Review: Halo 2 game

It’s quite a strange state of affairs when one of the most highly anticipated PC games of 2007 is a port of a three-year-old console title.

That the desktop release of Halo 2 is stirring up so much excitement is certainly a testament to the enduring popularity of Microsoft’s blockbuster franchise. But is an aging Xbox shooter really the best title to inaugurate the much vaunted Live gaming service?

Our first problem with Halo 2 is that it’s Vista-only. With no explanation, Microsoft has decided that only gamers who have upgraded to the latest version of Windows will be allowed to play. Given that the technical requirements of running such an old game must be fairly low, it seems an odd choice.

And with many PC gamers opting to stick with XP for now (for reasons of compatibility and performance), Halo 2’s Vista exclusivity could easily be interpreted as some kind of carrot to convince the hardcore gaming community to embrace the new OS.

The decision probably has more to do with the launch of Microsoft’s Games for Windows Live service for Vista. Live represents a unified platform for all the online aspects of gaming (such as online multiplayer) and has been running for a while now on Xbox and Xbox 360. For the Vista version, the principles have been imported wholesale from its console counterpart and the look and feel of the Xbox 360 dashboard has also been maintained.

You need to sign up for a Live account, but there are two tiers to the service – a free Silver option and a £40-a-year Gold membership. If you already have an Xbox Live account you can – theoretically – sign in with this and share your Live account and unique ‘gamertag’ with both console and PC. In our case, the Live service didn’t work at first, but after an update from Microsoft everything clicked into gear.

Once signed up and signed in, Live members can voice chat and message each other as well as gain ‘achievement’ points embedded in Live games. With some titles there will also be the potential for downloadable content and even cross-platform gaming between players of the Xbox and PC versions of the same game. In Shadowrun (Microsoft’s other Live launch game), for example, players on both Xbox 360 and PC will be able to meet up online and shoot the stuffing out of each other.

Oddly, however, this isn’t possible with Halo 2, despite the fact that the console version continues to be one of the most-played Xbox Live games. Standard PC-to-PC multiplayer also works well, either online or over a Lan. There’s nothing particularly new or different going on in the various deathmatch and capture-the-flag type scenarios, but there’s plenty of opportunity to customise your experience and a map editor is a useful extra.

However, Halo 2 is a fairly flawed game. No amount of increased resolution or anti-aliasing can hide the fact that the title really looks its age. The single-player campaign, meanwhile, retains everything the game was criticised for the first time round – namely its relative brevity and unsatisfying conclusion.

If you have already played the game to death on an Xbox, the PC version brings precious little to the table. And if this is your first taste of Halo 2, then you could well end up wondering what all the fuss was about.