Slashdot Mirror
First Review of Halo
The Halo Guy writes: "Voodoo Extreme has posted the first review of Halo, the new first person shooter from Bungie Software that's an Xbox launch title and will be ported to the Mac and PC later next year. Included are some very cool high resolution Xbox game captures too." I guess buying the bundle will be a little less painful if you get good games with the system.
The xbox is launched in the US in 6 days time.
A journey of a thousand miles starts with a brutal anal raping at airport security
Just when I decided to pass on the Xbox....
D
The first, last, and only tech news site on the net
But I'll wait until it gets ported to the PC
"...today consumers have been conditioned to think of beer when they see a bullfrog..."
"had the game chugging along nicely on a Pentium 2 powered 300Mhz PC equipped with a TNT2 graphics accelerator"
How come games like this can not be designed to run on older pc's. As these graphics look like they would need at lease 600mhz running on a normal pc.
Cruise TT
I'd even be willing to put someone else up as a personal slave for Bill Gates, if he'd get them to release it for the PC.
If that fails, I'll probably buy the XBox for this game alone. Hopefully someone will figure out how to hack the XBox to allow the REAL controllers - mouse + keyboard to be used. Then I'll have a Halo'va time fragging me some alien meat.
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
And how many people remember Bungie promising over and over that Halo would not become a console game? Or, later, that it would be released for the XBox and (PC or Mac) simultaneously? Oh well. Here's to waiting for the port.
Look at the headlights on that dune buggy. Nice(if it is an actual sreenshot). These shots remind me of the Final Fantasy movie.
I'm not buying either a cube or box until I see a good comparison of Metroid vs. Halo.
Then I'll make a decision...
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Is it just me, or does anyone else have a hunch that this might take off the same way Doom did sometime back?
How long till we get a version of Linux Ported to this?
The ultimate slap in the face would be to run Linux on Microsoft hardware.
For what reason you ask?? Simple! to run Mame games! or present a free development kit to the world for the Xbox instead of having to pay foir the development kit.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Finally some competition worth looking into in the console market. It's seems the Console Wars are back on and much better than ever. Time to see if Nintendo's rehashed ideas and Sony's "old" PS2 can compete with the X-Box.
_______
I just wish I could c:\format Internet
The game was originally designed to run on a Mac.
Seems Xbox hasn't lived upto the hype.. IMHO, Madden 2001 for the PSX2 was a lot better then this.
:) But I think this platform may be destined for failure, even if it didn't have the microsoft stigma.
I won't be getting an Xbox anyway, the whole anti-microsoft thing..
anyone else notice the last screenshot in the review shows a character whos design looks heavily influenced by the Protoss in starcraft ?
the knees and 'psi-blade' in particular...
does anyone else keep reading this as "Master Chef" ? Maybe it's just the influence of certain Steven Segal movies or South Park, or the lack of caffeine in my breakfast.
-f
www.blackant.net
... assuming that MS didn't pay this guy a bunch of money for the review, it seems It really is going to happen, that I get an xbox... too bad I have to wait till febuary at this rate.
HALO was planned to be an amazingly, impressive, multiplayer game set inside a virtual online war. If you look at the finished product, having no idea of the original concept, you might think it's a nice, fun game. Woo. But if you knew what the game was to be like before MS purchased Bungie, you would know how HALO has been watered down into a trivial, add nothing new, console version of Quake or Unreal.
Honestly, the fall from a multiplayer, persistant, war story of epic proportions down to a simple action shoot-em-up with a hint of multiplayer is truly a fall form grace.
Suck it up, Bungie. MS stole your soul and your ability to innovate.
Bad Mojo
"If you can't win by reason, go for volume." -- Calvin
I not trying to put a damper on this news it just seems like console gaming has lost it for me. I just don't seem to be intrested ... i thought well its because i am getting older but i seem to game longer and harder now than I ever did before ... but I just don't get the same pleasure of of playing on a console that get from most computer games. I may be that most games I play have so many "additions" the fact that I can change almost anything in the game with a simple download or just the excitement of waiting for an expansion pack ie. Diablo II.
But, then again, I'm just a developer...
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
I used to have a Macintosh, so when everyone was talking about Duke Nukem and Quake and all that I was left out in the cold, but then Marathon came along. I used to go to my friend's house and play his shoot 'em up games on his PC, so I knew the type, but Marathon just blew them all away. I even snuck a copy to our high school computer lab and setup some network games for us "geeks" while the rest of the class was still working on their assignments. It was the coolest game as far as fluidity of game play and ease of use. If Halo follows in that tradition then it must be pretty good. It's unfortunate though that it's only released on the XBox as of yet, I mean it's a shame that the first release is going to be tainted by the "blue screen of death."
On a side note, Bungie has a cool product page with a little more info.
~ now you know
At least two years ago, when I first saw movies of Halo, it looked like a surreal version of Tribes with bang-up art direction and a wonderful mood. The movies shown at E3 in 2000 were...odd. It was obvious that they weren't showing gameplay footage, as the camera did all sorts of fancy cuts to multiple things happening simultaneously.
The most recent movies are certainly not of the same game people started drooling over in 1999. The indoor stuff looks like Yet Another Quake/Unreal game, though with higher polygon counts. The outdoor stuff is spastic and pretty much Unreal Outdoors (tm), with terrain replacing corridors. In the end, Halo has become a lightweight evolution over previous games, and certainly much more of a genre title than anyone expected. This is a far cry from the original hype that made the game seem to burst out all over in new directions.
Halo does seem to have found a niche among zealots who passionately dislike Sony and Nintendo, though. I'm not sure that's a good thing.
Sigh.....did anyone else notice, no curved surfaces, everything was strait lines and angles.
