Reviewed by Barry Little - June 26, 2007

ESRB Rating: M (Mature 17+)

It’s been almost three years since the alien Covenant brought their devastating war against humanity to the Xbox in Halo 2. Now, “because the fate of all mankind is too great to be decided on a console alone,” PC gamers who are Halo fans can finally step into the iridescent green battle armor of the Master Chief and take the fight to the Covenant in Halo 2 for Windows Vista. Was it worth the wait? Let’s find out…

Love it or hate it, with more than just a few awards under its belt, a line of popular action figures, four novels and a highly anticipated motion picture adaptation in the works, Halo is undeniably one of the hottest and most successful franchises in modern gaming history. Although originally planned as a title exclusively for the PC, in 2001 Halo was quickly drafted to give Microsoft’s new Xbox console a fighting chance in the highly competitive and cut-throat console gaming market before it finally saw the light of day two years later on the PC. Halo’s compelling, story-driven single player campaign and wildly popular multiplayer became the springboard for the Xbox-only sequel, Halo 2.

Halo 2’s single-player campaign didn’t resonate well with a lot of people, in spite of  improved visuals, new weapons and adversaries and a cool, dual-wielding weapon system—mostly because of the somewhat abrupt, anti-climactic ending. The game’s real strength and appeal, was multiplayer. When Xbox LIVE was introduced, Halo 2 took console-based multiplayer to a whole new level in homes and professional gaming tournaments around the world. Meanwhile, PC gamers that were Halo fans, were left out in the cold once again by Microsoft and Bungee.

Then along came Microsoft’s new Windows Vista operating system with DirectX 10 and its next-generation visuals for games; the Games for Windows initiative that promised an easier, hassle-free gaming experience and the ability for PC gamers to finally play against their console counterparts via Windows LIVE. Halo 2 was chosen by Microsoft as the game that would lead the charge into this brave-new world of  PC gaming under Windows Vista and LIVE.

In Halo 2, you reprise your role as super-soldier Spartan 117—the Master Chief, assisted by his AI companion Cortana. You also get to see the universe through the eyes of one of your alien foes and the cultural, religious and political underpinnings of Covenant society by playing as an Elite—one of the fierce, towering, split-jawed warriors from the first Halo game.

As the Master Chief, you’ve survived the destruction of Reach, hordes of Covenant troops, the horror of  Halo’s alien parasites known as The Flood, and stopped the AI construct 343 Guilty Spark from activating Halo and annihilating all life in the galaxy. Victory, however did not come without a price, as many of your fellow Marines and Captain Jacob Keyes, commander of the Pillar of Autumn, were lost to both the enemy and The Flood.

The game starts out at a leisurely pace above the Earth on the Cairo Orbital Defense Platform. The Master Chief  is being fitted with a new suit of MJOLNIR Mark VI battle armor—a sleeker, tougher version of the old Mark V armor that took quite a beating on Halo, with enhanced energy shields. Shortly after, the Chief attends a ceremony joined by the only other survivor of Halo besides himself and Cortana (who is also sporting a new and more attractive look)—Sergeant Major Avery Johnson, who receives the Colonial Cross for his service to the Marines and his bravery on Halo. The daughter of Captain Keyes—Miranda Keyes, who is commander of the battle cruiser In Amber Clad, is also in attendance, accepting a posthumous medal for her father from the commander of the station, Fleet Admiral Sir Terrence Hood (Ron Perlman).

Meanwhile, on the other side of the galaxy, an entirely different ceremony is taking place in the Covenant holy city High Charity. One of the Elite commanders (Keith David) is brought before a tribunal of the Prophets Truth (Michael Wincott), and Mercy. To the Covenant religious hierarchy, Halo was a divine symbol of faith. For his failure in preventing the Master Chief and Cortana from destroying it, the Elite is stripped of his command and branded—literally and physically—as a heretic, to be put to death.

