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Halo 2.5 for Xbox 2
Voodoo Extreme is reporting that the Bungie team may work on a project to port Halo 2 to the next generation Xbox, adding in additional content and improving overall gameplay and picture quality. From the article: "Can you imagine Halo 2 running at 1280x720?!!! We also wonder what was meant by 'all the stuff people expected from Halo 2 but didn't make the cut.' With this kind of top-secret info, you don't ask; you simply listen."
This has got to be an Xbox2 launch title, which Microsoft knows is the only game they've got that stands a chance of selling system. Halo 3 must be taking too long, so a panicked Board has Bungie re-doing #2. I eagerly await Xboxers falling all over themselves to get this while simultaneously bashing Nintendo for the latest re-release of Super Mario Whatever. Irony.
If only they'd hired a competent Project Manager that knew his/her stuff when it came to delivering software on time, under budget, and to spec, without continuous deathmarch sessions, then they never would need to come out with an "here's-all-the-stuff-we-wanted-to-put-in-but-coul dn't" version. Oh, and would have saved at least the industry-standard 10% of the cost on redos and wasted effort to boot. Guess it is easier to do it twice rather than do it right the first time.
Yeah, right.
This is just one of many reasons that I'm annoyed at the games industry for pushing consoles at the expense of PC gaming lately. There are numerous advantages to playing games on a PC, resolution being one of the big ones.
Sure, consoles have advantages too, but it seems to me that the industry is killing off the PC market, deliberately or otherwise, and then doing thing like this - wowing people with the fancy 1280x720 resolution that they can get just by buying a new console, a new game, and a new TV. And people complain about PC gaming requiring constant upgrading...
Console advantages:
- price ($100 to $300)
- comfy to play in couch. Great to play with friends. Perfect also for getting in a game quickly (no booting, etc).
- easy integration of gaming with home theater. Gamers who work usually already own a nice HDTV and Dolby surround system.
- XBox live ease of use
- no installation pain (hello Steam)
- huge size of existing game library, with a lot of quality titles.
- variety of genres: fighting, racing, rpgs, FPS, platform, action/adventure
- tends to be more originality on console (pikmin, steel battalion, viewtiful joe)
- since the platform is fixed, console titles tend to get better with time, making console a better investement (as a gamer you get a lot of satisfaction from seeing your 3/4 year old console playing GTA-SA, MGS3, Ninja Gaiden or Halo2). It's the opposite with a PC - the newer the games, the older the PC, the worst is the performance.
- not that far behind PC's bleeding edge anyway: Far Cry, DOOM3, HL2 all coming on current consoles.
- gamepad: nice vibration feedback, analog movements and buttons, ubiquity (can be used to fight, drive a car, fly a plane, or shoot).
'all the stuff people expected from Halo 2 but didn't make the cut.'
Like a real ending?
I'll admit I haven't played through all of the single player and don't know first hand, partly cause I would just rather play online multiplayer. However it seems like everyone agrees the ending is shite and I'm taking their word on it.
Even if they are saving for some sort of content download, what about the half of my friends that payed $50 for the game, who would have X Box live but they can't get broadband where they live?
I would also love to see improved networking code. Maybe I just don't know about the underlying infrastructure to appreciate why I get dropped so much, but I recall having better luck playing Quake 2 on my 33.6 modem then I have had with my cable connection that is more or less fairly solid.
The PC gaming industry "killed" itself (your words, not mine) when games became a pain in the ass to play. Thanks to non-standard hardware, option menus you have to be hardcore to understand (remember having to edit your BIOS?), requiring patches and bugfixes on a regular basis, and throwing it all on a platform that is susceptible to total disarray due to viruses, spyware, and the overall crappiness of Windows. I remember the nightmare of getting Dungeon Keeper 2 multiplayer up, and thinking "There has got to be a better way." On consoles, even the lousy games tend to work correctly rather than not at all.
Of course, the hard drive version will cost more than the non-hard drive flash memory version... so if they really are putting a Halo 2.5 pre-loaded onto the hard drive for the Xenon, well, it's a ploy to get the more expensive version to sell. And it also shows Microsoft knows they need Halo to sell copnsoles, despite what many an Xbox fanboi has stated in the past.
However, MS knows that Bungie won't have Halo 3 ready for the Xenon launch, so if this rumor is true, they're trying to have some sort of Halo at launch. They know that Halo single handedly kept the Xbox alive until Xbox Live and some really good games started coming out a year after launch (and anyone who says the Xbox could have really been selling on the other games besides Halo released in the first year is deluding themselves), so they could be hoping to do the same with "Halo 2.5"; IE keep Xenon sales going until better games start coming out for the Xenon.