The Quake 3 engine is waaaaaaaaay more advanced, and when Return to Castle Wolfenstein comes out, every single first person shooter is going to look like a POS.
...I dunno. I thought the controls for the game were pretty painful, but then again I have yet to play a console-based FPS whose controls I find as intuitive as keyboard+mouse.
Granted, I didn't get to take the XBox home and hook it up to my Wega, but graphics didn't even come close to blowing me away.
MS is supposed to be spending half a billion promoting the XBox, right? Ads and demo machines are pretty sparsely dropped, so I guess we know where that money earmarked for advertising found its way to, hmm? Not saying that there's payola going on here, but "better single-player than Half-Life" has more than a tinge of that bought-and-paid-for hyperbole.
Easy does it!
This comment has been submitted already, 276865 hours , 59 minutes ago. No need to try again.
I noticed the author said he played through it a few times. If he means fully then this must be some short game. Also console games don't have the same life span as PC games since at the moment, no mods/maps/etc. (although getting closer to this).
So your life span is cut short, and as for the graphics, well, with Unreal 2 and Doom right around the corner, I doubt this will hold the crown for too long in first person shooters.
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad to see a kick ass fps on a console's launch and I've noticed Halo since its birth, but for some reason I doubt people will play Halo as long as they did (and still do) Half Life, Quake and Unreal.
but will it make you dinner?
Or too much Iron Chef!
"It's comin' back around again..." -RATM
Regards,
Marc
Those screenshots are supposedly from the XBox version, then how are they so big? I didn't catch the actual resolution of them, but they filled up my 1600 x 1200 monitor quite nicely. I know the XBox can't push resolutions like that (it would be pointless because TVs don't go that high) so where dod the really grap those screen shots?
sin(6cos(r)+5A)
I think there is a better review over at TeamXbox check out their review.
this?
It was reported last year that someone ported MAME to the Xbox. Unfortunately, since it is not an approved Microsoft title of any sort, it will never be made available for general use.
You should never take life too seriously - You'll never get out of it alive.
I guess I've never liked first person shooters on consoles. My brother had doom for Play Station and I didn't really like the control. Maybe the new controlers will work better. I still think it will work better with mouse/keyboard.
I just don't know. Halo was big news a couple years ago (they did a demo at mac-world..). Then bungie got bought by MS the game was delayed and now seems to be Xbox only. Like the mac world needed one less game developer developing for them....
and hardly anyone has anything ELSE to say about the GAME. but we all knew this, didn't we?
lord knows we'd never say anything POSITIVE about ANYTHING affiliated with MS, michael. but i expect so much more out of slashdot posters than just "well, i won't play it 'cause i'm anti-microsoft, so it must such" or "xbox will fail anyway".
god forbid we appreciate the work of a man who's spent years making a game that, to all ungrieved hearts who've played it, is truly beautiful and amazing.
god forbid we allow him the ability to take advantage of a 600mhz proc & dedicated gaming system to speed up product delivery a bit and increase detail, NOOO, NOT GOOD ENOUGH, IT DOESN'T RUN ON LINUX OR MY 200MHZ PENTIUM.
god forbid we give credit where credit is due and just say "yes, this looks like an amazing game."
i'm amazed that i survived - an airbag saved my life.
Wake up, people. M$ is making money off this. Don't be tempted. Stay strong. Buy a Gamecube 3 days later. The less money they have, the sooner there will be parity in the marketplace. The same goes for keyboards and mice, too. Sure, their mice are nice but Logitech and others make good ones, too. Don't be sucked in! Stay strong.
(I can't tell if this is begging, sarcasm, funny, or insightful. Probably just flogging the old dead horse. Either way, I'm not buying one.)
I don't know guys...why should I get an X-box for this when Doom 3 is coming to our PCs in a couple of years? Doom 3 is way more impressive to me than Halo.
I look at these screen shots and two things irritate me:
1. Why do game developers insist on rendering lens flare into every fscking game? Lens flare is bad. I still don't get why so many numskulls think it looks cool.
2. Even though the number of polygons keeps going up, so the size of the polygons can come down, so the detail can go up, it's still obviously a bunch of polygons.
Can someone explain to me why every freaking game does everything with polygons? Can't these "advanced" video processors render a freaking curve in real time? I mean, some things are round, human body parts (one would think) are better described with curves than a million tiny polygons.
I am not a game devloper and I know little of rendering. Is it just that curves are that much more processor intensive than drawing 31.25 million triangles per second?
It's not like individuals are buying the dev kits in the first place...
Developing console games cost millions of dollars.
I doubt any homebrew xbox games would be worth playing or developing.
And the idea of turning the xbox into some easy terminal or netpliance is stupid to put it bluntly. For spending a couple extra bucks, you can get a much better and more upgradable system.
i think the only thing microsoft is really worried about is pirates, not linux hax0rs.
I don't think the screenshots are real.. If the gateway tv/computer taught me anything is that the resolutions of tv's is not high
At times I find the demographic here rather amusing. .that is, of course, unless you give us cool games!
There is hell to pay for the anti-linux initiative. .
So, how many of these do you think hear the cries and respond with active participation in the gov't and such, the things around them?
