Halo 2 Reviewed!

I was surfing Gamerankings when I saw Halo 2 is already reviewed! 'GamingTrend' has reviewed the game & given it a satisfying 86%. Here's the summary:

Graphics - 80/100
Sound/Music - 96/100
Controls - 90/100
Gameplay - 170/200
Value / Replay Value - 80/100

Pros:

Fantastic integration of Games for Windows - LIVE system
Easiest multiplayer system of any PC title to date
Tray and Play is revolutionary and simple
Powerful editor included for free
VOIP system is as simple as it is on the 360
Achievements!
Dedicated servers already in place, as well as the ability to host your own
Keyboard/Mouse and 360 controller support
Low system requirements

Cons:

Mixed bag of high resolution and low resolution textures with no DX10 support
Is activation as finicky as Windows Activation?  Will I need to re-do it after changing hardware?
Vista only means lower adoption rate
Pay-to-Play multiplayer only - no LAN, no Local, No Internet
Full price for a 2.5 year old title

System Requirements:

OS: Windows Vista
Processor: 2 Ghz Pentium 4 or equivalent Processor (or x64)
RAM: 1 GB
Hard Drive: 7 GB
Video Card: DX9 graphics card: WDDM driver, PS 2.0/32BPP, At least nVidia 6000 or ATI x700 or above.
Multiplayer: Internet connection for Games for Windows - LIVE
Drive: DVD-ROM drive

To get the full cake click GamingTrend Halo 2 Review

So, What's your take?

The Pros say nothing about the game content per-se, and that Pay-to-Play just convinced me to NEVER EVER buy that game. If this was Microsoft's idea of an incentive to make me buy Vista, they've failed miserably.

OpenGL FTW! 

Forget about it if it has pay for play.

I'd rather spend the money on something else rather than trying to play a 2 year old game that microsoft is trying to be so damn exclusive about. Honestly, they (microsoft) are being like those young school kids who form little exclusive cliques.

Pay to play? system requirements are ridiculous considering that you have 3 different graphical options like they explained in the interview.

MS has sinked to a new low and I also hope this game will sell quite awfully. Anyone who buys this supports Vista only games and pay-to-play games.

This game easily could've been released on XP since it's DX 9 based but again all games are going to be Vista only sooner or later, since DX 10 can't be installed on XP. I have a feeling this game might be hacked to run on XP. And pay to play is lame, it's just lame. if one consider not to buy the game, it should be because of pay to play.

Pay-to-Play multiplayer only - no LAN, no Local, No Internet
OneEarth

nice work there alienating an already disgruntled and disinterested pc playerbase microsoft, nice work...

i can understand pay-to-play internet stuff (not accept, understand) - but no lan just causes damage to my brain when i think about it

Pay-to-Play multiplayer only - no LAN, no Local, No Internet OneEarth

No LAN support?? Awful. Big thumbs down to that!!!

I already have Vista, but definitely won't be picking up Halo 2.

pay to play? I thought silver still allowed you to play for free against PC users? MS has truly sunk to a new low. They better not be spreading this stupid windows live BS to other companies then, because there is no way I'm supporting normal online games that force you to pay monthly. onemic

It does. Either MS has blatantly lied to us about how GFWLive works, or this reviewer is full of it. Silver is free, lets you play online. Gold costs the same as XBLive, and lets you play cross-platform games like Shadowrun. The only thing Halo 2 requires gold for is some of the online achievements.

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2007/mar07/03-14G4WandXboxLIVEPR.mspx

Silver Membership Features

Single gamertag

Common gamer profile

Common gamerscore

Single player achievements

Private chat via text and voice

Common friends list and online presence

PC only multiplayer including browsing a list of active PC games

I am inclined to think Microsoft is lying.

Why?

Because then it can stack up the pre-orders that make it money. No one will actually know that you have to pay-to-play until they actually install the game, by which time it will be too late to return.

hi, im noob in here

this is my first post

for me, HALO 2 is very good 

From what I gathered, you can JOIN games as a silver member, but you have to be a GOLD member to HOST the actual game......

Guys its something like 2 quid ($4) a month, Xbox LIVE service isnt bad, but I hope this forced to use it tripe doesnt catch on? No LAN? I find that VERY hard to beleive.... 

You do no thave to play to play with anyone. You can only play against PC gamers and i will be picking this one up. not because i want to play halo 2 that bad but to check out Windows live and the new Vista features. Circuitcity has it on sale for 39.99 so i am about to buy it now.

multiplayer is free but only Gold member will have access to stuff like match making etc. Does not bother me since i already subscribe to Xbox live and i wish more PC games will adopt this system.

I don't really care. I played the game 2,5 years ago on my xbox. Quite a good score for considering how old the game is though.

But the system requirements seem steep IMO, not low. 1 GB RAM for Halo 2?

