halo2(pc).org

jayWHY, synide, and myself have setup the legendary HBO-COERCE server with all the old gametypes. I welcome the HBO-COERCE regulars (and even some newcomers) to join up to the server. We'll be hosting the server for a limited time.

For more details about the server see this forum post at halo.bungie.org.

Halo PC server IP: 70.86.254.82:2302 (http://carnage.bungie.org/halo/HaloQuery.cgi?address=70.86.254.82&port=2302&refresh=15">query)

Ventrilo server: vital.typefrag.com
Port: 3792
Channel PW if needed: halotv
You can download the latest Ventrilo here.
http://www.ventrilo.com/download.php
* For a limited time only Nov 22-25.

jcap and a few other standouts in the Halo PC and Halo 2 PC community have put their heads together and nailed down why Halo 2 for Windows Vista is a mess. I totally agree with these guys. Go read what they had to say: http://www.h2vista.net/forums/showthread.php?t=6854

Unfortunately, I can say that Shadowrun and now Gears of War (PC) are being handled the same way. Shadowrun, which is a mod of Halo 1 and was designed by Halo and Halo 2's lead designer, was a jewel of a game. It is my favorite first person shooter of all time. Unfortunately, the way Microsoft handled the game ruined the game for me and others. Halo 2 (PC) was the same way as you can read in the article above.

And guess what's happening now? Gears of War (PC) is in the same boat:

I having begun playing Gears of War (PC). It is riddled with problems just like Halo 2 (PC) and Shadowrun. I hope that the community will continue to express their disgust with the title support and Games for Windows - LIVE.

Wow. People ARE playing this game. According to Nielsen's GamePlay Metrics, HALO 2 is the 4th most played video game right now. Actually, HALO: Combat Evolved is the second most played video game right now.

It sounds a little fishy to me. HALO and HALO 2 are great games, but the Nielsen rankings don't support my findings. Heck, they aren't even close to Gamespy's stats. According to Gamespy, HALO 2 is the 9th most popular game right now judged by online users. As of this post, HALO has 2555 online players. In first place is Half-Life with over 72,488 players. Wolfenstein has over 8,000 users online right now.

Maybe I'm comparing apples to oranges. The Gamespy rankings are based on the number of online users. The Nilesen rankings are based on how much a person played a video game and only sample a small portion of the gaming community. Perhaps the people that are still playing HALO are the diehard fans who play for many minutes (or hours) per session. But that doesn't explain why the recently released HALO 2 is doing so well.

Still, this is positive news for HALO. This means that Bungie has built immersive games.

                                                   Avg # of   % of Total
           Prev                                     Minutes      Minutes
           Months                                    Played       Played
    Rank   Rank     Game Title             AA%**   Per Week     Per Week


     1        1    World of Warcraft       0.845       1043       17.959

     2        3    Halo: Combat Evolved    0.171        510        3.648

     3        2    Sims, The *             0.155        235        3.316

     4        6    Halo 2                  0.138        509        2.939

     5        7    RuneScape               0.131        673        2.788

     6       12    Madden NFL 07           0.097        378        2.060

     7       27    Warcraft III            0.093        671        1.991

     8       11    Warcraft                0.087        508        1.852

     8        4    Counter-Strike *        0.087        478        1.846

    10        8    Grand Theft Auto *      0.084        314        1.790

It seems that it is possible to run HALO 2 (PC) on Windows XP. The game is supposed to be exclusive to Windows Vista, however a gamer has made a rough and dirty mod to get the game running on Windows XP.

"Tired of waiting for Falling Leaf to produce drivers so that you can playShadowrun in XP? The wait is over, because Razor1911 already has the remedy! Yes, you read right. This game will also function in Windows XP".

Sources:
The Enquirer
halo.bungie.org

Download mod and instructions:
Download the mod

This isn't a bad deal at all. Buy HALO 2 (PC) for $40 at Circuit City and get Shadowrun for free. $40 isn't a bad price. Getting Shadowrun (which I think is a ton of fun) for free is like getting both for $20.

If you bought HALO 2 (PC) from Circuit City lately, you may be able to do a return and rebuy if you haven't opened the game yet. Doing so may allow you to get the Shadowrun deal.

Link to Circuit City ad

This isn't exactly HALO 2 news but it is HALO news. It appears that a HALO 3 Alternate Reality Game may be starting with the HALO community. I've posted details about this over on our mothership HushedCasket.com. What do you think it is?

details

Update: based on 21 reviews, HALO 2 (PC) now has a 73 out of 100 average over at MetaCritic. The reviews range from a 92 to a 55.

Last week we conducted a poll. So far 750 gamers have voted. 25% of voters gave the game a 10 out of 10. 35% of gamers give the game 5 out of 10 or below. On average our 750 gamers rate the game at about 65%.

We'll post back if we see significant changes in the scores or number of people votin

It looks like xI MadRoX Ix was the first to 1000 in OUR HALO 2 (PC) gamerscore leaderboard at MyGamerCard.net. In fact, if you do a global search, he's the first registered user in MyGamerCard.net's whole database to get the 1000 possible points. Looks like he edged out a few people by a day. He actually got the 1000th point a few days ago on June 6th. It only took him five days to get all 1000 points. Impressive. I can say that I still haven't finished the final boss on Legendary. Kicking my butt.

Congrats to xI MadRoX Ix.

Has anyone else achieved 1000 points? If so, you aren't on our HALO 2 (PC) leaderboards. Go join up at MyGamerCard.net. Click on the image below for the action:

Metacritic is a pretty good site to track the scores of various reviews of the same game. So far, after about a dozen reviews HALO 2 (PC) is averaging a 72 out of 100. The scores range from 92 to 60. That's a pretty wide gap.

Track the reviews at Metacritic.

By the way, my local Circuit City had one copy of HALO 2 (PC) on the shelf.