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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.