First Impressions: Halo PC

[WarLocke]

For starters, I see no reason whatsoever for it to lag at 1280x1024 in my box (without antialiasing or anything of the sorts), an Athlon XP 1900+ (1600 MHz), GeForce ti4400 and 1.5 Gb of memory. The world is not that choke-full of detail and the textures are in general pretty bland, so I say that's poor optimization.

True, but consider that the game was built from the ground up to run on the XBox (that is, after Microsoft bought out Bungie and scrapped the original PC-platform plans) which runs at 640x480. Also, Halo doesn't use AA/AF at all. If they're enabled in your display settings, your card will still use GPU time to do them, but they don't get used by Halo at all; they're wasted processing. Turning them off in your settings (card settings, not game) may help.

I found Halo at 640x480 looked just fine. I've even seen quotes in various places that playing at higher settings is just a waste. Heck, Idunno.

Second: Aiming and reloading. Having to "aim" with a circle that is 1/10th of the screen and the bullet might land "anywhere in the circle, sometimes outside", and having to reload your weapon is fine for games like Splinter Cell (tangent: what a friggin' great game), but in my opinion it has no place in a fast paced first person shooter.

The aiming bit really depends on what weapon you're using. Yeah, the assault rifle is pretty innacurate on full-auto (I find short 3-4 round bursts much more accurate and easier on reloading), but pick up a plasma pistol or rifle and shots go straight down the middle.

Reloading didn't seem to be a problem for me either. Just remember that this isn't Quake and you can afford to duck around a corner and spend a few seconds reloading (you'd probably need to anyway, to give your shields time to recharge).

Third: I'm tired of throwing grenades when I want to zoom in with the sniper rifle. In every game right click zooms with the sniper rifle. I can define the right click to be the zoom but that'd render it useless with the other weapons.

Did I say other weapons? I can carry only two anyway.

Okay, I'll give you that. I'm used to zooming with the RMB too. But I remapped the 'alternate weapon function' (also does a 2x zoom with pistol) to CapsLock, and got used to it after awhile.

The carry limit is cool! C'mon, how many guns can you realistically run around with? You just need to decide what you should be loading at any certain point (I tend to favor human weaponry, as Covenant plasma-tech can be gotten just about everywhere).

Fourth: Having to drive the vehicles with the mouse. It's great that you can, it sucks that you cannot just use the keys like in every other driving game. It was not that hard to implement was it?

Idunno. I'm just gonna point to the Xbox control scheme on this one. For the most part it works; the only vehicle you can drive and fire in seperate directions with is the Scorpion tank, all the others 'work' with the control scheme.

Fifth: The incredible lack of good ambient sounds. I have a surround system, I like to be able to rely on my ears to know when something is happening behind me. Talking of sound, I have a 7.1 system, but the game doesn't use standard positional sound, so the rear two don't do anything.

I thought the ambient sound was pretty good (voices around corners/through walls, footsteps, etc.) but then again my speakers aren't exactly the best, so maybe I have lower expectations or something along those lines?

Sure it has good things, like the great NPC interaction (those marines sure kick ass ), and the immersion, and I can't wait to try cooperative multiplayer.

I don't think the PC version shipped with co-op MP. :(

The marines sure do kick ass though. B)