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Halo 2 Goes Gold
schmiddy writes "This just in -- Halo 2 has officially gone gold as of today. Bungie has confirmed the story with an announcement on their front page. Trailers and such available here ."
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won't have any time for the GF soon...
won't have any time for the GF soon...
GF, eh? I suppose you have a copy of Duke Nukem Forever as well?
A computer game has been released. The President isn't scheduled to comment on the momentous event...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
So we can all argue about why it's being released on XBox, but not PC, extoll how much better it will be than D3, complain about the code not being OSS, point out miniscule contradictions in the screenshots, post mirrors, make jokes, argue about why it's being released on XBox, but not PC, extoll how much better it will be than D3, complain about the code not being OSS, point out miniscule contradictions in the screenshots, post mirrors, make jokes, argue about why it's being released on XBox, but not PC, extoll how much better it will be than D3, complain about the code not being OSS, point out miniscule contradictions in the screenshots, post mirrors, make jokes, bitch about dups, get off into some tangent about video cards, and make jokes.
You're new here, aren't you?
Any sufficiently well-organized Government is indistinguishable from bullshit.
I should preface this comment by saying it is very subjective and should be read as such. I'm making huge generalizations about entire platforms and I don't want to turn it into a debate but rather a discussion.
/endrant
From the first day, I've been given a horrible impression by all modern consoles. PS2, GC, and XBox. My issues is with their controller setups. I absolutely despise the concept of dual joystick and I think the XBox controllers are the worst yet. Many people would surely agree with me that they're oversized and poorly laid out. There are of course third party replacements.
This leads me to a conclusion that PC gaming is just "better" from a usability standpoint. In a PC FPS I get freelook with the mouse, and 5 individual buttons to map (at least on my mouse). On the left, I get movement and strafe as well as any other function I want to bind near those keys. The classic "Quake" layout. And I can change this layout at will. It is far more powerful and far more natural.
Beyond that, PC games have readily available multiplayer over the internet; the apex of multiplayer gaming. Console games are only just now getting this, and some of them are even subscription only.
In short, if I were to purchase Halo, I wouldn't touch the console. I'd get it for the PC. It's just a superior gaming experience. I don't see how the negligible (to me) convenience of plugging in a console and playing the game could at all be anywhere near the gaming experience you get on a PC with its infinitely customizable interface.
In short, if Halo 2 is available for PC (and Linux in my case), I would consider it. But as long as any game remains locked into a console with what is IMHO an inferior interface it won't be worth my time and money.
Tell me, anyone, what is the lure of console games? Is it merely the plug it in and go aspect? Why settle for an inferior user interface? Or am I missing something important here regarding the design of modern contollers? I did like the N64 controller as well as controllers like the Gravis Gamepad Pro. But dual-joystick just isn't a substitute for a mouse and keyboard for me.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
And there's a whole bunch of .wavs on the site if you go digging.
-T
Lure of console games?
1) Not having to wonder if you system can handle said game...it just works
2) Not having to upgrade your system to play said game...it just works
3) Not having to know your system inside and out.
It's gaming for the masses.
Controllers, I love the Xbox and GC controllers (PS2 can suck it) because of the placement of the dual analogs. Your argument "freelook with the mouse" is done with one analog, and the other is movement and strafe, just like any PC setup. Besides that, many games offer custom controller setups (Halo did) if you don't like the default.
The original Xbox controllers were big, they were big enough to be comfortable like a pillow in your hands after a few hours of gaming. Initially I thought they sucked as well, until I used one for a while and realized how well it was layed out.
It's hot in here..I forgot where I was going with this (if anywhere)
"Halo 2 is a lot like Halo 1, only it's Halo 1 on fire, ...
going 130 miles per hour through a hospital zone,
being chased by helicopters and ninjas
And, the ninjas are all on fire, too."
--Jason Jones
Bungie Studios
for more sweet ninja action, go for www.realultimate power.net
Latest development has been that a set of coordinates for payphones and times were decoded from the site, and people have been going to those payphones, picking them up when they ring, and speaking to "the operator".
Neat, kinda spooky, and coming to a head with the release today.
-T
Blue team has the flag.
Where did that grenade come from?
Red team-flag returned!
Game: Player 'Donald J Trump' now has AI skill level 'experimental'.
I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you XBox fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a XBox (a 8600/300 w/mod chip) for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to copy a 17 Meg file from one folder on the hard drive to another folder. 20 minutes. At home, on my Pentium Pro 200 running NT 4, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this XBox, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.
In addition, during this file transfer, Gotham Racing will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even Tony Hawk Underground is straining to keep up as I type this.
I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various XBoxes, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a XBox that has run faster than its Wintel counterpart, despite the XBox's faster chip architecture. My 486/66 with 8 megs of ram runs faster than this 300 mhz machine at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that the XBox is a superior machine.