Back in our little corner of the universe, a Covenant fleet suddenly emerges from slipspace, and sends boarding parties to blow up all of the orbital defense platforms, including the Cairo. A frantic, desperate battle ensues that is reminiscent of the one that took place on the Pillar of Autumn at the beginning of Halo. Although you prevent the Covenant from destroying the station, the alien fleet is heading right for Earth. Oddly enough, not only is the fleet led by the Prophet Regret smaller than the one that annihilated Reach, but the Covenant seem to be more interested in finding something on Earth, than destroying the planet.

Still, they make it quite clear that they didn’t come to socialize, and you’ll battle them through narrow city streets, across beaches and through underground transportation tunnels on foot, and from human and commandeered Covenant vehicles, often with other Marines at your side. After a number of harrowing, bloody battles that result in the defeat of the invading Covenant ground forces including the destruction of their formidable Scarab “walking tank,” the Prophet Regret makes a fast and devastating planetside escape through slipspace. Unknown to Regret, In Amber Clad has snuck along for the ride. The destination?

Another Halo.

Commander Keyes orders you and a contingent of Marine Special Forces—the Hell Jumpers to secure an LZ on the ring and find out what Regret is up to. Here’s a hint: it ain’t good…

Back on the Covenant side of the galactic fence, the disgraced Elite commander is dragged before a closed door session with two of the Prophets, by Tartarus, Chieftain of the Brutes, and two of his warriors. Rather than be put to death as demanded by the Covenant High Council, the Prophets covertly make the Elite an offer he can’t refuse: become the Arbiter. A holy warrior who represents the Prophets, the Arbiter is called upon to deal with situations that are a grave threat to the security of the Covenant. Since Arbiters are given what are essentially suicide missions, the Elite will die in the service of the Prophets and the Covenant, as all Arbiters did before him. The Supreme Council will have their death sentence carried out. And the Elite will have the opportunity to redeem himself (in his eyes if no one else’s) and die honorably in combat. A win-win situation for everyone, I suppose…

As the new Arbiter, you are assigned with eliminating an Elite dissident leader (Miguel Ferrer) and his compatriots. The rebel leader calls upon his brethren to turn away from the Prophets, and warns that the Halo rings left behind by the Forerunners hold no salvation for the Elites, or any other race of the Covenant—only death and destruction for them all. With a contingent of Elites and Grunts led by a  “SpecOps” Elite (Robert Davi), the Arbiter assaults the rebel stronghold only to find that the dissidents aren’t the only threat that must be dealt with. As the game progresses with the survival of Earth at stake, and the Master Chief battles against increasingly overwhelming odds to stop the Covenant, a twist of cosmic fate and the ultimate betrayal will test the Arbiter’s faith; open his eyes and force him into an unlikely alliance with his sworn human enemies to stop all life in the galaxy from being extinguished.

I installed and played Halo 2 for Windows Vista on a system configured as follows:

If you’re already familiar with Halo 2 on the Xbox, you won’t find any real surprises or much to get excited about in Halo 2 for Windows Vista. If you’re a hard-core PC gamer and a Halo fan, you’re in for a few surprises—both pleasant and unpleasant—with the game.

First, like its Xbox counterpart, you can start playing Halo 2 for Vista as soon as you drop the disc into your DVD drive. This is Microsoft’s new Tray and Play technology for the PC under Windows Vista and Games For Windows, and actually works quite well. The game installs in the background while getting you into the game in two minutes or less, depending on the speed of your PC and DVD-ROM drive. Tray and Play makes use of multi-core processors (however briefly), to speed up the process and make it as smooth as possible. Nice to see those dual and quad-cores do something to earn their pay besides hanging out and providing bragging-rights. Of course, if you’d prefer doing things the old-fashioned way by installing the game completely before playing it, you can.

Halo 2 for Windows Vista installs itself in Vista’s Game Explorer, which provides a single, convenient location to launch all of your games—assuming that Game Explorer supports them. Game Explorer also allows you to take advantage of Vista’s parental controls and family settings. Rather than trying to decipher the usual laundry list of specs in fine-print on the box to determine the game's hardware requirements, Game Explorer also provides you with a less cryptic minimum and recommended requirement rating for a game that can be compared against your system’s performance index rating. It would be even more helpful if Games for Windows required that this information was printed on the outside of the box, so you can review it before you buy and install the game.