When will someone port everquest to the MAC?
about a year ago, when first previews with more than just some marketing hype came around, Halo was the next step in FPS gaming.
let's see - it had a persistent, massive-multiplayer online world, a solid storyline driving an amazing outdoor graphics engine. and there were rumours that it was going to be released for windos, Mac and Linux - simultaneously.
then, bungie got bought.
when Halo finally comes to the PC in summer 2002, it will be yet another FPS, as all the really innovative concepts have been removed. the graphics will also be much less amazing given the amount of time that has passed.
all that wouldn't be catastrophic, if it weren't for the fact that 90% of those who were starving for Halo earlier this year have been alienated.
first the Mac and Linux users by bungie being acquired by none else then microsoft. the bungie forums were aflame in Mac users who felt somewhere between sold and raped.
then, all those looking for the "next generation" game were pissed of by waiting about a year longer than was originally said, during which time Halo's graphics and physics engines have dwindled from "revolutionary" to "quite nice".
and finally, everyone looking for the next step in FPS gaming, in the sense of more depth in gameplay than just kill-em-all, will have to look for some other place. sorry, Halo is just another shooter, try again next year.
frankly, selling the game as part of a bundle is, IMHO, the only chance it has to break even. some idiot has systematically destroyed its fanbase, and because of the early marketing offense, almost everyone who'd pay money for Halo *was* a part of the fanbase.
let's hope someone takes that which has been taken out of the game, i.e. all the *really* great parts, such as the persistent world, and makes a game around those.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
has played their Dreamcast online with "Alien Front Online", "Outtrigger", "NFL2k1", etc...will notice that when using one of these "New Fangled" machines it will be like taking a big step in the reverse direction. Is it not sad that when the bar gets set to a certain level -- todays competition does not match up to yesterdays inovation. Just wait until all these people buy Halo and are able to "own" the AI of the machine -- and are left with nowhere else to turn for competition.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
... all I can say is that we've got an Xbox demo stand downstairs in the lobby and it's pretty damn cool ;)
$5 a go, anyone?
"Never let the truth get in the way of a good story..."
Not "real"? Are you proposing that the screenshots were created my magical faeries?
The screenshots were not taken on a TV, but they are indeed real screenshots taken at a playable framerate.
Here are some other xbox bundles that Slashdotters may want to take a look at.
On the cutting edge again I see...follow this link to the preview dated 10/25/01 - which is almost exactly the same article as the review. The review has a bit better writing and imagery...Talk about recycling editorial!
It's not funny till someone gets hurt.
Remember, Bungie was jumping into the Linux games market, with titles like Myth 2 (way cool game!).
Now we'll never see a port of this for Linux.
Although, I just bought a slew of Loki games, and I'm still playing Terminus.
HALO is not coming out, ever. Bungie made big promises for ONI and HALO to Mac users for years and years. Now both games are out, and they both suck hard. I played HALO the other day, and it's about half as fun as UT. I always knew they were lying, though. Give me Soul Caliber 2 instead.
Stop. Wait. Pause for breath.
Don't speculate that this is faked up, or a bought review, or that it rocks, or sucks, or is the best thing since sliced Tomato Demon.
Just wait. Wait until you've played it in a store, or your excited friend plays it, or a plethora of reviews from many independent sources are available.
Anything other reaction is just buying the hype, either Microsoft's bought hype or that of the anti-Microsoft crusaders.
Make the decision now to wait until after this Christmas to buy an Xbox. It'll still be there, and it's still be as good or as bad as it is on the day it ships.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Lens flare these days looks like, well, lens flare. It's easy to do in realtime; not rocket science. It's been done on a number of games.
Head on down to your local Electronics Boutique or Babbages; you can see for yourself. This game is visually beautiful, and it's not just the lens flare. These shots are all real -- or at least, I can't detect any differences between these and the actual game running in realtime (except perhaps resolution, as I've only seen it on NTSC).
-spc
How do you get hi res screen shots from a game designed to run on a device that uses a TV for output? Smells fishy, but that could just be my lunch.
I'm going to go back in my box and will think within the limits of my box: MS Sucks Linux Good I read too much Slashdot.
I sorry to say that this is just a version of Q3 or UT set on the Ringworld created by Larry Niven.
I guess one of the game designers was reading/had read that series while designing the game. Probably up late one night gaming before a big meeting and when asked for an idea blurted out the whole ring world thing, as defined by Niven.
If you can't innovate.. steal from someone else.. works well for M$.
I am constantly blown away by the progress of games in general. My first videogame experience was breakout on the Atari VCS. Look at how far we've come. Incredible!!!
I was really impressed what Secret Level was able to do for Unreal Tournament on the Dreamcast. 8 player online, with most of the popular PC maps. Broadband support, keyboard and mouse support as well.
Of course it wasn't as good as the PC version, but it was enough to make me believe that FPS's do have a future on consoles. At least two of the new console have "easy LAN party/networking" potential that I've been waiting to see on consoles for years.
The Xbox (with ethernet) and the PS2 (with Firewire) would be a lot easier to haul around than a big computer, and without the hassles that Windows inevitably brings to network gaming. (DirectX hassles, random crashes, etc.)I really can't wait for the Gamecube Broadband adapter, does anyone know if that will be released at launch? I hope the 'Cube version of Perfect Dark supports LAN play.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
The gaming community has been drooling over this title for weeks, or months. Many think it'll be the Xbox's killer app. It's visually stunning, and apparently the graphics and, more importantly, gameplay -- both single player and the innovative multiplayer modes -- are a step beyond any FPS currently out there.
MS has spent a ton sending playable demos of the XBox -- usually showcasing this, the new Oddworld, and a few other first-party titles -- to many game retailers around the country. Stop by an Electronics Boutique, Babbage's, etc and if they have a demo console, try this game out. It's for real, and I for one am planning on buying an XBox, in large part for this game.
There are other reviews on the web; check out GameSpot (who also has many movies), TeamXBox, etc.
Tony Hawk 3 is also out for GameCube launch, but there's no review of that version of it up yet.
