Rating: 
Summary: playa, wha?
Review: for the haters: you need to tweak or upgrade. that's it. this game is not a disaster. Bungie's name has not been tarnished by GearBox. your mom will not be there to hold your hand forever. there is no Santa. that's right, no Santa!!with all details on high and 1024 x 768 res i can pull over 70 fps with vsync turned on. the game looks so, so sweet with this configuration (the ati 9800 pro card helps). with the res turned down and all details turned to "low", i can get over 200 fps with action and 400+ without anything going on. yep, over 400 fps. i've never seen numbers like that with any other game (although, Quake III has come close... but that game doesn't look nearly as sweet as Halo). those who say the game is sluggish don't know how to configure a PC game and/or need to upgrade. these same people will be crying a river when Half-
Life 2 comes out (whenever that'll be. man, who would hack Valve of all companies? EVIL!!!!!!). and saying the development was lacking because a patch has already been released (actually, there are several now) doesn't even make sense. PC game patches are the rule, not the exception. tons of QA testers playing this game for months cannot catch what hundreds of thousands of users (with a ridiculous number of PC configurations) can in a day. it happens to ALL software. welcome to the rest of the world, Bubba. this game rocks. the offline play is fun and looks amazing and the online play is fast and furious. 'nuff said.
Rating:
Summary: HALO is great- problems are imaginary!
Review: For those of you having problems with why HALO can run on a "big, black, ugly toy" and not on your top-of-the-line PC, well, you should hang around the Bungie online forums occasionally, where they talk about how hard it is to go from a platform that's completely dedicated to your game to a bunch of different ones that they have to compromise for. And as far as I could tell, most of the people who've had problems have been PC Gamers way too cool to ever play HALO on the XBOX, because, y'know, the XBOX is a toy. Listen, people, the problems you're having are being fixed. Like I said, check out the Bungie support forums, they're doing everything they can to help you guys out, and you're just like "Blah, blah, HALO sucks, I'm taking it back." I did everything they said on their support forum when I had problems, and now it's fine. Oh, and yes, I'm sure game'll run slower at 10000 by 50000 resolution- but so will any other game out there. The only other point I'd like to make is that, also, HALO was designed for realistic, balanced gameplay. YES, the Master Chief can only carry two weapons. I'm sure that in "real life", geeky science people like Gordon Freeman can carry at least a dozen different types of weapons, and run at 15mph+ for four days straight, et cetera- but not in HALO, and that's one of the things I enjoy the most. But, yes- HALO for PC rocks! I still like it better on the XBOX (because I've mastered the control set, and now I keep getting beat in HALO multiplayer), but with the Shade and Banshee in multiplayer, and the fuel rod gun and flamethrower in single player- well, it makes me want to (censored) myself. My system is a dual 1.2g Athalon with a 128mb video card with 256M of RAM, btw.
Rating:
Summary: Wow!
Review: This game is great. It's a shame that some people are so bitter because they can't get their system to run the game despite them having a sytem that should be able to run it nicely if they had more than two (2) brain cells to rub together.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Expectations
Review: It's sad to see a game with such awesome potential reduced to this. Reports abound of slow framerates and random crashes, and the first patch came out within two weeks of the game's release. Microsoft took Bungie's beloved child--the game that would have also been the second coming of Mac gaming--and perverted it into the XBox title. Then they farmed the work out to Gearbox for converting Halo for the PC. Gearbox usually does a fine job, but this is just subpar. When I look at this game, and think of what it could have been if Microsoft let the people at Bungie do their jobs, it makes me angry. Halo for the PC is an insult to the memory of Bungie.
Rating:
Summary: Best PC game to be released in years
Review: This seems to be hotly contested here at Amazon, but I have to say, Halo PC is wonderful. But its not like there aren't issues. First, to all the folks saying things like "it shouldn't be like this with my video card" and "not for a 2 year old game" and other such things (in regards to video performance): hate to burst your bubble, but welcome to the future of gaming! I would direct your attention to Anandtech.com and their last review of all the latest graphics cards running 15 of the latest and upcoming games. Guess what? The days of 160FPS in Unreal Tournament are over. The fastest card available, the Radeon 9800 Pro 256MB, only gets an AVERAGE framerate of 43 in Halo. And not just Halo. Halo, Jedi Academy, Final Fantasy XI, Half Life 2, Doom 3 -- all the most anticipated games of the year -- are DirectX 9.0 games. And the very latest hardware can only run any of these games in the ranges of 30 to 60 FPS, average. Sometimes you'll only get 20 frames. Yes, even with a Radeon 9700 or 9800. The 9800 Pro 256MB only averages 19.9 in Final Fantasy XI! Its not the game producer's fault, nor does it mean that a game sucks. It means that your hardware sucks in comparison to what it could be. Nothing personal. Your self-image shouldn't be wrapped up in what video card you bought and installed. But game hardware is obviously going to need to advance more still in order to keep up with software requirements. I personally think that you should blame both ATI and Nvidia for doing a poor job of actually getting the market ready for DX9. (One tip: Halo doesn't support Anti-Aliasing yet -- not many DX9 games do -- so make sure your drivers are set to "Application Preference" so that the card doesn't try to set AA. That will really bog things down.) Also, although the core of the game is 2 years old, it was completely recoded from the equivalent of a DirectX 8 game (on Xbox) to a DirectX 9 game. So in terms of coding, its