Unlike the Xbox and the majority of PC games on the market, Halo 2 for Windows Vista is saddled with Microsoft’s Product Activation Technology. You can uninstall and reinstall Halo 2 on the same PC as many times as you want. You can uninstall it from one PC, then install and successfully activate it on another. However, if you make major changes to that second PC and are forced to re-install Vista and Halo 2 on it—or you uninstall Halo 2 and try to install and activate it on a third machine with different hardware, be prepared to make a call to Redmond’s activation police to explain yourself.

Although Halo 2 for Vista can be played with the Microsoft Xbox 360 Controller for Windows, for the “console controller challenged” (guilty as charged) or those who just hate the damned things and would rather use a mouse and keyboard (guilty as charged again), the promise of fully customizable keyboard and mouse control is the main enticement for PC fans of Halo. But instead of the keyboard and mouse control from the first Halo PC game that you could set up virtually any way you wanted, what we ended up with in Halo 2 for Vista was an inflexible, convoluted mess.

Similar to the settings for the Xbox controller, you are given three default keyboard and mouse presets Default, Skirmish and Southpaw—plus a Custom preset for the purpose of mapping keys and mouse buttons to your liking. And it's here where the trouble and headaches start. With the majority of PC games that use a keyboard and mouse for control, if you want to assign a key or mouse button to a function other than the default, all you have to do is either delete the default function and enter the new one—or overwrite it with the new one. In Halo 2 for Windows Vista, if a button or key is already in use that you want to change, you cannot delete it and assign another key or button to it. Nor can you overwrite it with another key or button.

What you must do is find a set of keys that are not being used for anything—it doesn't matter what they are—only that they are not currently being used by the game. Map those unused keys to the functions you want to change, to free up the keys (and mouse buttons) that you do want to use (don't forget to change the secondary keys for a function, if needed). With the mouse buttons and keys that you want to use now available, you can now go back and assign them to the functions and controls that you want.

Even the ability to remap certain mouse button and keys is inconsistent. A number of people on numerous Halo forums for example, have been complaining that they can't remap and use the <E> key. I personally did not have a problem with that key. However, I was initially able to assign the left mouse button to fire the left and right weapon simultaneously in dual-wielding mode. When I was forced to reinstall Vista from scratch and reinstall Halo 2 during my evaluation of the game, I could no longer assign the left button that way again. Although it's not readily apparent, you can use one of the three default keyboard and mouse presets as a “template” to customize your mouse button and key settings. I tried modding the Southpaw preset which uses the right mouse button for both the “Use Left Weapon” and “Use Right Weapon” functions, and I tried toggling Dual Wield Inversion setting on the menu which swaps the primary and secondary weapon buttons when dual wielding, without success. Ironically, it wouldn't even accept the right mouse buttons for firing both weapons simultaneous in dual-wield mode when I tried changing the settings back.

I suspect that the heart of the issue lies with the fact that Halo 2 for Windows Vista is a console port aimed more at console gamers with gamepads and controllers, than PC gamers who use a mouse and keyboard. This becomes even more obvious when you look at the design of the menus and selection buttons, which mimic those on an Xbox controller. The blue X button's Delete function simply does not work in any of the menus, whether you press the X key on the keyboard or click it with the mouse, while the the green A (Edit) and red B (Done) buttons do work when pressing the corresponding keys or clicking them with the mouse. Interestingly enough, although the X and A keys can be remapped to another function, the B key which is assigned to the Team Chat function, cannot. If one of the three default mouse and key presets work just fine for you, consider yourself lucky. For those who want a custom set up, you're going to have to put in the extra (and unnecessary) work and possibly make some adjustments in how you play.

Initially, I was unable to get Halo 2 for Vista to log into my LIVE Silver account and accumulate achievement points for the single-player campaign. Either I was being prompted to create a LIVE profile even though I already had one—or was being told “You’re not signed into Live so you won’t be able to get any achievements. Sorry about that.” I didn't get any other error messages that would have suggested what the problem was. I uninstalled and reinstalled the game twice—first with the Tray and Play method. Then with the conventional full-install-first method. No joy. When I blew away everything and reinstalled Vista and Halo 2 a second time using the full-install-first method, it worked...