My other
http://animefreak.arkaic.com/goon/xbox_eb.JPG (XBox Demo Unit @ Electronics Boutique Metrotown in Vancouver BC, Canada)
See something here? Microsoft's XBox demo units use CRT TVs! How is one supposed to see the awesome graphics quality of their product? If you have taken a look at PS2, they used small LCD screens for their PS2 demo units and the quality is QUITE awesome. I kind of got discouraged to even consider buying an XBox after seeing this as Microsoft makes more money per second than Sony does in a month. If anything, they should have used Computer Monitors instead of these not-so-good-looking-quality Televisin screens.
As a longtime mac user, I was (and still am to a lesser degree) a huge fan of Bungie. Starting with the original Marathon, they've always put a lot of love and technical detail into their games, and their storylines were some of the most complex and intriguing in the industry. Even now, the Marathon story is still a matter of discussion. Hopefully, all that and more carried over into Halo (which is a spin-off of the Marathon story). But considering what we've lost already - the game was originally to be played from a third-person perspective to enhance the storytelling - I'm a little doubtful it will live up to our original impression. Well, here's hoping the mac version will run on my new powerbook.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
...and i'm starting to regret it. all of the xbox screenshots i see look noticably better than the ps2 graphics. that's too bad because i really don't want to buy the microsoft product. especially since it seems the future trend for these devices is towards a full media hub- gaming, dvd, music, internet browsing, hard drive space, etc. the last thing i want to do is use a platform that will force me to go where microsoft wants me to go. i would rather play games, watch dvd's, listen to music, and surf the web as microsoft free as possible. perhaps i'll just have to enjoy my ps2 for now and wait for the ps3.
I've been boycotting Microsoft products for years. I don't see any reason to stop now. It amazes me to see the M$-bashing Slashdot crowd suddenly cooing all over the newest Microsoft baby.
I don't think Microsoft is inherently evil. Windows XP would be their first decent "for-home-machines" OS if it wasn't for all the crappy business practices such as tying it to Passport. Their business practices have been so damaging to the technology industry that I refuse to buy their products.
You all should think about that before you run out to buy their new toy. There are other toys on the market.
include $sig;
1;
In all fairness, designing non-humanoid aliens is a tricky business. Yes, the knees do resemble those of the protoss, but how many ways are you going to design legs besides those of humans? Protoss/Covenant knees resemble those of a number of different animals (albeit of the 4-legged variety). My point is, if you're going to design a realistic creature, there are significant limitations. It's debatable whether nature will even allow many bodyforms wholly different from those you already see in the natural world.
As for the rest of the body, they're not that similar, and although they're using an energy blade it's not like that of the Protoss.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Granted the XBOX has a powerfull graphics chip, but isn't the biggest trick in the bag -- that the resolution of the TV is *soooo* much lower then the pc its trivial to render for compared to the (standard) 1024x768?
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
The only success that I can think of off hand are rare games for the N64 or those Torack fog-o-vision engine games (they where pretty crappy). However, drawing a comparison between these seems a bit apple's and oranges to me.
The Console dones't really lead itself to playing FSP's for some strange reasion, probally the same reasion that you dont really get a lot of RTS's for it,, It is, in short weird.
At the end of the day there has not been one commerically successful PC to Console FPS conversion and that should be a bit of a worry for M$, esp for a game that they think people are going to buy the console for
Also, not to dis this game (after all some block spent years creating this) but when I first looked at the game everything about it look's like it has been taken from some other game, A lot like that crappy lost in space movie from a few years back looked like it was a taken off every scifi movie for the last 10 years.
The consoles (typeface) plus textures scream half life, The outdoor sections look a lot like tribes 2 mixed with unreal, the aliens look like they have been lifted out of starcraft (the protoss), etc etc. I get the distinct feeling that playing this game is going to be like seeing the disney movie ATLANTIS again.
Hell Iam open minded while I dont plan on buying any console in the future the Windows port does look it might be worth picking up. I would not buy a console for a FPS. If the PC version of this game out sells the Xbox version (which I think it will) then the Xbox is doomed.
Hrm. It took Half-Life a good year or so to attain that title (in most peoples minds, myself included...in fact in some circles HL is considered one of, if not the best overall game ever). This game would have to be something utterly, mind-blowingly incredible to earn that title so *quickly*. It hasn't even been played by the masses yet, Internet multiplayer won't be around for a while, who knows when the ports are coming out (which is where it will reach the most people, imo). I think due to these factors, Halo won't quite be able to dethrone HL.
We need to really let it sink in and get played a lot before making those type of grandeous claims. But then again, maybe it will live up to the hype. Personally, however, I see great games rising up from fairly little hype(although I can't remember the hype over HL). All the 'hyped-up' games generally drown a bit in all that hype.
- A non-productive mind is with absolutely zero balance.
- AC
Actually, intial development work for Halo was all done on a PC, using MS Visual Studio. The engine was designed to be portable, and in-house work on a Mac port was in process at the time of the Microsoft buyout, but Jason Jones was on record at the time as saying that all primary development work for Halo was being done on PCs.
As far as I know, the only pre-xbox demo of Halo that wasn't performed on a PC was the 1999 Macworld one.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
- It's a first-person-shooter
- It's for the console
First-person shooters, in general, are IMHO the lowest class of games. Regardless of smart enemy AI, semi-deformable terrain, etc., the gameplay is almost always the same: "aim for the face". That's it. Just run around, look at the nice backgrounds, and shoot demons in the head. It gets boring after about 5 minutes. The notable exceptions for this rule are HalfLife and Deus Ex, both of which introduced story elements and puzzles into the braindead shooter genre. The ultimate continuation of this trend is System Shock 2, which has actually caused my college grades to drop a couple of points, and gave me nightmares for years to come. Unfortunately, it looks like Halo is sticking with the stale old formula: shoot monsters in the face, and that's it.As if this wasn't bad enough, Halo is a shooter game for the console. There are 2 reasons why FPS games for consoles rarely work. First of all, consoles have no mouse. It's hard to aim without the mouse. When the sole purpose of the game is to aim for the face, the lack of a good aiming mechanism becomes troublesome. Second of all, consoles rarely have good Internet access support. This means that multiplayer games (i.e., deathmatch) are hard to pull off. Actually, the Xbox may be able to overcome this limitation - we'll have to see.