That's a bit over the top. Pretty much all of the stuff in the collector's edition that they cut from the game was because they could get it to balance correctly.
They specifcally say that they didn't include the ATV because they couldn't figure out a reason to have it in the game either single or multiplayer.
All of the aliens that where left out where half finished ugly looking things.
In any creative enterprise, you consider things that you later deside are a bad idea.
It's easy to imagine Halo 2 at high resolution: you just have to imagine a world in which Microsoft didn't buy Bungie, and so the Halo games were published to sell games rather than to sell game consoles.
This is exactly what I was talking about. The PC gaming industry is destroying itself by over-complicating things and generally making it a pain in the ass to play a game. Over-zealous copy-protection that makes me uninstall other software, "hardcore" options menus that normal people don't have a hope of understanding, the fact that it's basically standard practice to release a game with a plethora of known bugs and patch it later, and on, and on...
Partly it's a bias on my part - I'm just used to playing games on my PC. Consoles make a more stable target for development, a closed system where the developer can hard-code those options that normal people won't understand. Many times, the "big name" games require a serious investment into new hardware to play on a PC. But that's not how it needs to be, or how it SHOULD be. Some games buck the trend - the one that comes to mind if Call of Duty: It does a great job of automatically figuring out what level of hardware the user has, and adjusting all the complicated options to fit the hardware. Half-life 2 scales down to run on 2-3 year old systems (not very well, on some, but it does an admirable job overall).
If the industry would focus a little more on simplifying the PC gaming experience through better-designed automatic configuration, easier and less intrusive copy protection, and scheduling more time for quality assurance testing to get the bugs worked out, the PC might become a competitive platform again.
... finishing Halo 2 for Xbox 1 before making the gaming masses go out and buy a new console just to see the end of the game?
The article summary makes it sound like a fact, but this is in fact a RUMOR that was most likely made up by OXM. Microsoft/Bungie has never said anything like this.
You make some good points, and as I said, consoles have their strong points, but I'd like to point out a few things...
- huge size of existing game library, with a lot of quality titles.
PCs don't have a huge library of exsisting titles?? I can go from playing Half-life 2 to DooM to Nethack and everything in between. Thanks partly to emulators, I can play a huge variety of games from the last 20 years or so. Try doing THAT on an XBox.
- variety of genres: fighting, racing, rpgs, FPS, platform, action/adventure
Again, PCs have just as much variety. Some types of game work better on a console (fighting games in particular) and some work far better on PC (western-style RPGs, RTS, FPS)
- tends to be more originality on console (pikmin, steel battalion, viewtiful joe)
PCs make an easy platform for indie coders to show off their talent and originality. For every Katamari Damacy, there's at least four original games on PC. Most of them don't have AAA budgets, but that doens't make them less fun. Liquid War, Orbital Eunuchs Sniper, Pontifex 2, etc.
- gamepad: nice vibration feedback, analog movements and buttons, ubiquity (can be used to fight, drive a car, fly a plane, or shoot).
Yes, gamepads have some pretty nice features. I wish there were better-quality gamepads for PCs. Analog buttons add a lot to the possibilities for control, and the vibration feature is nice for immersion (you can get the same vibration on force-feedback peripherials). But ubiquity of purpose? My keyboard and mouse have helped me fly space fighters (I prefer a joystick for this, but Freelancer got it right) cut through legions of orcs, sneak through the shadows and blackjack unwary guards, and command my battalions of tanks to overrun an enemy base, and when I was done gaming, they went on to help me write slahdot posts, plan out my next D20 Modern adventure, write code, and learn quite a lot about a whole lot of things thanks to Google.
in both half life 2 and doom 3, possibly the biggest pc games of 2004 video options were preconfigured to preform best on your system. if you didnt want to change them, you didnt, and the idea was that it would run at an acceptable speed. far cry too had this. I played them all, they all had incredible graphics for a video game, and were painless to setup.
Can my TV actually support that resolution?
I prefer consoles mainly because I'm sick of upgrading my video card every 6 months. Even if the games for Xbox/Whatever don't look as good as most PC games, I'd rather know that i can buy the latest game instead of being disappointed by lacking the specs once again. I used to be a big pc gamer, now i use the PC for work and the console for play.
But seriously, you must be relatively new to PC games. Things got *way* better when Windows 95 came out and games started supporting it. Back before that, you needed a plethora of boot disks (or a cleverly constructed boot disk menu system) setting up various types of extended memory managers, TSRs, sound drivers, etc. If you wanted networked games, it got worse as you threw packet drivers into the fray.
