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Geek Culture / Halo vs Half-life 2

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General Reed
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Posted: 23rd May 2007 23:49
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What would u pepole say were better? Halo (1,2 and 3) or Half-life 2.
I vote Half-life 2, because of being able to use the physics and enviroment to your advantage, and the incredible ai, making it diffrent to most of the fps's out there. Whereas halo tends to be just Move-Shoot-Move-Shoot.

I have AMD Athlon X2 5200+, Geforce 7600GS, 2GB Ram, 240GB HDD and one hell of a headache
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NeX the Fairly Fast Ferret
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Posted: 23rd May 2007 23:50
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Halo doesn't require a download to function. Nor does it need anywhere near as much HDD space. The level details suck, though.


Since the other one was scaring you guys so much...
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General Reed
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Posted: 23rd May 2007 23:52
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Hmm, seriously though i wouldnt say HDD space or an update was an issue

I have AMD Athlon X2 5200+, Geforce 7600GS, 2GB Ram, 240GB HDD and one hell of a headache
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UnderLord
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Posted: 24th May 2007 00:01
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Half-Life 2

Halo has nothing on Half-Life 2...lots of FPS's don't even compair...

"I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road."
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Torsten Sorensen
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Posted: 24th May 2007 00:11
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Half-Life (1 and 2), and Halo (1, and 2) are way overrated IMO. I never saw what was so great about Half-Life 2, and GearBox just did a sloppy job on porting Halo to PC.


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General Reed
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Posted: 24th May 2007 00:12
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@Torsten Sorensen - Are you mad? have you ever even played half-life 2?

I have AMD Athlon X2 5200+, Geforce 7600GS, 2GB Ram, 240GB HDD and one hell of a headache
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Raven
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Posted: 24th May 2007 00:15
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If it was between Halo 2 and Half-Life 2, personally i think there's no contest. Halo 2 definately.. Halo 1 however wasn't what my expectations had hoped from when it was still being called Planetside and i still have a bitter taste from it becomming an xbox exclusive title then ported despite it being originally designed for the PC.

One of my biggest gripes about Half-Life 2 is simple, loading. You more about 50 steps and bam! loading a new area. Also after all of the boasting of the maps being able to be 16x larger than those in Half-Life the game ended up loading just as much if not more sometimes. Not to mention I can't say I ever noticed when this extra space was ACTUALLY used. The levels are so small and almost as clostraphobic (unless in the immediate leading/trailing areas from the vehicles) it wasn't even funny. Weapon imbalance also ment that it was fairly pointless using anything other than the ZPM or SMG for the entire game unless you ran out of ammo, or it was required for some of the most uninspired puzzles i've ever seen.

On the whole I'm left with more of a bitter taste from Half-Life 2 not really improving much over the previous game; and just being yet another over-hyped uninspired FPS. Atleast with Halo 2, they didn't set out and claim they were re-inventing the 3D wheel.. nor did they leave fans waiting for the same ridiculous period Valve did. Even with those points set aside Half-Life 2 still is a shockingly ordinary game.

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General Reed
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Posted: 24th May 2007 00:16
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Yes well the loading problem is not really there with a reasonable machine

I have AMD Athlon X2 5200+, Geforce 7600GS, 2GB Ram, 240GB HDD and one hell of a headache
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Torsten Sorensen
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Posted: 24th May 2007 00:16
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I said "IMO" for a reason... Yes, I have Half-Life, Half-Life 2, and Ep.1. All you do is shoot people, do a few physics oriented puzzles, then continue with the action. The story never really engaged me, and it was way too easy on hard. The only thing that I truly love that came from it was CS: Source.


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General Reed
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Posted: 24th May 2007 00:17
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Quote: "CS: Source."
, oh an i suppose that has an enthrilling story "unlike" half-life 2?