In general though, I wouldn't buy Halo even if it was released for the PC. Not because of some kind of a religious anti-Microsoft passion, but simply because I expect the game to be boring. In case anyone remembers, Max Payne was also hyped as the best forst-person shooter game ever - and it turned out to be a glorified rail game with a cool graphics effect that you get to watch over, and over, and over, and over again.
Unfortunately, modern games seem to be focusing more and more on graphics, and less and less on actual gameplay (works of art such as Ico are rare exceptions). I, for one, will note use my hard-earned cash as a vote to continue this sad trend.
>|<*:=
Now what do we get, the X-box. When it was first announced innocent little me believed all the hype, believed that it would be better, believed it would be everything the PS2 promised but failed to deliver, and more.
Now this, a prettier Perfect Dark? The screen shots are pretty but its no leap forward. A step maybe, but no leap. I am so dissappointed, even this glowing review mentions choppy frame rates! Frame rates were a problem with Playstation that was 6 years ago. I accept the laws of diminishing returns, but how is frame rates still a problem?
Now its all down to Gamecube to provide the revolution that this new generation promised, I know its Nintendo but depressingly I am not holding my breath.
This is the worst sig ever.
The PS2 A/V outputs are better than "Just Enough". It supports DTS, has an optical out (though really all DVD players have that, so it's not saying much) but also component output (and I think progressive scan at that).
I seem to remember a number of reviews when it came out saying that the video quality output from DVD's was equal to some higher end players.
Now the DVD control features, there I'd have to say the system is lacking big time. They could have had an amazing array of control features but instead really do have an almost less-than-minimal set. It will be interesting to see if the XBox improves on that or has the same lame set.
I use the PS2 as my only DVD player for the moment (having given away the other ones to family), and at no point has the A/V quality been an issue. It't certainly better than an Apex DVD player I bought a bit ago with a bad tendancy to stutter at times. Now THAT is annoying.
As for MS selling a million units (you didn't specify a timeframe, but I assume you meant "before CHristmas" and not "ever"!), it could be possible but they have some brutal competition. I'm preordering a Gamecube just for Rogue Squadron, and some of the other Gamecube games look equally amazing. The PS2 has come into its prime with multiple fantastic games, and will probably dominate THIS Christmas. Now next Christmas, that's anyone's guess but it will probably come down to the best set of unique games are around for each platform. So many games now are developed for all the machines there are only a small set of games that make each platform unique.
One last note - have you forgotten that Panasonic (at least I think it was Panasonic) is coming out with a DVD playing version of the Gamecube? If I knew the feature set was better I'd get that instead of the base gamecube.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You're asking why newer games can't be designed to run on older PCs?
Are you on crack? Do you know just how much new, graphics-laden games would royally suck if they were designed with, say, a Pentium 90 in mind?
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Bungie had the storyline for this game sorted way before MS has anything to do with it. It's morons like you who make the rest of the /.'ers look like lunix fanboys who can't ever admit that MS has done anything good.
The nintendo 64 controler worked pretty well for me, at least on Goldeneye which was all I ever played on it.
The simple fact is the screenshots are about 1280x965 pixels. I TV has a theoretical maximum of 525 horizontal dots of resolution (and somewhat fewer vertical lines).
That means these are not screenshots. They're manufactured by some other means. Only MSFT knows for sure. Certainly not the reviewer.
Whatever else is faked is left to our imagination...
A beginners' guide to Portland, OR?
Ok.. Ok.. I know some people live for video games but really. It's only a game people, why the fuss?
Ok, it's not being released this week or probably this month for the Mac/PC. But there are OTHER games to play out there. The world won't stop turning. Life goes on.
From what I've seen so far of HALO I'm not even that impressed with it and am definately not running out to buy a Xbl0X to replace my PS1 that I'm quite happy with.
HALO is here today, probably will be gone tomorrow, and next year it will be in the $10 software bin.
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
Every game seems to use this effect now, and they all put it in their screen shots. But why do they use it so much? Does anybody feel that this enhances gameplay or even the graphics in any way whatsoever?
Lens flare is not experienced with your eyes in real life. It's an effect of a camera lense. So in a game where the creator wants to make it look at real as possible, and make it appear as you're in the action, why would they use an effect that makes it feel like you're behind a camera?
The only purpose I could see using for is maybe in a sports sim that allows replay, or possibly in some cinematic sequences where you'd be looking at a TV within the game.
Start enumerating your responses today!
Dont eat yellow snow
Although Microsoft now owns the whole of Bungie, as part of the deal, Take 2 Interactive (who used to own 19.9% of Bungie) have acquired all the rights to Oni and Myth, as well as the rights to build two titles based on the Halo engine.
Bungie have also been quoted as saying that they will remain autonomous within MS, and may continue to develop titles for non-MS platform (e.g. Mac), although it remains to see how long that lasts. I suspect that Mac titles may be allowed to continue for a little while, but PlayStation 2 titles will be knocked right on the head in favour of X-Box.
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
Wake up, people. M$ is making money off this. Don't be tempted. Stay strong. Buy a Gamecube 3 days later. The less money they have, the sooner there will be parity in the marketplace.