You want to play Descent with somebody over the Internet? Can't do it, unless you payed for Kali, which routes IPX over TCP/IP. Doom was fun, but it originally did network calls via broadcast packets -- killing the entire network if more than a few people were playing.
Even after Windows 95, then 98, etc., things still got tricky. Do you have a 3dfx card? Then you want Glide -- OpenGL may not work properly. But what if your game doesn't have a Glide mode? Or what if you don't have a 3dfx card, but your game only has Glide support? (A pity -- I really liked playing Dethkarz with my friends, but it's 3D is Glide only. I could set up an older computer to play it again, but can't expect my friends to do so too ...)
Seriously, ignoring blips like requiring Steam (and an Internet connection) to play games like HL2, PC games are easier to get running right now than they have since they started requiring more than 640k of RAM and better than CGA graphics, and had to actually be *installed* on the hard drive. And as much as I enjoy bashing Microsoft, I also know that much of this `ease' is thanks to Microsoft and the semi-standardized APIs that Windows provides.
What's with these Xbox lovers? I've ran all my PC games at 1600x1200 with anti-aliasing since april (2004) with high framerates (60+). Many other PC gamers do too. And the *next generation* of Xbox won't allow higher resolutions? Other than the low price, why to Xbox users bother with these ugly things which are always outdated the month after they're launched?
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sig sig sputnik
And just yesterday there was the article about Bungie's Marathon being released 10 years ago. In 10 years, they've gone from releasing incredibly innovative games that remain classic for a decade, to rehashing a sequel to a second-rate game that is only appreciated by new 'gamers' who have never played anything else.
R.I.P. Bungie.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
I remember when I got KOTOR for the PC and starting playing around with the sound settings in the game. At one point my game froze and my sound card stopped working for the entire computer. After about 20 minutes of tinkering around with it I finally had to do a Windows Backup Recovery to get back my sound card. When was the last time PS2, XBox, or GameCube did that to your Television? Hell, I bought a mid-top of the line computer last May and Doom 3 stil looked like crap on it. WTF? I don't know about the rest of you guys but PC games are pretty much dead to me.
-Dipster
Yeah its called a PC, now only if they would make a decent port. The Halo 1 port was pretty bad.
In America we are imprisoned by our fear of them.
None of those exist with consoles and the games are nearly perfect.
and i dont know why anyone would be dumb enough to buy an xbox wich is sooo weak compared to a pc."
wow, and here i thought people on slashdot where usually smart. i realize most of you guys probably spend a small fortune on computer junk and alot of people on here may also make a good bit of money doing some computer related job, but the bulk fo this country does not have very much expendable income. I don't know why its so hard to imagine somone buying a $300 game sytem to hook up to there -$1000 hdtv they bought at walmart and there $200-300 suround sound/DVD player they also baught at walmart. why dont they just go pay $1000 for a cpu, $500 for a top of the line video card, and then a couple hundred for a decent sized monitor and another hundred for decent speakers and then that whole ram/hard drive/ mother board/case/ sound car(although most mobo's have decent built in sound now) thing.
so lets see for less than 2g's i can have a nice like 30-40" hdtv and a pretty nice game consle with a ton of games to choose from and decent surround sound... or for atleast 2 grand if not more i can play in even higher res on a 19inch monitor that takes up my whole damn desk and weighs more than german shepard (do we count flat panels? with their crappy refresh rates and/or humongus price tags?)... yeah you guys are right, people are stupid. Especially the lower class, *pfft* who needs em!
Besides when i have to buy a new 500 dollar video card again next year along with more ram, my pc will be soooooo much better than the xbox2 its not even funny.
way to see the big picture everybody.
Kerry Edwards in '05
Yeah I said it!
Plenty of people agree with me.
But this will still sell consoles.
Now mod me down fanbyos, mod me down.
no
But seriously, you must be relatively new to PC games.
Fine, I'll bite. I've been playing games since my old TI-99, which was in some ways more like todays consoles than a PC.
I agree that games have gotten vastly easier to get working on a PC than they ever were before. Years ago, I spent most of a weekend tweaking a boot disk to play Master of Orion on my 486, trying to find the exact combination of drivers that would satisfy the game's requirements and not run out of memory. We're at a point where automatic configuration should be the default, and some games, as noted above, are utilizing it.
The other problems (painful copy protection, long wait for installation, succeptibility to viruses/spyware, etc.) facing PC gaming are the bigger issue. If the PC game market wants to continue to compete with consoles, they're going to need to make some changes and figure out ways around these problems. I should be able to take the game home, put it in my computer, and play (assuming I've got the hardware requirements - a solution to that is probably a long way off, though Half-Life 2 took a big step).