I have AMD Athlon X2 5200+, Geforce 7600GS, 2GB Ram, 240GB HDD and one hell of a headache
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Raven
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Posted: 24th May 2007 00:24
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Quote: "Yes well the loading problem is not really there with a reasonable machine"


Last time I played it for a reasonable amount of time was when it was released on an

Athlon64 3200+, 512MB RAM (DDR400), GeForce 5900 Ultra 256MB AGP8x
Western Digital SATA 1.5Gb 250GB HDD

I would hardly call that a slouch, and destinctly remember loading times between areas of 2-10min. What I find shocking is even now that I'm currently running a Core 2 Duo 1.8GHz, 768MB DDR2-677, Radeon X1900 XTX 256MB PCI-E x16 WD SATA 3.0Gb 320GB HDD and started playing through again to see how it runs on the new card.
Loading times are still far from what I'd like.

Halo 2 for Windows Vista (Beta) will load after each chapter, which lasts roughly 20-30mins each. Loading times are roughly 1-2mins maximum. There are still parts of Half-Life 2 that take almost 5minutes to load. Given it's now begining to show it's age that is ridiculous especially on fairly "decent" current hardware.

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General Reed
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Posted: 24th May 2007 00:25
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I think its the memory, 768mb is a bit low for modern day gaming machines

I have AMD Athlon X2 5200+, Geforce 7600GS, 2GB Ram, 240GB HDD and one hell of a headache
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NeX the Fairly Fast Ferret
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Posted: 24th May 2007 00:57
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I play Oblivion on 512mb, for god's sake. It hardly matters.


Since the other one was scaring you guys so much...
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General Reed
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Posted: 24th May 2007 01:03 Edited at: 24th May 2007 01:04
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Depends on the quality, and also how much memory is needed to store per level. If the game/app needs more memory then u have, it will use swap space, of course its going to slow down, because its effectively copying files from one part of the hdd to another. Whereas if u have enough ram then the copy/load is from a hdd to a fast memory bank - decreasing load time. Plus when the game needs the data loaded into the memory/swap, its a lot faster to load it directly from memory than from hdd.

So yes it does matter, a lot. Ive found that every time ive upgraded my memory, its significantly increased performance more than any other upgrade would(exept graphics card).

I have AMD Athlon X2 5200+, Geforce 7600GS, 2GB Ram, 240GB HDD and one hell of a headache
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NeX the Fairly Fast Ferret
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Posted: 24th May 2007 01:08
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[sarcasm]Well, maybe if programmers were a little more efficient, they wouldn't need 1Tb of memory. [/sarcasm] Seriously, though, I can understand 200Mb at the max.


Since the other one was scaring you guys so much...
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Raven
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Posted: 24th May 2007 01:56
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Quote: "I think its the memory, 768mb is a bit low for modern day gaming machines"


768MB certainly as hell isn't low for modern gaming.
512MB is standard, and 1GB is considered recommended.
And it's only been a year since this has become true, because games a year ago were still asking for only 256MB and recommending 512MB.

What's more is Half-Life 2 is almost 3years old now, and my system certainly passes far above the "recommended" hardware for it.

You know if, and doubt it but.. IF it's true that HL2 is loading slowing because of my RAM (which Kingston HyperX DDR2 677MHz C3-2-3-6 ECC I would highly doubt this to be a pipeline issue) then it just a testiment to how poorly developed the engine is. I've said it many times in the past but I think Windows developers have far too much freedom concerning technology and rather than pushing the best from what is available and adding features for future releases they seem to develop games that require you to have a system that won't even be publically available until post-release. Games should be released for available hardware, not on the basis that hardware will eventually catch up with what they think they can get away with.

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Agent Dink
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Posted: 24th May 2007 02:10
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I dunno Raven, I run HL2 on a similar system to the one you described. The difference is I had 1.5gigs of ram. I only have to wait roughly 15-30 seconds to load a new segment of the game. It's rather quick loading. It gives you just enough time to crack your knuckles before the next zombie slaughtering session

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Torsten Sorensen
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Posted: 24th May 2007 03:04
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Quote: "oh an i suppose that has an enthrilling story "unlike" half-life 2?"

Personally, I don't really give a crap about single-player in games. Sure, it doesn't hurt to have a great campaign, but I'm more of a multi-player person. I love Halo for its multi-player, but I never really play through it more than once. Half-Life 2: DeathMatch was one of the worst online shooters I have ever played, but CS: Source actually takes a bit of skill (Although, the hitboxes are extremely flawed).


