trash. But while Halo was the best looking FPS ever upon its release for the Xbox, it now ranks only slightly above average for a PC FPS.
The real issue with I had with Halo is on a performance level. I donât have a strong gaming PC, but I can run most games moderately well. For me, Halo, despite it being released close to a year ago, runs on par with games that were just released (Doom 3). I ran the game at the worst possible detail settings at 1024×768 (with low sound quality as well), and I averaged 15 fps (for comparison, gamers consider 30 FPS playable with 60 FPS being optimal) throughout the game. While I found that I could play through the game at that rate even though I was playing at a harder difficulty level, this may have been because I know the levels of the game well. The loss in visual quality for me was quite significant as well. The game at its lowest settings often looked like an early Quake 3-engine game, which is to say that it can look like a 4-5 year old game at times.
The visual quality settings actually have a significant impact on gameplay. On high settings, in a situation where you have a Covenant who is partially invisible and difficult to fight, on low settings, that same Covenant becomes gray and easily dispatched of. Lighting and special effects are affected so drastically that explosions donât really explode (you cannot see explosions or fire) and the flashlight, which is supposed to be absolutely necessary in some levels, becomes an afterthought. Halo actually becomes easier on its low detail settings. Some might say these types of issues occur with all PC games; if you donât have the power to run a game, youâll have to sacrifice certain things in order to play it. I would argue, however, that because Halo runs much more sluggishly than it should in terms of its ratio of performance to visual quality, this is an important issue that needs to be voiced. If you have a slower PC, the performance is definitely something you should consider because it may really damper your enjoyment of the game.
Unlike Haloâs graphics, its music, sound effects, and voice acting donât suffer in the transition to the PC. While Halo supports surround sound, I ran the game in stereo and found the sound positioning to be very strong. I actually heard a lot of sounds I had never noticed in the Xbox version as well. Sound effects and voices are crisp, in sync, and distinct.
Having mouse control, as you might expect, is a huge advantage over the analog sticks of a gamepad. In the Xbox version, the aiming reticle was slightly magnetized; as you got closer to placing your reticle over the enemy, your aiming sensitivity would get slower. Therefore, it was easier to âlock onâ to an enemy once you got your aim onto him. For mouse control, Gearbox just removed this aiming help. I did notice that when youâre manning a turret, youâll still get a little bit of help, however, and so Iâm not sure how much exists (if any) in other situations. Mouse aiming controls well as you might expect for any PC FPS. An odd thing is that the maximum mouse sensitivity that you can set through the game menu will likely be too low for the experienced PC gamer. This, however, can be tweaked externally through information you can find on the Internet. If youâre migrating from the Xbox version, youâll find that sniping and grenade throwing is significantly easier with a mouse despite how well the Xbox version controlled.
Halo separates itself from other games due to the level it immerses the player in. From the start when you wake up on the Autumn, the game setting almost seems realistic, or at least plausible. You can only carry two weapons, just like a normal person might. Youâre a super soldier, part man, part machine, so itâs no wonder youâre stronger than everyone else. You have a rechargeable shield which allows you to survive encounters that would normally wipe out an entire human squad. The characters around you act real and treat you like you would expect for a person of your stature. If humans are fighting around you, youâll notice that their mood picks up when you arrive. They recognize who you are and what youâre capable of. Theyâll chatter during fights and youâll know it when theyâre scared or confident about the current situation. Theyâre human.
Enemies are no different. There is a hierarchy system where if you show the lower grunts that you can defeat their higher ranked warriors, theyâll become scared of you and try to run. If you throw a grenade at them, theyâll panic in an attempt to escape from it. Youâll always feel that youâre powerful, but that doesnât mean you can just walk in and kill everyone Rambo-style. The enemy fights you together as a coordinated team, not just a bunch of AI bots trying to kill you on their own. Itâs hard to understand what this means until you play Halo. In other games, it seems that characters fight you the same no matter what happens around them. In Halo, however, the environment and situation always dictate how the other soldiers and enemies fight.
The sci-fi storyline is great, and the dialogue is consistently good as well. The voice acting is never cheesy, and the music always creates a great sense of atmosphere. The soundtrack picks its spots; itâs not just always looping in the background. Instead, it always seems that, at the gameâs most exciting moments, thatâs when the soundtrack is primed and getting you ready for whatâs coming.
The magic of Halo is that it never lets you break from its grip. Thereâs nothing that reminds you that youâre just playing a game. From beginning moment to end, you are Master Chief, the super soldier. Youâre fighting an alien species for the survival of all mankind. Itâs all perfectly normal, perfectly natural. When you die, you wonât think âHey! Thatâs CHEAP!â Instead, and even at the hardest difficulties, youâll always know you can beat a particular section- you just need to limit your mistakes. And as a super soldier, thatâs all youâll ever want because, after all, you can only control what you do.
What makes Halo such a great game is that it is the closest thing to a cinematic experience in gaming. Usually, a âcinematic experienceâ means heavy use of beautiful pre-rendered cut scenes and high production values, such as what youâll see in the Final Fantasy and Lord of the Rings games. In Halo, however, youâre not playing the movie or reliving the movie, you are the movie. If youâve ever watched movies like Predator, or Aliens, or even Starship Troopers, the pure adrenaline rush you feel in the best moments of those movies is what the entire Halo game creates. In Halo, there are no puzzles or slow moments- Halo is pure action (without boring repetition) mixed in with a fantastic storyline, strong AI, excellent voice acting, and an epic score. Like Half-Life and Goldeneye (N64), Halo will always be considered one of the true classics of the genre.
Test System: Windows XP SP1, Intel M 1.5MHZ (approximately equivalent to a P4 2.0-2.2), 512MB, Radeon 9200 (64MB).
Note: Multiplayer was not tested
(originally published in GamersInfo.net)
