Now I Know Why Windows XP Sucks So Much Ass

Apparently, all of Microsoft's talented developers were busy coding Halo. And with Halo 2 slated for release in the relatively near future, Longhorn is bound to suck, too. However, being the gaming nerd that I am, I, for one, am willing to make that trade-off. Besides, there's always SuSE Linux to use when I'm not fragging the hell out of pixelated extra-terrestrials.

As you might have guessed by that intro, I recently finished Halo's single-player campaign. I know, I know, I'm a little late. I actually started the game a good many months ago, set it down, and due to my then lack of sufficient attention span to actually finish a video game, never went back to it. When I installed my new (and working this time!) Sapphire Radeon 9600XT (256MB, biatch!), I decided to reinstall 'er and give it another go. This time, I managed to finish it, and it only took me three days to do so. For your edification (who the hell am I talking to? The whole one or two people who actually read this damned thing have probably already long since beaten the game themselves), I'll weigh the pros against the cons and tell you what I liked and didn't like about the game.

First of all, the pros:

Story. The game was actually a lot more story-driven that I'd imagined, and more than that, the story wasn't just existent, it was pretty good. There were enough plot twists and turns to keep one on their proverbial toes, and the cinematic cutscenes and beautifully detailed environments aided my immersion into the experience. I'll never forget the first time I encountered "The Flood" (I'll not spoil the experience by describing it in any detail.)

Graphics. While it can't really compete with the newest shooters on the market, like Far Cry and Doom 3, the graphics are phenomenal for the time in which the game was released, and they still hold up well today, seeming relatively unaged.

Gameplay. This is a straight-forward, balls-to-the-wall Run 'n' Gun shooter. None of that strategy crap. No leaning around corners, no ability to slow or quicken your pace, no going prone to enhance your sniping accuracy. Just run like hell and pump some lead into those bodies until they stop moving. A lot of people might not like this, but I love it. Mind you, strategy and intellegent gaming is great, but every now and then a guy wants to just turn off his brain and shoot some folk.

And now...the cons.

I should probably start by saying that, unfortunately, I am not exactly the 1337est g4m3r on the face of the planet. I usually have substantial difficulty getting through the average action game on the Normal (or "Medium" or what-have-you) difficulty setting. Because of this, I almost always play games on the Easy setting. I did so with Halo, and when I got far enough into the game that I was unwilling to start over from the beginning, I realized I probably shouldn't have.

This game, for me, was easy. Very easy. Perhaps Microsoft just didn't feel the need to compensate the difficulty level for mouse-aiming when porting the game to the PC, or perhaps the higher difficulty levels are more challenging, but this game was quite practically a walk in the park for me straight through to the end of the game. There were very few sections of the game where I actually lost any health points (you have an auto-regenerating shield to protect you from suffering damage until you're hit with enough firepower to break the shield and leave you vulnerable), let alone where I actually died a few times. I cannot remember being killed once until after my first encounter with the Flood, more than halfway through the game. After that, I didn't get "stuck" a single time. Not once. The worst thing I had to deal with was getting killed in a particular section (where I was overpowered by a ridiculous number of enemies) twice or three times in a row before I buckled down and thought out a basic strategy, at which point I blew through it with little problem. In a way, this was good, because I never once became frustrated or pissed off, as I do with almost every other game I play, but on the same coin, the lack of challenge nearly bored me on occasion. Almost. Even without the lack of challenge, however, the experience was absolutely exhilerating for the most part, and many times while battling the Flood, I felt a bit frantic, as if I could be overwhelmed and killed at any moment.

System performance. This game is tough on one's PC. When I played it months ago, I was playing on a 1.6GHz CPU and a 64MB Radeon 9000 (read: not fully DirectX 9 compliant) video card, and I was forced to play in 640x480 resolution, because anything higher lagged my PC down quite a bit. One would think that upgrading to a 2.16GHz CPU and a 256MB, fully DirectX 9 compliant card would dramatically improve the performance. I thought so, too. I initially tried playing at 1024x768, but the game was pretty much a slideshow, so I broke down and lowered it to 800x600. This played at a very tolerable 30-40 FPS, but whenever I fired my weapon and it made contact with an enemy, the framerate would bog down to 5-10 FPS. I'm writing this off as simply bad programming, as none of my other games exhibit characteristics so odd. Finally, I had to drop my resolution back down to 640x480, which sucked ass. Fortunately, though, the framerate was consistently high enough (70-100 FPS normal gameplay, 40-50 while firing weapons at opponents, and down to 30-40 in certain "high-strain" areas of the game) that it still offered a visually splendid experience.

Aside from those minor quibbles, I can't really think of any complaints I have with the game. A lot of gamers would probably chastise it for its brevity (it took maybe ten hours of actual gameplay to finish it, as far as I can tell, but that's a very rough estimation), but with my measly attention span, it was an asset. Long enough to make me feel sufficiently satisfied upon completing the game, but short enough that the story stayed interesting and kept me on the edge of my seat; it never really seemed to drag.

Overall, I really, really enjoyed the experience, and I'd recommend it to anyone who's into video games. Additionally, this is a great place to start for someone new to and interested in shooters, who might not fare so well to jump into a more difficult game. If I were to reduce it down to a simple numbered rating, I'd give it 4½ out of 5.

And now, due to the wonder of FRAPS (which bogged my performance down dramatically, which is why you'll notice it's a bit jumpy at times in this clip), here is a brief clip of me playing the game, toward the middle of the last level. (Note that the clip contains a spoiler of sorts, so if you plan on playing it and haven't already, you might not want to watch it.)

Right-click, Save As... (19.4 MB) (DivX)