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RUCCUS
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Posted: 24th May 2007 04:18
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Really...why does it matter which we think is better? Why does it matter what we think about haters? Why...




>> Gibble Blops - free, online, playable!
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greenlig
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Posted: 24th May 2007 05:48
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@ Raven - You mention Halo was originally called Planetside. Planetside is a totally different game that was being developed before Halo was.

I'm sure you know it's a MMOFPS game...

http://planetside.station.sony.com/

I might be wrong, but they look like completely different games to me. I only remember this because I followed the development of Planetside with interest.

Greenlig

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AaronG
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Posted: 24th May 2007 05:53
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Halo was supposed to be a graphic novel called Planetside.
I personally like HL2 better, because all of it's physics and the storyline were amazing. The character's actually talked to you and interacted, instead of having a seargent standing there doing bad lip syncing and telling you to shoot stuff.

Do I see HDR and water physics in halo2? someone? anyone?



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greenlig
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Posted: 24th May 2007 05:58
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I thought something like that might be the case. Thanks for clearing that up.

Greenlig

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Torsten Sorensen
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Posted: 24th May 2007 06:24
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Quote: "Do I see HDR and water physics in halo2? someone? anyone?"

Thats not a fair comparison, the Xbox cannot do HDR...


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Raven
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Posted: 24th May 2007 07:40
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greenlig, back when they started development (in 1997) it was originally called PlanetSide. Designed as a massively multiplayer third person shooter game, a bit like an mmorpg only without the leveling; you all just fought over territory on a planet either as humans or the "aliens".
The actual graphical style, and main game elements haven't appeared to change much since the original design; but somewhere along the line they decided to change it to large multiplayer with a single player. Then the planet they were fighting over changed to be a ring-world.. and the name was changed to "Halo".

I could go into more detail about this, and probably be able to dig out some old PC Gamers that cover it with the proof most tend to demand from me. From when it was first announced though I'd followed Halos' development closely given by the time everything started to change Oni was released for the PC; which was imo a work of art. Changed my whole view on Bungie, and started to believe they might actually pull it all off as they promised.

The end result was good, but still burns it never really ended up as faithful to the original concept; and the storyline felt like it was an after-thought. Well scripted one, but still not something they'd originally planned on.

Quote: "Do I see HDR and water physics in halo2? someone? anyone?"


Given HDR is only available to GeForce 6, 7 and 8-Series as well as Radeon X, X1K and X2K-Series cards.. how the hell you expect them to have a GeForce 3 GPU achieve HDR at reasonable gamespeed is beyond me. That said Bungie realised this too, and the Cut-Scenes (which are all in-game rendered) DO have HDR. So, put that in your pipe'n'smoke it.

As for realistic water physics.. given there's only a fraction of the game spent near any bodies of water cause your either blasting through underground tunnels, or in complexes, or on barren terrain. Having that feature would've been pointless... this said you do know that Halo 2 and Half-Life 2 use the exact same physics engine right? So if they wanted to waste processing power, which imo was actually better spent on AI that is actually intelligent rather than predictably scripted; on making realistic water, they could've. Personally I think Bungie made the better choice given Half-Life 2 requires an x86 1.5GHz Processor to run, and Halo 2 was running on an x86 733MHz Processor. So HMMM, for saying Bungie had less to work with; they certainly as hell did more with it. That's something I admire about console developers.

If you've ever played the Xbox version of Half-Life 2, you'll have noticed most of these cool features that everyone raves about on the PC.. just aren't anywhere near as good. (and sweet jesus does it have awful loading times!! even FarCry wasn't that bad!)

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Agent Dink
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Posted: 24th May 2007 07:46 Edited at: 24th May 2007 07:52
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HL2 came out after the xbox was becoming obsolete in comparison to gaming computers, so naturally it's going to be more taxing on a system. And when they port it to Xbox they have to take some of those features away to get it to run.

EDIT, yeah just checked dates...

