One of my favorite Halo 2 for Vista features, is the ability to commandeer an enemy vehicle, or jump on and plant a grenade in it to blow it up. Though I personally wasn't able to pull it off, if you time it just right, you can jump on an enemy vehicle with a mounted weapon, knock the gunner off and take over the weapon. The other is the dual-wielding weapons. Though you can find yourself out of ammo and/or energy with both weapons running dry at the worse possible moment if you aren't careful, when  used properly the extra firepower you can bring to bear on tougher enemies can mean the difference between life, and a quick trip to the "Reload Your Last Checkpoint" screen.

As always, the Martin O'Donnell soundtrack is stirring, powerful, and does an excellent job punctuating the game's dramatic moments and keeping you pumped up for battle when the shooting starts. While it isn't necessary to have tier-one Hollywood actors perform character dialog, so long as the writing is good and the right talent used, it always adds a little something extra to the game when you recognize the voice acting performed by actors you often see on television and the movies. A lot of people didn't like the idea that the alien dialog of the Covenant was scrapped in favor of English, but I didn't find it objectionable. In fact, it would have been more difficult for the player to gain some understanding of Covenant culture and politics and what motivates them, without it—even if English subtitles were used, which would have slowed the game down too much.

Sad to say, the AI for friendly NPCs seems to have taken a turn for the worse in Halo 2 for Vista. They seem to have a much more difficult time operating vehicles and keeping themselves from getting killed. When they aren't busy lining you up like a clay pigeon for enemy fire when behind the wheel, they are either driving you off cliffs to your death, into ravines where you get stuck, or off ledges where you get thrown from the vehicle like an armored Frisbee. Some of them leap right in from of you to engage an enemy that you're already firing on—then have the nerve to bitch when you end up shooting them instead. Although friendly troops for the Chief and the Arbiter are fairly helpful at the easier difficulty levels, their god-awful driving skills and penchant for throwing themselves headlong into battle without any regard for their own well-being—or having the good sense to withdraw when they're outgunned. As a result, you'll often find yourself without a chauffeur for the game's vehicles if you want to use their mounted weapons, and tackling the opposition solo throughout most of the game.

Then again, maybe the lousy driving isn't entirely the NPC's fault. Vehicle control just isn't as snappy and responsive as it was in Halo for the PC (the Warthogs were the worse). In spite of the improvements I was able to get by playing around with the sensitivity controls of my Logitech G5 Gaming Mouse inside and outside the game, it still wasn't as responsive as I would have liked it to be. This is probably due to the still relative immaturity of hardware drivers for Windows Vista, the way mouse and keyboard control was implemented—or both.

Since Halo 2 for Windows Vista is a straight console port utilizing DirectX 9 with a few hi-res textures thrown in here and there to make it look better than on the Xbox, frame rates were smooth and stutter-free at widescreen resolutions of 1680 x 1050 and 1900 x 1200, with 4x antialiasing enabled and details set to High. There are no advanced settings to tweak to really pump-up the visuals to make the game look even halfway up to snuff with today's PC titles. The result is a game that looks much better than Halo for the PC, but, really shows its age otherwise. Enabling SLI on the two 7900 GTX cards with either the 158.24 or 160.04 ForceWare drivers installed made no difference in performance, but it did make Halo 2 for Vista crash to the desktop a lot, and occasionally go out of sync as if someone had flipped the vertical hold on a TV set. So I disabled SLI and played the game just fine on one card.

Halo 2's multiplayer has always been more popular on the Xbox than the relatively short single-player campaign. No doubt the same will likely to be true for the Windows Vista version as well, once Vista eventually gains momentum among PC gamers. All of the multiplayer game types in the Xbox version are also in Halo 2 for Windows Vista:

A bonus Map Editor and several exclusive maps are also included. Halo 2 for Vista's multiplayer is accessible through Microsoft's Windows LIVE accounts, which come in three levels: Local, Silver and Gold. Local accounts are for those who do not have an Internet connection, or for those who prefer to play with friends over a LAN. With the LIVE Silver Account, you can create a friends list, send messages, and earn achievements in the single-player campaign via the LIVE game browser. But if you really want the multiplayer good stuff— in-game chat via text or voice, LIVE game hosting, multiplayer matchmaking with friends; TrueSkill matchmaking when players with the same skill level can compete against each other, multiplayer achievements and cross-platform gameplay—you'll have to ante up to the tune of fifty bucks a year the the LIVE Gold membership package (a 30-day free trial is included with the game). Not surprisingly, I found more free Silver LIVE accounts and servers active than Gold, when I fired up the game browser. Microsoft is in for one tough sell to get many PC gamers to pay for the additional features of a Gold LIVE membership that they are already getting for free elsewhere.