Almost halfway through the single-player campaign, my Sound Blaster X-Fi went nuts and let out a high-pitched screech that forced me to tear my earphones off to save my eardrums—and locked up the PC. After doing a hard reset with the power switch, Vista recognized the card, but not the installation of the drivers—even after I uninstalled and reinstalled them (I was using the latest v2.15.002 Vista drivers from Creative Labs). I had to wipe the hard drive (again) and reinstall Vista for the OS to detect the drivers for the card again—then reinstall Halo 2. Fortunately, you don't lose previously earned LIVE achievement points if you are forced to reinstall the OS and the game. If you did not back up and restore your most recent Halo 2 saved game—which is “conveniently” tucked away under Users\<Your User Name>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Halo2\Saved Games—you'll have to start the game over from the beginning and play up to the point where you left off to start accumulating achievement points again.

Another glitch I ran into, was right after the underwater complex segment of the “Regret” episode. The Halo 2 splash screen appeared, followed by a “Sorry, please insert your Halo 2 disc” message. Supposedly, you can play Halo 2 for Vista without having the disc in your DVD drive. I had left my disc in, so I clicked OK to continue. Imagine my surprise and irritation, when I was taken all the way back to the beginning of the previous level, rather than advancing to the next level. Fortunately, I was able to load the next level manually from the menu and continue on with the game without having to start over from the previous level again—which was a good thing, since it happened again about two thirds through the game.

In addition to all of your old Covenant enemies from the first Halo, you'll also face two new races who are now part of the Covenant collective—Brutes, a vicious, simian race with a punishing, berserk melee attack. The insect-like Drones with their fast, darting airborne attacks makes them hard to hit and extremely dangerous when encounter in groups. If you really hated those Elites with those nasty Energy Swords that can slice through a Marine or a Spartan like the proverbial knife through butter, you'll just love the new similarly armed Honor Guard Elites that you'll encounter more frequently in the game. Did I mention that there is a new silver-armored Ultra (or Special-Ops) Elite that can take and dish out over twice the punishment of his purple, red or gold armored brothers? As the Master Chief, you'll finally confront the Prophet Regret, who by the way, is not as weak and helpless as he looks.

Most of the Human and Covenant weapons from the first Halo game are back in Halo 2, with some changes and new additions as well. The M6D Pistol has been replaced with the stripped down M6C, which lacks the scope, but can be dual-wielded for greater firepower. One new weapon added to the Master Chief and Marine Corps arsenal, is the M7/Caseless Sub Machine Gun. A favorite with Marines who prefer close to medium-range combat, only the Master Chief has the skill and ability to use two M7 SMGs at once. The old MA5B Assault Rifle from Halo has been upgraded with the BR55, which has a scope and a tighter focusing crosshair on the HUD for better “shoot-from-the-hip” accuracy. The “new” M12G1 Warthog LAAV (Light anti-armor vehicle) is your M-12 Warthog with a M-68 Gauss Gun replacing the tri-barrel M41 machine gun. Ideal for taking out armored targets, the Gauss Gun's slow rate of fire and low splash damage makes it less effectively against multiple soft targets.

The Covenant have also been busy upgrading their weapons against Earth's UNSC forces. The Brute Shot Grenade Launcher used exclusively by Covenant Brutes, is capable of serious direct impact and splash damage. Its grenades can be also be bounced around corners. What the Brute Shot lacks in accuracy and low ammo capacity (four-shot magazine), it makes up for as a devastating close-range weapon with its huge, curved, razor-sharp bayonet. The Covenant Carbine is the Covenant version of the BR55, while the Particle Bean Rifle is the Covenant's answer to the Marine Corps S2 AM Sniper Rifle. Preferred by the Covenant Jackals who excel as snipers, unlike the S2 AM, the Particle Beam Rifle is depleted after the final shot is fired, making it a "throw-away" weapon like other Covenant energy-based weapons. The Covenant Energy Sword is the most fearsome close-range weapon in the Covenant Arsenal, and can be wielded either by the Master Chief or the Arbiter. Its power-lunge attack can cut down all but the most powerful enemies with a single blow.