Xbox, released in 2001 in the US.

HL2 released in 2004, Halo 2 was also released at this time.

HL2 on the PC, Halo2 on the xbox... Now... Our computers were becoming much more powerful by that time. The Xbox wasn't really able to keep up anymore with the gaming PCs. So naturally a game designed for that era of technology is going to be more feature laden on the PCs it came out for, and of course if they port it to the xbox it's going to run slower, so they have to take away from the graphics and stuff to get it going up to speed.

If HL2 were ported to the 360 it would be excellent in terms of how it runs / console to PC features, it would be identical.

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Raven
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Posted: 24th May 2007 07:58
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Quote: "HL2 came out after the xbox was becoming obsolete in comparison to gaming computers, so naturally it's going to be more taxing on a system. And when they port it to Xbox they have to take some of those features away to get it to run."


Valve claim that Source will scale down to run on a

DirectX7 Graphics Chip
800MHz x86-32 Processor
128MB RAM

atleast that was their claim. I've never seen it running on anything below DirectX8 (manually setting DirectX7 causes Source to crash on 2000/XP) and certainly doesn't like having less than 256MB RAM or 1.5GHz Processor; although with a decent graphics card and amount of ram this can be downgraded to roughly 1.0GHz.

Still for the graphical and physics content, loading times are shockingly high; and the specifications just aren't worth it. Half-Life 2 just doesn't look nice until it's on a current mid-range card and they're about the only ones capable of running it at a reasonable speed with the high graphics on. Personally I find that until it's in High graphics, Killzone runs rings around it graphically... and that's running on far less resources. Has a better story, singleplayer and multiplayer than Half-Life 2 as well. About the only thing that ever made HL2 stand out was the ZPG; and the vehicles making up atleast half of the story just made me feel like the entire game was a technology test.

Atleast we all knew Doom 3 was a technology test, with a stylised thin storyline that by id's own standards was extremely in-depth.. compared to other games was there just to add to the graphical atmosphere. On the whole it looked better, played better, and you felt like you were actually working towards something rather than having someone constantly guide you to the next tech demo set-piece. I know alot of people complained about Doom 3, but hell atleast they were honest about what they hyped about the game.. they tried to sell it as a Survival Horror, that was trying to be as faithful to the original as possible while giving a new and graphically amazing experience.

Halo 2 also offered this to gamers, it remained faithful and true rather than including new technologies just because they could.

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Torsten Sorensen
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Posted: 24th May 2007 10:01
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Quote: "and the vehicles making up atleast half of the story just made me feel like the entire game was a technology test."

Thats pretty much how I feel. Its fun, but there just isn't much there. The visuals are quite nice though.


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Bill Bailey
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Posted: 24th May 2007 19:48
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half life 2 was a experiment to see how far they could push profesional limits. It is incredbible and anyone who doesn't see how should ge garry's mod and see how amazing the physics, graphics and animations are. In it you have decent team play, enemies with an IQ of 300 and the level of detail in the huge environments is so good that if it was released yesterday, some people would still think the game is the best ever.

Halo 1 is good especially in its cut scenes and loading times. The maps are small and the level of detail cannot compare to hl2. The covenant and the infected flood share animations which is dissapointing but the animations of sleeping and on guard exceptional.The online multiplayer was also a huge sucess and that is the main reason why halo 2 succesful.
Personally i think half life 2 has the upper hand because of the level of user creativity with the game engine. Games such as countertrike and garry's mod have made valve very rich people.
Case closed.

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UnderLord
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Posted: 25th May 2007 16:31
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Quote: "The maps are small and the level of detail cannot compare to hl2"



Indeed =)

"I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road."
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David R
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Posted: 25th May 2007 23:10 Edited at: 25th May 2007 23:15
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Quote: "
Valve claim that Source will scale down to run on a

DirectX7 Graphics Chip
800MHz x86-32 Processor
128MB RAM
"


Runs on me old lappie, with very similar specs (in fact, the same, barring the processor) but 1.2Ghz processor. It simply scales down the DX ver to work on it - if you tinker with the SDK, you'll see it can do QueryInterface down to DX6 and still work


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UnderLord
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Posted: 25th May 2007 23:28
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Neat huh...