Once I got the mouse and keyboard customized pretty much the way I wanted (an aggravating process that took longer than it should have), and got past the more disruptive and annoying issues, Halo 2 for Windows Vista was a fairly enjoyable experience. But as much of a fan I am of the Halo saga, I couldn't help but feel some disappointment over how good the game could have and should have been. After hearing so much about Halo 2’s terrible ending and finally experiencing it for myself, I have to say that while it wasn’t quite as bad as a lot of people made it out to be, it wasn’t exactly the “I can’t wait to see how this plays out in Halo 3!” kind of cliffhanger ending that the game truly deserved. Halo 2 for Windows Vista has its inspiring moments, but the ending certainly wasn’t one of them. I can understand why even Bungie themselves weren’t happy with the final results.

Given what we've seen of the handful of tech demos and actual game titles that have shipped which have either been patched or written for DirectX 10 (all of whom can be counted on your right hand), the “Wow!” factor just isn't there yet. Vista hardware drivers are still beta quality at best, and a lot of the issues and annoyance with the OS are obviously slowing its adoption, especially among gamers. The possible delay of the first (and desperately needed) service pack for Vista isn't going to help matters. Against that backdrop, it's not surprising that Halo 2 for Windows Vista is a DirectX 9 title. But that doesn't excuse the fact that more effort should have been made to make the game look a lot better than it does now. Half-Life 2 is a DirectX 9 game that is nearly as old as Halo 2 and it's a much better-looking and playing game—under Windows XP and Windows Vista.

The Vista-only requirement for the game is even more questionable when you consider that even if you have a Windows LIVE Gold account and you want to take advantage of TrueSkill and multiplayer matchmaking with your friends who have Halo 2 for the Xbox, you're out of luck. Your LIVE Gold multiplayer Halo 2 for Vista perks are only good when you play against other gamers with Halo 2 for Vista. I thought cross-platform gameplay was the main selling point of Windows LIVE Gold.

I can’t imagine any PC gamer who wouldn’t welcome the opportunity to be able to just jump in and enjoy a new game without having to deal with the usual stability and performance issues. But I don't think they’d do so at the expense of giving up the PC’s power, flexibility and freedom by turning it into a glorified, product activation-infested imitation of a console, when it’s a lot cheaper and less frustrating to go out and buy a console to begin with. I think Microsoft’s idea of using Games for Windows and Windows LIVE to make life “easier” and more “enjoyable” for PC gamers is to use Windows Vista as the foundation to turn the PC into something that it’s not—a console—and with enforced lock-in through product activation—which will backfire on them. Imagine having to spend hours on the phone to get “permission” not just to re-install the operating system—but all of the games you paid for—simply because you upgraded your hardware.  Over 90% of the PC games published do not penalize or inconvenience people for upgrading their systems. Microsoft and any other studio trying to make product activation the new “standard” in game copy protection, will find themselves staring down the barrel of a public relations nightmare and consumer backlash that will make Sony’s root kit fiasco look tame by comparison.

During its development when it was probably clear that for whatever reason, Halo 2 for Vista would be incapable of LIVE's cross-platform support, that's when the decision should have been made to add enhancements and exclusive content that would have made purchasing a title over two years old with an unnecessary Vista-only requirement, really worthwhile:

With Halo 3 and the conclusion of the saga of the Master Chief versus the Covenant now set for a September 25^th release on the Xbox 360 this year, one can only speculate when or if Microsoft and Bungie will decide once again whether or not “the fate of all mankind is too great to be decided on a console alone.” Though such a scenario is highly unlikely, it would be awesome if Halo 3 was simultaneously launched on Vista under the Games for Windows banner and the Xbox 360. We all know that Halo 3 is going to rock—for Bungie and Microsoft's sake it has no choice. With real cross-platform and better mouse and keyboard support, enhanced AI and physics, tons of jaw-dropping, high-res and high-definition DirectX 10 visual goodness, blow-you-out-of-your seat gameplay and an epic, grand finale worthy of the Halo name—Halo 3 for Windows Vista would take the franchise to new heights and insure Games for Windows and Vista's success as The PC gaming platform.

The majority of gamers, however, aren't going to budge on switching to Windows Vista until Service Pack 1 and better drivers are released—which will definitely be long after Halo 3 sees the light of day. Slow Vista adoption means fewer game publishers willing to take a chance on Games for Windows and Vista titles that take advantage of DirectX 10. And LIVE for Windows could certainly use some more quality time in the QA department.

So it looks like the Nano-suit augmented Delta Force Operators and teraforming alien invaders of Crytek's Crysis, rather than the Master Chief and Arbiter, will be the ones who pull Games for Windows and Vista out of their current slump. In a way, it's too bad for Halo fans who are PC gamers and deserve better than a game with so much thrown-away potential for greatness like Halo 2 for Windows Vista, that ultimately delivers too little, too late.

Final Score:

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