Well, from some recent posts it seems no money will be required to play online but they won't be able to host game, which will require money. But the absence of LAN still hurts. Lastly don't believe everything GamingTrend has to say. It may be not as simple as 'pay to play', there may be many options.OneEarth

the game is free to play online.  Like the reviews said this is the easiest multiplayer system of any PC title to date so don't knock it unless you try it. I personally believe this is exactly what PC games need and it will get me playing more Pc games other than the 2 that i currently play. This is the only difference for silver members.

Gold Membership Features

All Silver membership features

Multiplayer matchmaking with friends

TrueSkillTM matchmaking

Multiplayer achievements

Wow if this "pay to play" thing pans out its gunna be complete BS.

At first i thought that GfW was going to be the revival of PC gaming, now all i see that it is the bringer of doom.  M$ seems to think that all PC gamers are eagerly willing to get sucked into a completly tied down system (XBL) which only means that they can control the market completly.

Next we will be hearing that we have to pay extra to install mods, how about having to pay for the map editor? Whatever it is i am not buying it. I dont want an open platform like the PC to turn into another console.

micro is gonna destroy pc gaming, well they already half way killed it with xbox/360, now vista/live scam. im not gonna be forced to buy vista or live as a pc gamer. why o why doesn't sony require k/m for the fps on ps3? i still may buy the ps3/wii cause im starting to hate micro more everyday.cajunXLVII

Piracy is killing PC gaming. Not consoles. Although Vista may be clunky and in many ways just bad the anti piracy improvements are really needed IMO.

Complaining about 2-3$ a month, when some of you will happily throw out $15 on the grind game thats is World of Warcraft is hypoctical, its less than a games price, you pay it once and only have to renew it once a year, you get a unified profile (You say u dont care yet I bet you have xfire stats or play ladder matchs on alot of games) and matching systems...

LIVE is still in early stages, this will be recoreded throughout the rest of your gaming days, and its not pricy..

and stop bashing vista, XP was just as bad on release. 

It's not hipocritical at all...

Thats two entirely different issues. 

"you pay it once and only have to renew it once a year"

That means it is not "once"...that is recurring...

"you get a unified profile (You say u dont care yet I bet you have xfire stats or play ladder matchs on alot of games) and matching systems..."

I say who cares, and I don't have any of that crap you listed...

"and its not pricy.."

I do consider it pricey, I don't see the value.  MMO's fee makes sense, as you cannot get a true MMO experience for free, but for the live, I play houndreds of games similar to halo for FREE, and things like X-Fire (which I do not even use) are free as well.  Anything that already exists for free and now will require me to pan out dough for, automatically gets dumped in the "pricey" bin.

"and stop bashing vista, XP was just as bad on release. "

This is true, I think Vista will certainly come around one of these days.  Just a matter of time before they patch it all up.  After that, people will talk about how great it is and how they don't know how they ever lived without it :P

Complaining about 2-3$ a month, when some of you will happily throw out $15 on the grind game thats is World of Warcraft is hypoctical, its less than a games price, you pay it once and only have to renew it once a year, you get a unified profile (You say u dont care yet I bet you have xfire stats or play ladder matchs on alot of games) and matching systems...

LIVE is still in early stages, this will be recoreded throughout the rest of your gaming days, and its not pricy..

and stop bashing vista, XP was just as bad on release.

Meu2k7

Which is why you never should buy a new windows OS before the first SP :P. I already have an xbox live account so I get windows gold for free, but I do think it's a bit too much to ask pc only gamers to pay for it. On the other hand people pay $5 a month to get extra features in games like Runescape, so the price shouldn't really be a problem. It's just that pc games always have had free online.

Complaining about 2-3$ a month, when some of you will happily throw out $15 on the grind game thats is World of Warcraft is hypoctical, its less than a games price, you pay it once and only have to renew it once a year, you get a unified profile (You say u dont care yet I bet you have xfire stats or play ladder matchs on alot of games) and matching systems...

LIVE is still in early stages, this will be recoreded throughout the rest of your gaming days, and its not pricy..

and stop bashing vista, XP was just as bad on release. 

Meu2k7

Exactly. half the people bashing it know nothing about it. I personally think it wil help PC gaming by creating standards like widescreen and voice in all games plus it has features to help against cheating. We know PB  does nothing and we encounter cheating / hacking in all PC games. I just hope more games will use it and it is free for multiplayer gaming. You get more options for being a Gold subscriber though.

I alreayd have live so I am already subscribed.

[QUOTE="OneEarth"]Well, from some recent posts it seems no money will be required to play online but they won't be able to host game, which will require money. But the absence of LAN still hurts. Lastly don't believe everything GamingTrend has to say. It may be not as simple as 'pay to play', there may be many options.skbmassive

the game is free to play online. Like the reviews said this is the easiest multiplayer system of any PC title to date so don't knock it unless you try it. I personally believe this is exactly what PC games need and it will get me playing more Pc games other than the 2 that i currently play. This is the only difference for silver members.