"I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road."
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Inspire
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Posted: 25th May 2007 23:44
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I love them both dearly. Half Life 2 is better though. The level design alone owns Halo....

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Bizar Guy
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Posted: 26th May 2007 01:50 Edited at: 26th May 2007 02:01
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Quote: "Personally I find that until it's in High graphics, Killzone runs rings around it graphically... "

GASP. Killzone has better graphics when HL2 isn't running at close to full specs!??

Sorry, but that just made me laugh. Raven, you don't need to make up things that are wrong with HL2. Your normal reasons are perfectly valid already, without going into load times or how other games look better when HL2 has the its graphics turned down.

I do totally disagree with you, but I have an idea that I'm a totally different type of gamer.

If nothing else, I'd say HL2 is easily the greatest artistic achievement I've seen in games. Don't go explaining how other games have better graphics, because that's not at all what I mean. Art is much more than texture quality and polygons. Texture quality though is something I think valve should go back to Half Life 2 and update though. That would be an awesome update.

Killzone has some reatty good art as well, but Half Life 2 far outdoes it, I think.

Half Life 2 is much much more than a tech fest. If you don't see anything but that in it except problems, you aren't very good at looking...

And I find it interesting that in another thread you said "I've never liked FarCry though, but I'd say given it's following that it isn't exactly a "bad" game", but think Half Life 2 is a horrible game, despite how large its following is. Does the following not count for Half Life 2, or is it just so obvious that you don't bother to mention it?

The reasons you usually state are valid, even if I disagree with many of them, or think you blow a lot of them out of proportion. But why on earth are you inventing reasons?

I'm not crazy about Halo, and even less about Halo 2, but then again I've never played a console fps I've liked. I always feel claustrophobic. The ringworld idea really appealed to me though. If I find the book at the library I'll give it a read.

Edit:
Quote: "768MB certainly as hell isn't low for modern gaming.
512MB is standard, and 1GB is considered recommended."


I agree with you that it isn't low, but I would say that 512MB IS low for gaming, and 768MB certainly isn't high.

...I have 1GB, on my 2004 Laptop.

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Raven
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Posted: 26th May 2007 11:41 Edited at: 26th May 2007 11:44
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Killzone:







Half-Life 2:


Something to note is while sure, Half-Life 2 looks much sharper with more contrast; there is a huge difference in the actual texture quality between the platforms.

Half-Life 2 on those settings is still using 512x512x32bpp samples, while Killzone is using 256x256x8bpp (paletted)
The models are also quite different depths; Half-Life 2 is 3,500 (low) polygons while Killzone is 2,500 polygons. Still the shear difference in quality is just gob-smacking. Something else to note is that's not the lowest possible settings for HL2, in-fact that's just the lowest settings in DirectX9 Mode. If HL2 was cooperating with the command console then I would've turned it down to DirectX7 Mode which is just shocking quality level.

The whole artist style of HL2 is lost entirely when the photorealism textures are taken away. It's like Max Payne on the PS2; take away the high-resolution textures and the entire point in the graphics is lost. The lighting engine again is something that I don't like that much, given the level is still lightmapped; so low-resolution textures = low-resolution level lighting (as shown in the screenshot) also the dynamic lighting is done via vertex lights unless you have shaders on high. This just provides a horrible polygon lighting effect that bleeds sometimes in quite extreme results.

As I said before the story just doesn't really exist, and the entire challenge in the game rather than actually doing something in order to make it through the game is simply to get from A-B without much thought. If something is in your way you shoot it. Killzone had some quite interesting character interaction in it's story.. but HL2 is just, well dull.