Actually, Microsoft loses money on every XBox console that anyone buys. The exact figure is unknown, but it's estimated at $200 per unit.
More than one wag has suggested that MS-haters might want to buy lots of XBoxes this christmas, just to put a big ol' dent in Bill's bottom line.
Of course, what they do make money on is the software, which is why they're trying to force those awful multi-game bundle deals on everybody. But if you can find an unbundled xbox and a single copy of Halo, you can have a pile of gaming goodness and still pick Bill's pocket while you're at it.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
To the Bungie Webmaster to get you answers. Please!:
webmaster@bungie.com
Frog Blast the Vent door
( Because he provides such good answers...)
- Sig
I won't play.
However, I did go to a Comp USA in NJ, and they had an Xbox setup with a Football Game.
While I am not an avid footballer (of any kind of football), it was an interesting game to play. The graphics were very crisp, and the sound (as hooked up to a subwoofer-enabled sound system) was pretty damn good..
I am not in love with the controller, though. A little too narrow for my average-sized hands.
FUD?
Isn't that the same Adobe lens flare effect that people complained about months ago on /.?
Do really dense people warp space more than others?
Halo was designed and developed on the mac... before ms made the grab for the company they were almost done the mac GM... now they turned it in to a FPS and made it a shitty X-Bawx game.... I won't be buying it.
But you will have to wait for something like six month from the xbox launch day, since MS paid alot of money for a Xbox exclusivity. The only reason i think this game is so good is because of that deal -it looks like a real killer app.
The graphics are quite nice, but it seems to me all of these "revolutiony" features were done first with tribes 2, and improved on in Tribes 2 (and runs extremely well on Linux).
You can't compare those kind of games because they are totally differnet from one another.That's why you can't pick "the best game of all time" .You may pick the best sports game or the best rpg , but you can't compare two genres together.
Hello, what do you think most people are going to play the game on? Dumbass.
No they aren't. They are shots taken with a developer or pre-release version of the game which supposedly allowed you to change the resolution. The final game doesn't support the HD resolution the screen shots were taken at.
FWIW, I've played all of the major shooters from Wolfenstein through today's HLCS/UT/Q3/Wolf2. I'm not a PC-only type, either, I have also spent hundreds of hours in front of consoles.
I spent an hour at e3 playing Halo. Not looking, playing. First off, it is truly beautiful. Nothing I've seen compares with the look of the game. Driving around in a car adds something I've wanted to do (and failed with mods) for a long time.
Know anyone who plays Counterstrike with a Sidewinder? There is a reason people use mice and keyboards for FPS games-- it evolved over years of trial, research, and all sorts of goofy 'solutions' from joysticks to headbands.
Halo is simply unplayable on the Xbox. Anyone who has tried Doom or Quake or UT on any console will attest to this. Yes, you can spend 20 hours learning how to cope with the lack of a mouse, and you can get close to the speed required to play a FPS. But not close enough.
I'll wait for the PC version on this one, and it looks to kick ass. As an added bonus, I can't wait to pound fool Xbox users who join PC multiplayer games. You'll be able to spot them easily, they'll be the ones with no points.
That Microsoft is making Halo their launch title really shows Microsoft's lack of knowledge about consoles and gaming. FPS games on consoles are about the worst-selling type of console game-- they aren't even a category. Treating a console like a PC does not make it one.
When I look a historic come from nowhere successful launches, say, PlayStation, I see awesome console games and strong differentiation from competition at launch. PlayStation had kick-ass console games at launch - Toshinden, Ridge Racer, Tekken. Saturn was a very weak contender. The only thing I see that *might* be worth a look is Oddworld, but that isn't worth buying a console. I'll just wait for the PC version, or the Gamecube version.
I just don't see strong differentiation for Xbox. I don't see powerful, must-have titles that are exclusive on the Xbox.
OTOH, Gamecube has some awesome games that I won't be able to get anywhere but Gamecube. Rogue Squadron, Luigi's Mansion, etc. Those games are sweet.
-B
The PS2 A/V outputs are better than "Just Enough"
Chalk it up to poor word choice, then. We're still off-topic here. I meant only to imply you get the most important features from the fully-loaded consumer players. My DVD player (also made by Sony) has outputs for Dolby 5.1, and digital audio, and extra outs for something like four audio sources, and on and on and on.
One last note - have you forgotten that Panasonic (at least I think it was Panasonic) is coming out with a DVD playing version of the Gamecube?
I had, in fact, not heard of this. Maybe because the story ran on slashdot. That's cool nonetheless, but when did another electronics company get rights to Nintendo's design?
Remember, Bungie was jumping into the Linux games market, with titles like Myth 2
Bungie was hardly "jumping into" the Linux market. They licensed Myth II to Loki well over a year after the PC and Mac versions shipped.
Even before the MS buyout, Bungie never said a word about a Linux port of Halo, probably because Loki never sold more than a handful of even their most popular titles.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
What I am trying to say here is that if Microsoft wants to show the best graphics quality that this console pulls off, they should spend the extra money and use LCD screens instead of CRT Screens as LCD screens usually show better quality in most cases. It is quite obvious that most homes in the United States still use CRT-based televisions, yet in order to sell these consoles you must make sure you can show the best that the console can do. A CRT television limits that.
I may be wrong, but I believe I read that multplayer Halo meant 4 people on a console or 16 people with 4 consoles hooked together.
Are any of the Xbox games planning to large, online, multiplayer modes a. la. Tribes2 ??
If Chaos Theory has taught us anything, it's that we must kill all the butterflies.
First off, I don't see any real features lacking as a DVD player on the PS2 except for the high quality outputs. It can do slow motion, A->B playing, etc with the remote. You can do most of these things also via the menu with just the upgraded 2.10 drivers (that only come with the remote, but people say that it might come with games later). The only annoying thing I have against the PS2 is that you can't turn it off/put on standby with a remote.