Gold Membership Features

All Silver membership features

Multiplayer matchmaking with friends

TrueSkillTM matchmaking

Multiplayer achievements

What is this, Viral marketing 101???? To hell with MS and their initiative, there doing nothing but raping the PC gaming community, and the only way we can speak is with our wallets. No lan support? That's a HUGE  no no for a PC game, not to metion, once MS gets their way, all Games will require Live, and you can forget about what made the PC so great in the first place.

I'm flippin outraged over this whole GFW live BS, no thanks. 

Oh boy Halo 2!!

Its multiplayer is going to revolutionize Pc gaming. NOT

There are 20 games out right now that are better then this and they don't require Vista and all the other MS BS 

[QUOTE="Meu2k7"]

Complaining about 2-3$ a month, when some of you will happily throw out $15 on the grind game thats is World of Warcraft is hypoctical, its less than a games price, you pay it once and only have to renew it once a year, you get a unified profile (You say u dont care yet I bet you have xfire stats or play ladder matchs on alot of games) and matching systems...

LIVE is still in early stages, this will be recoreded throughout the rest of your gaming days, and its not pricy..

and stop bashing vista, XP was just as bad on release.

skbmassive

Exactly. half the people bashing it know nothing about it. I personally think it wil help PC gaming by creating standards like widescreen and voice in all games plus it has features to help against cheating. We know PB does nothing and we encounter cheating / hacking in all PC games. I just hope more games will use it and it is free for multiplayer gaming. You get more options for being a Gold subscriber though.

I alreayd have live so I am already subscribed.

You really think hacking will go away if MS completely controls the online gaming space? Hacking will be here forever no matter what system is implemented. Hell, hacking is even prevalent in halo 2 and that's a console game, which is a lot harder to hack than a PC game.

Next thing you know we'll be forced to pay for mods, maps, and other things that were supposed to be free.  

It shouldn't be pay2play, it shouldn't even have cross platform option imo ..unless they've changed few things in the last minutes. Anyway, there will almost certainly be an online fee in the future if MS succeeds with this GFW thing, and eventually you'll be paying for mods, new maps and basically everything that used to be free. Well I'm not big on online gaming anyway, and if I need Live to play SP then I'll just pirate the games, their choise, not mine.EntwineX

True. If they do all that crap in the future then their will be a massive amount of pirates, a lot more then there are now.

How foolish is this. Vista user only, lol. That's like the whole 10 people in the world. 

I never owned an xbox, but wanted to play halo 2, too bad I am not paying a S*** load of money for a windows program that's faulty and worse than xp. Pat yourself on the back MS, you've just won the honorary dumba**es of the year award, any thoughts on your acheivement? MS: Yea, lets sell a 360, paint it black, give it more space, not include a an HD-DVD, oh and lets sell it for about a 80 bucks more. :| ....

[QUOTE="skbmassive"][QUOTE="Meu2k7"]

Complaining about 2-3$ a month, when some of you will happily throw out $15 on the grind game thats is World of Warcraft is hypoctical, its less than a games price, you pay it once and only have to renew it once a year, you get a unified profile (You say u dont care yet I bet you have xfire stats or play ladder matchs on alot of games) and matching systems...

LIVE is still in early stages, this will be recoreded throughout the rest of your gaming days, and its not pricy..

and stop bashing vista, XP was just as bad on release.

onemic

Exactly. half the people bashing it know nothing about it. I personally think it wil help PC gaming by creating standards like widescreen and voice in all games plus it has features to help against cheating. We know PB does nothing and we encounter cheating / hacking in all PC games. I just hope more games will use it and it is free for multiplayer gaming. You get more options for being a Gold subscriber though.

I alreayd have live so I am already subscribed.

You really think hacking will go away if MS completely controls the online gaming space? Hacking will be here forever no matter what system is implemented. Hell, hacking is even prevalent in halo 2 and that's a console game, which is a lot harder to hack than a PC game.

Next thing you know we'll be forced to pay for mods, maps, and other things that were supposed to be free.  

Hackign is not possible on Halo 2 for the console. A glitch is not a hack in case you did not know. You cannot hack the game and play it on xbox live especially since you cannot change the info on the original disc.

How foolish is this. Vista user only, lol. That's like the whole 10 people in the world. 

I never owned an xbox, but wanted to play halo 2, too bad I am not paying a S*** load of money for a windows program that's faulty and worse than xp. Pat yourself on the back MS, you've just won the honorary dumba**es of the year award, any thoughts on your acheivement? MS: Yea, lets sell a 360, paint it black, give it more space, not include a an HD-DVD, oh and lets sell it for about a 80 bucks more. :| ....