And yeah I didn't comment on Farcry saying it wasn't that bad because it has a following simply because I've not played through the game ever. Only played the demos or a small section of the games. It never really interested me, so never really bothered with it. This said with that game I can see the appeal of what people might like. With Half-Life 2, it's very difficult to see that appeal. It was a game I had waited years to play, quite eagerly.. the end result was something that I honestly can't understand why people rave about it so often. It's a bog standard FPS with little story, graphics that aren't really that awe-inspiring while playing.. in-fact the only time I thought "wow" throughout the entire game was when you reach the bridge just before nova prospekt, with the low-flowing clouds it just looked amazing ... from a distance. Close up it lost that whole awesome factor. Over half the game is vehicles with the other half often trying to show off the Havok physics engine.

Really my biggest issue with the game was the fact it was just uninspiring. Look at the level design, it's been said above that "it's better than Halo"; sure for most of Halo 1, but there are some sections of the game that are really well done. Halo 2 certainly improved on this quite a bit where by rather than one really good section every half hour they're there most of the time. You can see with the Halo games that the level designers have actually thought about aspects despite the fact the game is literally move'n'shoot everything. Half-Life 2 where you'd expect more involvement in the worlds and much larger areas, because of the whole "interacting script system" they'd made you just ended up with very small areas where if there was no where to go you had to find the button to push.

If you ask me Half-Life 2 should've been more like Penumbra Overture. Despite it not looking as-good graphically, the issue there is that the game is being developed by a small independant team, not a large corporate games company worth millions with 70-odd artists who are all seasoned professionals. Yet you know what the game puzzles are some of the best I've EVER seen.. hope that the control system is improved, but atleast they listen to the public rather than keep all of the information quiet and claim it'll be the best thing since sliced bread.

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entomophobiac
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Posted: 26th May 2007 18:25
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I think this isn't even difficult.

Half-Life 2 is one of the most overrated games ever made, in my opinion. Sure, a half-decent campaign and all. But I found it tedious half-way through.

Halo 2? All I say is cooperative play... And don't give me no Sven Co-Op or anything like that. I play games out of the box, because I don't have time to play very often and want to be able to enjoy what I play right away.

And there's really nothing to compare to a nice few matches over the Halo 2 match making system... No other FPS comes even close, in my opinion, irrespective of platform.

Half-Life 2 was just pure disappointment.
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UnderLord
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Posted: 26th May 2007 18:54
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Quote: "Half-Life 2 was just pure disappointment."


Guess it depends on who you ask....

Now Stalker : Shadow of Chernobyl (SP?) thats a game with awsome lighting i'll have to take some screenies and post em.

"I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road."
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Raven
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Location: Hertfordshire, England
Posted: 26th May 2007 19:06 Edited at: 26th May 2007 19:12
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yeah that's certainly a pretty game, shame it took to long to be released. i've lost interest in it tbh, might get it if it comes out for the 360 though

edit: no one else thinks that Killzone looks good? guess it's just me, it's shame you loose the whole motion blur that makes it feel more realistic; plus there are no shots of looking down and seeing legs. might be quite weird but i think part of the whole illusion of fps are lost on most where you can't see the arms/legs when moving around. i mean in half-life2 you don't even have a climing arm animation; yet in halo and better in killzone you can see yor legs and arms as they would be because the camera is actually where the head would be; rather than simple visual weapons. Halo 3 is even better actually cause the HUD is no longer rendered on the screen as sprites but are rendered to the helmet view; when you have no helmet you have no hud. It's not somethig that's major but it helps keep the illusion of you're ACTUALLY that character.

Something else that irks me about HL2 is the fact that gordon never talks, i mean it's nice he's about the only character that doesn't but it makes interaction feel very .. one-sided.

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Torsten Sorensen
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Location: Seattle, WA
Posted: 27th May 2007 00:28
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S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is my favorite PC game at the moment. One of the most (If not the most) atmospheric games I have ever played.
Here is a video I made with it:
http://www.gamespot.com/users/TorstenSorensen/video_player?id=IHMzlDH95b4JvzXc


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UnderLord
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Posted: 27th May 2007 03:30
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Quote: "One of the most (If not the most) atmospheric games I have ever played."


Agreed

"I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road."
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Agent Dink
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Posted: 27th May 2007 03:50
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Thinking of getting STALKER... Looked cool when it was first announced and seems like it would be fun even now.

I have no signature...
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