brand new. Much newer, in fact, than even Unreal 2 or Unreal Tournament 2003 (both Direct X 8.1 games). Also, keep in mind that there is a lot of controversy over Nvidia graphics cards and their performance in DirectX 9 games. They optimized their drivers for benchmark performance, but they don't actually "fully" support DirectX 9. As a result, you get less than anticipated performance in any DirectX 9 game, of which Halo is one. Yes, even a 5600 or a 5900 Ultra. Sorry. Don't kill the messenger. (Again, I recommend you peruse Anandtech.com for much more detail on this). I wouldn't be surprised if most of those reporting poor performance here are using newer Nvidia cards. As for Halo itself, its simply wonderful! It truly is visually incredible. I'm using a Radeon 9500 Pro and a Pentium 4 2.4C at 1024x768, everything set to high. I personally have only had minor performance problems during very large combat scenes (30+ characters, lots of fire, lots of decals (blood), and lots of sky and ground textures). Be sure you update to the latest driveres for your video card. The gameplay is pretty much perfect. Better than anything else out there. Someone finally made a PC game where you don't have to switch to grenades in order to use them! And you get lots of them (so use them liberally). The weapons are diverse, but there are none (with the exception of the perennial favorite rocket launcher) that is clearly more powerful or useful than any other, which keeps the gameplay balanced. And the bot AI is awesome. Some of the Covenant foes are really clever. Some are really not. The little ones (forget their names) are hysterical. "He'll kill us all!" "Down in front!" "Run for your lives!" I find myself (morbidly) laughing out loud in the middle of major battle scenes. Multiplayer is really fun and reminds of my days playing Team Fortress Challenge. I dig it. But you HAVE to download the update before you can play in multiplayer. Otherwise performance will [smell] or multiplayer will crash repeatedly. In the final analysis, this game really is ahead of its time. You can't blame the game or Microsoft, no matter how much you want to, if your hardware can't keep up. Blame the hardware manufacturer. Send them a letter and tell them that you demand better. And if your able, definitely consider upgrading to a Radeon 9500, 9600, or 9700 card. They all perform well in this and other new games, and are all under $...now. The investment will be worth it if you want to play any new games this year.
Rating: 
Summary: Another Microsoft software catastrophe
Review: To all the morons telling us to just shut up & enjoy playing HALO for PC, well we'd like too but guess what, we can't enjoy a crap game that slows down to a 5 fps crawl so shut your pie-holes. Trust me I had been waiting with baited-breath along with everyone else, excited for HALO to come to PC only to have our dreams crushed with shoddy, slow game play. I have a P4 2.4 GHz w/ 512MB ram & a GeForce FX 5600 w/ 256MB & this so called video game slows down to an unplayable C R A W L, even on the lowest video settings & all the eye-candy turned off. This is inexcusable to have them spend so much time developing a game (it was originally going to be a PC game before Microsoft bought out Bungie) & then send this garbage out to the public. I'd like to meet the testers, producers & coders who worked on this game & give them all a swift kick to the nads for allowing this terrible game to get released in this beta form. Shame on anyone involved in the production of this garbage. Thank God I can play HALO on my XBOX & still get some enjoyment.
Rating:
Summary: Halo is the best
Review: I wrote a review several weeks ago anticipating the release of this game. I predicted it would be amazing. It was.
Upon installing the game, I was informed that my 500mHz P3 was not fast enough to run this game. Almost sure it would fail, I started up Halo anyway and began playing. It was almost as smooth as Xbox on my setting of over 800 by 600 resolution ( i cant remember the exact numbers). It is so smooth except in massive combat scenes in single player. The game runs smoothly in multiplayer, which, byt the way, is more addicting than Counter-strike, Team fortress, or any other online shooter combined. I give this game 5 stars. Ever dollar in my 50m bucks I spent on this game was worth it. BUY THIS GAME OR YOU WILL MISS OUT ON THE BEST SHOOTER IN HISTORY. NOTE: My comp runs on 128 mb RAM, an ATI Radeon 64mb graphics card, and a Pentium 3 550mHZ processor.
Rating: 
Summary: no graphics problems, great fun
Review: I've got a very old system: 1.0GHzAMD, Nvidia Ti4400, 768 MB RAM and the game runs as smoothly as anything else I've played. (at 800*600).
That havign being said, how long to game graphics really hold your attention after the first ooh aahhhs are over? about 5 minutes. And then it back to the basics: If a game isn't engaging, well written, well paced nothing can save it.
Halo is all that. The Graphics and sound are icing on the cake, and the icing here is good too.
Rating:
Summary: Great Game
Review: I dont know what is these people are doing rong but i have yet to have a problem with halo. The graphics are beutifull and the only time the game gets the slightest bit slow is a rare ocasion on single player. I have no lag on multi player and all the graphics options are set to the max. It dosent quite come head to head thoe with xbox's single player, but on xbox you don't get the online play. I would recomend this game to anyone who can meet the requirements, at least for the online play. P.S. My computer isn't anything speacial eather. Just 2.4 GHz processor 256 ram and a radeon graphics card. It playes this game as good or better than othe games.
Rating:
Summary: Bad port...
Review: XBox version is unbelievable, but when it reached PC it seems Bungie forgot to compensate for the higher resolutions. Running it at anything higher than 800x600 caused considerable lag, and I have an FX5900 Ultra! This is NOT supposed to happen with ANY game played on this card. Anxiously I await a good patch. AND, WTF HAPPENED TO COOPERATIVE GAMEPLAY??? The moral of the story, this game kicks ass but its technology seriously lacks for PC.
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