No longer a multiplayer-only weapon (in fact all of the weapons in Halo 2 for Vista's single-player campaign are available in multiplayer), the Fuel Rod Gun—identical to the weapon used by Covenant Hunters, is highly effective against ground forces and vehicles. You won't find the Fuel Rod Gun often though, and ammunition for it is scarce.

Remember those Covenant Wraith tanks in Halo that always seemed to show up at the most inopportune moment to bombard you from a distance with their Plasma Mortars, and make your life miserable? As the Arbiter, you finally get to drive one, as well as the new Specter. Faster than a UNSC Scorpion Tank but not nearly as fast or maneuverable as a Warthog, the Specter is equipped with a powerful, rear-mounted rapid-fire Plasma Cannon. Two additional Elites can ride shotgun—one on each side of the vehicle—to provide additional fire support. The game also introduces two more non-playable Covenant transportation and fire-support vehicles—the Shadow and Phantom. The ground-based Shadow is encountered by the Master Chief and his Marine allies in the underground transportation tunnel levels on Earth in “The Metropolis” episode, while the airborne Phantom makes regular appearances throughout the game. As the Arbiter, not only will a Phantom accompany you in your Banshee during the air combat sequence of “The Arbiter,” but will provide troop deployment and fire support in other Arbiter-based missions in the game.

Much of what made Halo a success and enjoyable to play has thankfully, been untouched in Halo 2. The HUD is clean, simple and informative, with prompts that advise you when to reload, take cover to recharge your shields; when you can pick up and dual-wield weapons and which keys to press to do so, and so on. All without cluttering up the screen and getting between you and the action. Battles are much more frequent and intense, and enemies are more numerous and aggressive (though not necessarily any smarter) than Halo for the PC. The only lull in the action are the cut scenes that help move the game and the plot along at a fairly decent pace, though some may find the plot a bit hard to follow at times because it jumps around a bit. If you've played the first Halo game and have read the excellent novels based on the game, you shouldn't have any trouble following what's going on in the storyline, and why.

Though the outdoor levels are a little better looking and have a bit more variety than the indoor levels, some of those indoor levels—the Forerunner facilities on Delta Halo and the Covenant City High Charity—are huge and serve as the perfect backdrop for the game's many white-knuckle firefights. There's also a lot more vehicular combat this time around, than in the first game. It's not uncommon to go up against multiple armored vehicles with allies and hostiles slugging it out all around you, as enemy air support pounds your position from the sky while dropping reinforcements onto the battlefield. And yes, those disgusting, resilient parasites—The Flood—are back again, and you'll battle them both as the Master Chief and the Arbiter. Fortunately, it won't be in any blatantly recycled and tedious levels as the infamous Library level in Halo. In fact, as the Arbiter, you'll even have some help.

The single-player campaign in Halo 2 for Windows Vista will take anywhere from 10-13 hours to complete, depending on player skill and difficulty level selected (Easy, Normal, Heroic or Legendary), and is divided into 15 "episodes." As you alternate between playing the Master Chief and the Arbiter, aside from the obvious differences in hand models when wielding weapons and the color of your HUD (the Chief's HUD is blue, the Arbiter's HUD is magenta), both the Master Chief and Arbiter are skilled with using weapons and vehicles of the opposing force. The one advantage the Arbiter has over the Chief, is his armor's Active Camouflage, which is invaluable for sneak attacks or slipping by large groups of enemies that you don't want alerted to your presence. Unlike the cloaking system used by other members of the Covenant, not only does the Arbiter's camouflage system disengage the moment he attacks, but it automatically disengages after 30 seconds, and needs 30 seconds to recharge before being used again. At first I didn't like this feature and immediately compared it to those dumb "30-second flashlights" in other shooters. But I found myself being a bit more strategic not only in using it; but in planning how to get through enemy infested areas in the game, where I normally would have been overwhelmed and killed in the blink of an eye.