Halo 2

Well, I made the jump to Vista and I am satisfied with its amazing stability, but Halo 2, leaves a hole in my heart.  First thing I noticed about this game was that it was built more around a 360 controller than anything, this is a pc game, then when I decide to jump into a multiplayer game(Im in Halo 2 mostly for the multiplayer), I notice a thing I wouldn't hope to notice, THE MOUSE FREAKING LAGS AND POSSIBLY THE KEYBOARD TOO!!!  Now my pc doesnt fail at any degree, but to my suprise the game was locked at 60fps, and I thought to myself, maybe its like the first Halo pc and has mouse lag with Vsync turned on.  So I added -novsync to the shortcut properties and long behold no more mouse lag, but what is this!?  The aiming is far from precise, although lag-free it was glitchy and unresponsive at times, but my framerate is above 100?  I disable the antialiasing and the unresponsiveness(which also plagued the 360 controller) was gone but it still wasnt up to par with counterstrike and other profound high-quality titles.  Putting that aside I can actually aim now and do some damage, but another obstacle blocks the ownage, the terribad netcode.  While the netcode on the xbox version wasnt perfect, it was leaps and bounds better than most xbox games at the time and certianly better than its PC counterpart.  Either the netcode didnt transfer well to the pc or they failed at re-working it but I can actually say its just as messed up as the first Halo pc's netcode, unless if you have an absolutely "raw" connection to the server, you will notice some hit detection misshaps, whether its because I disable Vsync, I don't know, but the netcode has problems.

Putting my gripes aside this is still a very good game, the single player can at times be deap and involving, the story is by far, above average, but the scriptwritting is incosistiant and awkward at times, but overal welldone and pleasing, and I didnt find the cliff hanger as bad as everyone else said but that is what the multiplayer is for.

Like I said the multiplayer is plagued by subpar netcode, but behind that there is still alot of fun to be had with Halo 2's online component.  It has all the original Halo 2 maps excluding the last 2(Tombstone and Desolation), but has 2 new maps to make up for it and they get the job done, but if that doesnt satisfy you, you can make your own with the map editor that ships with it, while limited, it still has enough features to make excelent maps, and with the community currently working on enhancements and in some cases, re-working of the map editor, so theres that to look forward to.

In the Tech side of things, minus the mouse lag and netcode the game seems to be pretty bug free.  The annoying texture pop-in that affected the xbox version has been removed and in turn the game looks sharper thanks to higher resolution textures, and slightly improved shadows and other effects, nothing to warent it a modern looking game, but it certianly doesnt look bad.  However the audio totaly kicks ass, mainly in the music area, the music is just simply mind-blowing and beutiful, its almost worth the purchase just to listen to the amazing music.  The weapons also sound as powerful/weird as they look and fit nicely.

All in all a terrific game plagued with a mediocre porting job(the game doesnt run half bad however), but the mediocre porting cant hide such a great game that can be pretty much considered a classic if not for the netcode and mouse issues.