Second, the Panasonic Gamecube is known as the 'Q', but apparently, it won't be coming to the US, or at least not officially yet (probably don't want to announce it to hurt next week's sales). This was announced on GameSpot, cube.ign.com, etc. a few days ago. Anyway, enough of this off-topic post...
They are licencing Nintendo's chipset. I believe the model with the DVD drive will cost the same as an XBox or PS2. The story did run on /., but I had read about that on IGN and other sites first.
Also, there are no audio or video options that the PS2 doesn't support - it also has Dolby Digital 5.1 and everything else you'd find in any player (and things like DTS support you don't see in all players) ranging up to the most expensive. The only thing it doesn't have is a RCA type digital connector in addition to the fiber connection, but few low or even mid range players have more than the fiber connection anyway and most receivers seem to support the fiber connection. Like I said, you get no more A/V features on a $900 player than you get with the PS2. It's only the poor control options that bog it down.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Heh, I think you meant:
;-)
Frog blast the vent core
I've never seen a more realistic form of textual fellatio than is contained in that voodoo extreme review.
What a crock of shit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_U.S._Election_c
How long do ya'll think it'll take till someone
writes an emulation app for xbox games?
In comparison to writing an N64 or PlayStation emu (which have both been done), emulating the very PC-like xbox on an PC should be a piece of cake.
Are there any such projects in the works yet?
C-X C-S
mod this up - it's true. All you bashers would be eating this up if an identical system with an identical game lineup was released by Sony.
Oh, and it's obvious you Linux people can't code. This statement is off-topic, but true.
ll iiin nn nnnnn oo00o 0o000 xxx
slow
buggy
slow
(a marketing rep lent Techhouse at Brown University an XBox so I got a chance on the system)
Halo is basically a pc game on a console, but the controls were quite good, despite it being a FPS.
The 1 player mode was short. I am not sure how many hours it took, but it was easily completed in a day.
Multiplay is cool. Its kinda fun to jump into a jeep and roll over your opponent, or even better, hitting his jeep just before he manages to get in, making his jeep roll him over (which counts as a suicide).
Anyhow, the graphics were damned nice - which is a good sign for microsoft - that a first gen game looked so good. Maybe most impressive is how smooth the game ran with so many explotions, and moving characfters, and such. Of course, our 65" HDTV helped the experience a bit.
I really wish I could get some nice pc net action on the game, though. I suppose the xbox wouldn't sell if halo came out for the pc. Oh well.
Does Halo take place on a Ringworld? Looks that way in the screenshots, but they got the perspective all wrong. By the time the curvature of ringworld brings the arc into view over the horizon, it should appear MUCH more narrow and farther away than it does in those screenshots.
This ringworld looks to be maybe a couple hundred miles in diameter and perhaps 50 miles in width, Niven's Ringworld was 180 million miles in diameter, and 1 million miles wide. The walls at the edge were 1000 miles high.
This screenshot also seem to show that the sun is offset from the center of the ring. I am having a hard time accounting for the shadow on the visible part of the ring, given the position of the sun.
Edith Keeler Must Die
You should get the official Sony Remote for PS2. Updates the DVD drivers and adds several features to the playback.
5 4§ion=MoviesEntertainment
http://www.beststuff.com/article.php3?story_id=23
Men believe what they want. - Caesar
Well, if the point of writing games is to make money, Deer Hunter was a stroke of genius.
A friend of mine 'invented' deer hunter for Valusoft/GT Interactive.
IIRC, the game took 2 months to write and cost $62,000. I don't recall how much money GTI made off it, but lets just say the suits were creaming. AFAIK the programmers and my friend never saw any of that money (in the form of bonuses or comissions).
Oh well... Interested in good electronica?
Isn't it kinda funny that there was a separate rating for "Stability" ? I'm not much of a gaming nut anymore, but that's the first time I've seen a percentage rating applied to a game's stability. Scary stuff, combined with the crashing EB XBoxen.. I'll still be holding onto my PS2 for a while i think..
-Billco, Fnarg.com
I suppose it must be a spinning ring (imagine how much tensile strength the materials would have to have!), engaged in some sort of insanely complex orbit with those planets and/or moons that I see in the screenshots. Man, I have to get myself one of those.
It does add some features (though I've never really used a-->b much anyway).
However, what I'm really missing is variable FF/REW. 2x just does not cut it when you are looking through a really long chapter, I used to love the 2x-40x range my old Toshiba DVD player offered - that's really the only feature I miss.
The other feature I don't really miss but does seem to be included on a number of players is "Zoom". I always thought the PS2 could probably have a very cool variable zoom instead of the fixed zoom offered by everyone else, after all it has all that processing power it could devote to video alteration...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You'd have to reverse-engineer the BIOS, just like IBM did years ago. Then you'd have to modify Linux to act like XOS.
/.'ers principles). Just remember how long it took Compaq to crack IBM's bios. Look at the quote below (taken from a Cringley column on PBS.com)...
This doesn't sound like an easy thing... and you've still got to pay MS (which seems to go against most
"Probably the most famous (and profitable) instance of reverse engineering was Compaq Computer's cloning of the original IBM PC. Would-be PC clone makers had to come up with a chip that would replace IBM's ROM-BIOS but do so without copying any IBM code. The way this is done is by looking at IBM's ROM-BIOS as a black box -- a mystery machine that does funny things to inputs and outputs. By knowing what data go into the black box -- the ROM -- and what data come out, programmers can make intelligent guesses about what happens to the data when they are inside the ROM. Reverse engineering is a matter of putting many of these guesses together and testing them until the cloned ROM-BIOS acts exactly like the target ROM-BIOS. It's a tedious and expensive process, and one that can be accomplished only by virgins -- programmers who could prove that they had never been exposed to IBM's ROM-BIOS code -- and good virgins are hard to find. Reverse engineering the IBM PC's ROM-BIOS took the efforts of 15 senior programmers over several months and cost Compaq $1 million. Such a deal."
