Halo 2

The Good
Okay so Microsoft decides to release a game which was outdated since its release. Yes, outdated on release!

Halo 2 was released in 2004 for Xbox and that year the PC had titles like Half Life 2, Doom 3 and the outstanding debut of FarCry.

There are few good things about this game. It's A.I is pretty impressive even with current standards. Some of the weapons are fun like the battle sword. Not to forget the dual wield feature was integrated with the mouse controls perfectly(carry two different one handed weapons). The overall production quality is good & multiplayer is promising.

The Bad
The single player campaign could have been more interesting if it had more depth. The gameplay is equivalent to an old arcade game. Its basically run and gun everything, occasionally drive vehicles. Think Painkiller with vehicles but not as enjoyable, insane or good looking.

The movement and control is a disaster. Still the same slow paced gameplay. Not to mention the zoomed in field of view(FOV) is back, what i mean is you keep getting the feeling that your weapon is zoomed in a bit. This was just making my head pain.

The graphics are okay for 2004 standards, but for 2007 its horrible. Not to mention the bad porting which was done. While games like Half-life 2 and Bioshock run fine on my PC with everything turned up Halo 2 tends to stutter or even lag at times.

Last but not least this game is a Vista exclusive, that means it doesn't work on Windows XP. I find this decision pointless as the game doesn't even use DirectX 10 nor does it do anything to at least enhance the graphics a bit. It does utilize "Tray And Play" which is a new Vista feature where you can play the game as it installs and Windows Live.

The Bottom Line
Over hyped and Overrated is the only way to address the newer Halo games. The only reason Magazines and sites give this game a high rating is to avoid conflicts with the "fanboys". While this game is below average overall, i would still recommend it to a person who is new to gaming or First Person Shooters as its very basic, bland, easy to understand and got pretty good production.

And should you upgrade to Vista for this? I wouldn't recommend it if you're solely doing it for this game but hey its your choice.