But they did... they all switched to consoles! If you recognize this as a major flaw in PC games, why are you holding out for them to fix it. Just for better graphics? It sounds like you're holding on to Windows for the sole reason being just to hold on to Windows. Let it go. They failed to make the PC easy to use in the face of the alternatives; you don't have to back them any longer!
A seperate race just to use the covenant sniper rifle? Uh, no. Theres already 5 races (6 if you count the prophets) in Halo 2 and Jackals piss me off as it is with the sniper rifle.
A 1 man warthog vehicle? Pretty but the only reason why the Ghost gets away with being a solo vehicle is because it can strafe.
A flamethrower? Fun but how are you going to fit that in? Most maps in Halo PC don't even put in the flamethrower, let alone the players.
Halo 2 is a very tight knit, carefully designed game compared to most other FPSs on the market. Who the hell uses the pistol or machine gun in Doom 3 when you have the chaingun? Why use gravity gun when you have the rocket launcher or crossbow in Half-Life 2? Why use the knife when you can get the sniper rifle or the shotgun in Far Cry? In Halo 2 the pistol still has some use as a last resort weapon (a SMG + pistol is considered to be the best close range method of attack after the shotgun).
99% of people : Bungie? Who the hell is that?
1% Bungie! Marathon!
Post-Halo :
99% of people : Bungie? Halo!
1% Bungie? Those sell-outs!
You call me a troll while simultaneously basing your whole post on a false dilemma?
As you may have noticed, the eventual release of Halo for the PC did not cause anyone's XBox to explode - the XBox copies of Halo kept working, just the same as ever. Making Halo a "PC game" didn't prevent it from being an "XBox game" as well - games are just software.
If such things as "XBox and PC games" are possible to write, then, one is left to wonder why making Halo (a game which was originally written to be cross platform and include PC support!) one of them took two years. It could be because of the vast architectural differences between the XBox and PC, of course, or it could be because of Microsoft's inexperience writing Windows programs - but I don't think I'm being a conspiracy nut by identifying one other contributing factor: each of those Halo-PC copies was just a $50 sale, whereas many of those Halo-XBox sales were $250 sales, to people who would have bought a PS2 (or for those "PC people", no game console at all) if they hadn't found their hardware choices restricted by software compatibility.
This needs to be treated as a rumor and not fact. If it does not come from Bungie, then it's not official. They tend to be honest about what they are working on. I seriously doubt that this is fact at all, and am calling it bullshit.
If they think I'm going to pay another $400 so I can have "all the stuff people expected from Halo 2 but didn't make the cut",
then they're quite mistaken.
Bungie$oft can go to HE77.
In fact, the opposite seems to be occuring: after I pointed out that you were insisting on a false dichotomy, why are you continuing to repeat the same false dichotomy? Releasing Halo for the PC (or for the Mac, or the PS2, or whatever) does not imply not releasing Halo for the XBox. The decision here is not "selling Halo-XBox copies" vs. "selling fewer Halo-PC copies", it's "selling Halo-XBox copies" vs. "selling more Halo-XBox and Halo-PC copies".
I'm not suggesting that Halo shouldn't have been released for the XBox, as you appear to be assuming - I'm suggesting that any non-Microsoft company would have wanted to release Halo for the XBox (making millions of sales) as well as for the PC (making even more sales with very little additional work) and probably PS2, Mac, and Gamecube.
It's not very complicated: Being compatible with more game platforms makes your market larger, which means more people buy your game. Being compatible with fewer game platforms means fewer people buy your game, but the most diehard fans buy the whole platform as well. If you sell games but not game platforms, then unless a platform manufacturer is giving you kickbacks you want to make the former decision. If you sell game platforms, and in particular if you sell a game platform that's so new it's still being criticized for "not having enough good games", then you want to make the latter decision.
1) With a fighting or sports games, the portability of save games is something to consider. And you chose GTA as an example. From this I can accurately conclude you've got no friends let alone friends with a PS2, who've got so little going on they'd watch you play your game.
2) The xbox has got you covered anyway. Oh and making your own soundtracks to your games.
Hard drives for consoles own. They are the absolute shit. It is a huge advantage, you're inability to recognize a vastly superior way of doing things has two possible roots, self-delusion, or ignorance. And the mario party games are impossibly lame. It takes a long time to load a mini game which lasts seconds, involves no talent beyond being awake, and then ends stupidly. Great for taking care of small children in batches of four no doubt.
And Microsoft is smart. This time, they're making people pay extra for a HD. Why, because it's that good. And they can make money from consumers upgrading, a market they simply didn't envision originally.
I think the "implication" works well story wise anyway you want to slice it as it is.