Who's going to shell out the 1 million for this? And when you're done, don't you think the XBox games (which contain the XOS) are going to have some sort of EULA preventing this sort of thing? The legal issues alone would bury this.
Hmmm.... slashdot still can't handle "greater than" and "less than" in plain text mode.
Hmmm.... some of us still haven't figured out what Slashdot's posting modes mean, so I'll say it again: the trick is that the names of the modes are sort of "backwards" with respect to their meanings, but there's a logical reason for it, and if you think about it for a couple of minutes you'll stop being confused.
Here's the big secret: the names of the modes refer to the way the text you type in the box will be inserted into the HTML source for the page, NOT the way the text will be displayed in the browser. Think about the HTML document that is being built -- do you want your text inserted directly into the HTML source, or do you want some translation applied to it first?
Hence, "Plain Old Text" means that what I type in the box just gets pasted directly into the document with no pre-processing (*1) so any tags I type will be interpreted as such and the text will be displayed accordingly -- of course this also means that it eats your "<" sign unless you're clever and use the "<" escape sequence.
This is the exact opposite of the text being displayed "plain" with markup ignored, which seems to be what so many people expect it to mean -- that's actually what the other modes do. I don't know or care exactly what the difference between them is, but "HTML Formatted" does some translation, and "Extrans" translates even more aggressively. The rationale is that here the text is formatted into suitable HTML so it can be displayed as you typed it.
I prefer "Plain Old Text" because it lets me both type tags directly if I want to use them to adorn my text and use escapes if I want to display a tag instead of its effect, or display special characters.
*1 Except that it adds a "<BR>" wherever I hit "Enter", because it's "obvious" that I'd want that. Also, I guess it strips out non-permitted tags that would do something harmful to the resulting document, like a </TABLE> for example.
David Gould
main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}
But as far as story goes, i don't think a single video game has beaten out the Marathon series. And believe me, i've played plenty! Plus, Half-life was pretty bland as far as gameplay went. There were some pretty tense moments, and some very sweet scenes- but overall it just didn't have that same "Ohmygodohmygodiamgonnadie!!!" feel that playing Marathon did. In the end, Half-life just wasn't as fun to play.
-Elendale
IANAT (I Am Not A Troll)
If you feel like a challenge, try vidmastery... I remember back when i tried to do the whole game of M2. That was back when there were a few levels that were thought to be nearly impossible to vidmaster
-Elendale
IANAT (I Am Not A Troll)
-Elendale
IANAT (I Am Not A Troll)
Jeezus... why do i even read this damn site anymore?
-Elendale
IANAT (I Am Not A Troll)
If you want the best, try checking out the Marathon series. Yeah, the graphics are kind of dated by now- but the story still holds up as the best there ever was in a video game. By the way, the guys who made Marathon are (in fact) the same guys who made Halo. The two will probably even be intertwined a bit, if you know what to look for. Halo probably won't dethrone Half-life as the most popular game out there- but that isn't what it was designed to do. It's just supposed to be a good game.
-Elendale (We'll see soon enough if it succeeds in what it was set out to do...)
IANAT (I Am Not A Troll)
I don't know exactly how much money this guy was paid to say Halo was a multi-orgasmic thrill-ride, but that's another matter.
I finally got to play Halo after my local Babbages had a technician in to fix their X-box (which took one day to break). I found it to be pretty, but nothing like what this guy was describing. It felt and looked like a tweaked version of Unreal Tournament's engine, with nice lighting effects. No more, no less. The gameplay was pretty much the exact same thing you've experienced playing any other FPS, shoot this, go here, shoot that, open door, get key, shot some more, go here, repeat ad infinitum. The only thing that really stood out was how the NPC's reacted to eachother, your character, and the environment. When they aren't just standing around, they move and act very fluid and natural. Low level guards cower and panic fire their pathetic little pistols, marines gun down aliens and celebrate, and then chatter back and forth. That much was cool. It's definately a pretty good game, but from all the hype you'd figure it'd reach through your monitor and jerk you off.
Is it me, or are Halo and Tony Hawk 3 and Half-Life the only halfway interesting looking games that are coming for X-Box.
I hate sigs.
Hmmmm...
Marathon was created in what... 1995?
Half-Life released in what?... 1998-9?
Three years is an ETERNITY in gaming technology. Of course the graphics were better *sheesh*.
As for the story... there is no other game as deep in storyline as the Marathon Series. If you can point one out, feel free to.
http://marathon.bungie.org/story
I think looking at screenshots do not do it justice. You have to play it! I was stuck in a rain storm yesterday and went to get shelter in a gaming boutique. Much to my delight an xbox console with halo was there. The stereotypical 8th graders were playing it in coop mode. They were good but sometimes failed to note the story cues. Being an old game developer myself remembering being laughed at when showing doom beta to now out of work bosses many years ago, it was fun for me to watch them "play" the game. Halo is good, not revolutionary but still good for those who love FPS games. Eventually a couple of hardcore geeks showed up and started to watch. They started rambling off technical specs and justifying to themselves why xbox was not good blah blah blah, then suddenly the stuff hit the fan in the game, they shutup real quick and I heard a little "woo" from them. So in the end... hey, theres a new game out and it doesnt suck, go play it and have some fun.
people on ludes should not drive