Rakuho

Many many people have already switched to vista.

Complaining about 2-3$ a month, when some of you will happily throw out $15 on the grind game thats is World of Warcraft is hypoctical, its less than a games price, you pay it once and only have to renew it once a year, you get a unified profile (You say u dont care yet I bet you have xfire stats or play ladder matchs on alot of games) and matching systems...

LIVE is still in early stages, this will be recoreded throughout the rest of your gaming days, and its not pricy..

and stop bashing vista, XP was just as bad on release.

Meu2k7

heh, pay 2 play is ridiclious since all of the  FPS pc games i plays  are free to play online except MMOs. its obvious microsoft tryin to control the whole online gaming and stuff with their LIVE. i quess this is just the beginning of their whole scheme. 

[QUOTE="skbmassive"]

[QUOTE="OneEarth"]Well, from some recent posts it seems no money will be required to play online but they won't be able to host game, which will require money. But the absence of LAN still hurts. Lastly don't believe everything GamingTrend has to say. It may be not as simple as 'pay to play', there may be many options.mismajor99

the game is free to play online. Like the reviews said this is the easiest multiplayer system of any PC title to date so don't knock it unless you try it. I personally believe this is exactly what PC games need and it will get me playing more Pc games other than the 2 that i currently play. This is the only difference for silver members.

Gold Membership Features

All Silver membership features

Multiplayer matchmaking with friends

TrueSkillTM matchmaking

Multiplayer achievements

What is this, Viral marketing 101???? To hell with MS and their initiative, there doing nothing but raping the PC gaming community, and the only way we can speak is with our wallets. No lan support? That's a HUGE no no for a PC game, not to metion, once MS gets their way, all Games will require Live, and you can forget about what made the PC so great in the first place.

I'm flippin outraged over this whole GFW live BS, no thanks.

Free online made PC great? didnt think that people who could afford to buy the most expensive system would penny-pinch so much, we've always needed a perment service like STEAM, the hacking will be down, the piracyt will be down, the quality of games will be up, and we get a unique profile tracking our entire gaming stats and history/rating.

[QUOTE="mismajor99"][QUOTE="skbmassive"]

[QUOTE="OneEarth"]Well, from some recent posts it seems no money will be required to play online but they won't be able to host game, which will require money. But the absence of LAN still hurts. Lastly don't believe everything GamingTrend has to say. It may be not as simple as 'pay to play', there may be many options.Meu2k7

the game is free to play online. Like the reviews said this is the easiest multiplayer system of any PC title to date so don't knock it unless you try it. I personally believe this is exactly what PC games need and it will get me playing more Pc games other than the 2 that i currently play. This is the only difference for silver members.

Gold Membership Features

All Silver membership features

Multiplayer matchmaking with friends

TrueSkillTM matchmaking

Multiplayer achievements

What is this, Viral marketing 101???? To hell with MS and their initiative, there doing nothing but raping the PC gaming community, and the only way we can speak is with our wallets. No lan support? That's a HUGE no no for a PC game, not to metion, once MS gets their way, all Games will require Live, and you can forget about what made the PC so great in the first place.

I'm flippin outraged over this whole GFW live BS, no thanks.

Free online made PC great? didnt think that people who could afford to buy the most expensive system would penny-pinch so much, we've always needed a perment service like STEAM, the hacking will be down, the piracyt will be down, the quality of games will be up, and we get a unique profile tracking our entire gaming stats and history/rating.

That's such a lie and you know it. Also if you didn't know steam has already been cracked and piraters can DL about 1/4 of the games off of steam directly without having to use a torrent. No matter what system you implement things such as hacking and piracy will never go away and will likely never decline.  

i'll be damn! pay to play!? :D who do they think will pay to play 2 year old games that even looks terrible by todays standards? and Vista only when it doesn't even support DX10...

how much more greedy can they be?

edit: i don't care how little or how big the cost is, but it's the principle that matters. i think that once i buy the game from some store, i can do everything it has to offer without any extra payments.

im happy that this game is pay for play. It keeps a lot of cheaters away. Cheat and then u lose 50 dollars. Now all they have to do is get rid of those free passes then there will be a step foward of geting rid of cheaters. GO MICROSOFT the best thing on the planet. I cant wait to get this game. Im buying vista in 2 days to go along with my gaming rig.

im happy that this game is pay for play. It keeps a lot of cheaters away. Cheat and then u lose 50 dollars. Now all they have to do is get rid of those free passes then there will be a step foward of geting rid of cheaters. GO MICROSOFT the best thing on the planet. I cant wait to get this game. Im buying vista in 2 days to go along with my gaming rig.

GmeMaster500

you are what's wrong with pc gaming