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.

Comments

Re:HALO ... or how MS sucks!

[sql*kitten]

Suck it up, Bungie. MS stole your soul and your ability to innovate.

Alternatively, MS provided the hard cash and commercial expertise to keep Bungie in business to work on wildly-overambitions projects.

Not everything in life is a conspiracy by Microsoft against the entire world, you know.

the death of Halo

[Tom]

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.

Re:Better Review

[Rogerborg]

Cheers, nice review. But...

• "Finally, we have a combat title that actually gives us a taste of what the real thing might be like"

The reviewer needs to go and play Hidden and Dangerous. You crawl on your belly for 20 minutes, then get shot once by a sniper that you can't even see, and just curl up and die. Or, better yet, read "Dulce Et Decorum Est"

Also, both reviews seem to imply that you'll simply zip straight through the single player version, but the multiplayer has enough variety to keep you playing. Hmmm, seeing as how your only option (at launch) is a LAN party, you'd better hope all your friends buy Xboxen as well.

I'll definitely be waiting until after Christmas to decide on an Xbox purchase, and I strongly suggest that everyone else considers making the decision to do likewise rather than playing the "how much is the hype affecting me today" game. ;-)