I think the idea of saving the second "over the top" ending after seeing what the market wants it to be, and then remolding it towards that is intriguing, and worth exploring commercially.
They can also, in addition to using the ending to drive xbox live!, and I would hope they would, add it as a free disc in prominant gaming magazines. Finally, they can use it to create a new Platinum edition, rental versions, and xbox bundle.
As long as they have solutions out for both the broadband people and those not on xbox live which doesn't amount to a Kill Bill double shot of Bitch, I think at the very least I should reserve judgement.
Let's not forget the $300 console can really rip through a spreadsheet.
Consoles are toasters. They make toast. If all you want is toast and the style of toast you crave is available for the toaster, buy the toaster. Otherwise, buy a computer.
Feeling so good natured I could drool
Without going and getting out my copy of Dethkarz, I'd have to say I don't think it's Glide only. I know I was playing it last year on my GF4 Ti4200, and I didn't do anything special to get it working. I'd check it out, because like you, I think it's an awesome game and still love playing it. Good luck!
Hey dumbass - 1280x720 isn't totally impressive (though it's not bad either), until you realize it's usually on a screen at least (minimum) twice as big as your puny monitor hooked up to a REAL sound system, not some dinky computer speaker set. And you play from your couch.
You're right, Halo 1 and 2 are indeed better than all the other shitty console FPS games. Congratulations, you've just proved that Halo is better than shit.
Damn strait I'm right.
Console advantages: ...extra, over and above what you have paid for the multipurpose PC which also supports gaming. Could also be put towards a high-end graphics card, which will have a comparable lifespan to a console. (My Geforce 256 can play most modern games, especially at console-equivalent resolution settings)
- price ($100 to $300)
- comfy to play in couch.
Alternatively, you could step out of the 20th century and use your PC as an entertainment hub. The couch is a relic of a previous age; it's growing obsolete; its function is redundant; you may as well tout the virtues of parlor sickbeds. Video capture cards are Great to play with friends.
PC games are wonderful to play with friends, and the added complexity and depth makes the experience that much more meaningful. I have fond memories of Call of Duty and Battlefield 1942 shootouts with friends at LAN parties and online.
I suppose if all of your friends are luddites, technophobes or just incompetent and unable and unwilling to learn new game mechanics, a console might be your second best choice. Your first choice is to acquire better quality friends.
Perfect also for getting in a game quickly (no booting, etc).
Uh, consoles boot too. You have to sit through, usually, multiple logos - one for the console manufacturer and several for the game - and then allow for time for the game itself, since it has to load from slooooooow optical media onto a small amount of memory.
Windows XP boots out of hibernation faster than a Playstation 2 boots to "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas"' title screen.
Additionally, since your PC can do many other things besides gaming, you also have the option of leaving it on continuously. This may not be the best solution for all people, but a lot of people do it.
- easy integration of gaming with home theater. Gamers who work usually already own a nice HDTV and Dolby surround system.
PC gamers usually own a nice high-end monitor and surround sound system.
- XBox live ease of use
Again, this is an appeal to stupidity. This seems to be your strongest point so far.
- no installation pain (hello Steam)
Hi, bandwagon-jumper. I've had no problems with Steam and find it a pleasure to use. Judging from the retention rates, most Steam users agree.
- huge size of existing game library, with a lot of quality titles.
Not comparable to the PC's existing game library, or even the Mac's. Backwards compatibility is worth a lot. I can use my original disks to play "Space Quest" on my current PC, without having to re-buy a "classic pack" or any other such BS.
As far as quality is concerned, PCs have by far the best online multiplayer games, the best RPGs, strategy games, puzzle games, FPS games and simulations. PCs also have a diverse array of emulators available.
- variety of genres: fighting, racing, rpgs, FPS, platform, action/adventure
That is not an advantage over PC games, which have those same genres (sans fighting, but only because that "genre" is defined by button-mashing and joystick thrashing) and more.
- tends to be more originality on console (pikmin, steel battalion, viewtiful joe)
You're delusional. PCs have the advantage of a huge 'homebrew' community which have produced such awesomely creative games like Nethack. PCs have a sizable community of Indie game developers. Then there's the mod community. Then there's the commercial developers.
When I see Nethack or The Incredible Machine-level creativity on a console then you'll be right.
- since the platform is fixed, console titles tend to get better with time, making console a better investement (as a gamer you get a lot of satisfaction from seeing your 3/4 year old console playing GTA-SA, MGS3, Ninja Gaiden or Halo2). It's the opposite with a PC - the newer the games, the older the PC, the worst is the performa
Are you freaking kidding me? Well, there goes your credibility.