XBox addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use a XBox over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems.
Indeed.. which is a crying shame considering what a piece of shit the XBox is compared to recent gaming PC's. 3.4 Ghz with a gig and a half of ram and a GeForce 6800 anyone?
Please point me to where I can get one of those setups for $149, or $100 used.
Hell, for the price of just the FX6800 I can get *3* X-Boxes and games and plug them in around the house for network head-2-head play!
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
The Kerry camp is claiming that Kerry's Halo record is more distinguished than George W. Bush's.
"Do you know what it's like to run down a 12 year old and shoot him in the back, Mr. President? I do!"
Well- I like the fact that it is up here.
Because any time you see ANYTHING about Halo, it ends up in a 'This was a Mac game first' (Have you SEEN the original game, before it was ported to the Xbox? What a steaming pile THAT was...)
After the Mac people get involved, you've got the PC people, who will tell you how crappy the game is on the Xbox. It's better on a PC. Of course, it really isn't that good anyway, but the Xbox controller sucks compared to a keyboard and mouse. You should only play FPS on a PC.
Late in the game, the RPG fans will step in- they'll just tell you how crappy FPSs are. And how the levels are sooo repetitive. It's a brainless game, without any real depth.
Even with the detractors, the game still chugs on. This will be a huge seller. But I will NOT say that anyone will be proven wrong. The detractors will still have their opinions, and that won't change.
But when you give something this much attention, we start to wonder why you hate it so much...
No reason to lie.
I've spent a long time trying to figure out why I dislike this argument. It never sat well with me. It took me months - but one day I went to a friend's house to play some RPGs and I realized why.
"Give us better weapons!"
"No."
"But the game won't be fun unless you do!"
You know, power isn't everything. Sometimes part of the fun is not being godlike. In PC FPS games, you're pretty much guaranteed to be able to snipe people, instantly, with a machine gun, from two hundred yards away. And you know, I don't care. It's not interesting.
In Halo, it's a lot tougher. "Fire for effect" becomes a reality. Sometimes you're not really trying to hit anything, because you can't, you're too far away - you're just trying to keep their heads down.
To me, a game isn't necessarily fun just because I can kill things more easily. It's fun because of the challenge. It's fun because of the story, or the coolness. I'm told they jacked up the difficulty when they moved Halo to the PC - is it more fun now? I mean, sure, you're more powerful. No argument. So are they. So why is it now "more fun"?
I'd agree that there's a level of frustration when you just can't make the controls do what you want. But I didn't encounter that in Halo. You can snipe easily, if you have a sniper weapon. You can aim if you put a little time and work into it. It's far above the frustration point - so what's the issue?
Compare Starcraft and Total Annihilation. In almost every way, Total Annihilation's interface was far superior. You could select an unlimited number of units. You could queue up any commands, up to and including construction commands (yes, that's right - thirty seconds of clicking and you've got fifteen minutes of construction set up.) Does this mean TA is a better game?
No, of course not.
A game is a good game if people enjoy it. That is necessary and sufficient. Deer Hunter is a good game - for its target audience, it fills the exact need. Halo is a good game.
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
Wrong. The Mac. And let it go.
... they tend to get better with time.
Even if it's 3 year old underspec'ed piece of shit, talented devs now know the platform so well they structure the game engine around it and manage to squeeze every bit of perfomance out of it (without worrying about compatibility).
With PCs you gotta aim at the average PC specs, cause there is no incentive coding features that only a minority are gonna enjoy now (the only benefit you get from wasting $2000 on a top of the line PC is a slightly higher framerate and higher resolution... how exciting). By the time the current top of the line PC hardware becomes the standard, the target will have moved already.
And once the next gen consoles come out, PC will have "fall behind" once again.
But as every true gamer knows, what really matters is how fun the games are.
I completely agree with you. I still find myself playing co-op missions or against each other in TS or CTF. Its one of those games that just rocks in every aspect and never gets old, whether you're playing by yourself or against people.
I'm sure just about everyone on slashdot knows and agrees with this, but I would highly recommend XBConnect to everyone who owns an XBox and PC (Aquaduct for Mac users). It tricks your Xbox into thinking players around the world are on your LAN so you can play against them in halo system link mode (or a range of other games). Its similar to XBox Live but free.
Absolutely correct. Bungie had Halo on the Mac running well enough to do demo mode at MacWorld Expo. Then MS bought Bungie, shelved the Mac version, and had them port to XBox. The XBox version came out first, then the PC version, then finally MS got around to releasing the Mac version. Nice company, that MS.
I'd be surprised if Halo 1 didn't account for most XBox sales.
Think about that. Bungie weren't far off releasing Halo for PC when M$ bought them. We then had to wait 18 months for the XBox port, and another 24 months for the more-or-less identical PC version.