Why Halo 2 Vista is the WORST version of Halo 2 (Halo 2 for PC)

With Halo 2 being of huge interest right now cause of things like the Halo 2 LASO deathless challenge we thought it was a good time to look at Halo 2 Vista and try and figure out why it is the worst version of Halo 2.

[metroidfan]

Funnily enough, playing this version of Halo 2 on my college PC was what got me into Halo (and later Xbox) in the first place.

[UncookedMoa]

I actually made a mod for Halo 2 Vista called Halo 2 Reclaimed trying to restore it back to a state as close as I could get it to the OG Xbox. I couldn't get it 100% correct though. This was pre-MCC. There are actually a ton of differences in Halo 2 Vista, and even MCC. Lots of visual differences, which have mostly been addressed in MCC at this point. But since our main concern is gameplay here, there are a lot of those bugs too. In fact, the whole "In Gravemind Legendary, you die as soon as the level starts" thing was introduced in Halo 2 Vista. The OG Xbox version actually gave you a couple of seconds to register that Brutes were in fact in front of you. Another difference is that human Flood forms cannot climb walls like in the original. This made certain enemies like the Rocket Flood on Quarantine Zone unable to climb up, so you end up just not seeing them at all. It also made Sacred Icon's final waves more awkward, as some of those forms stuck to a wall and couldn't climb up, increasing the wait time between waves. These bugs are still in the MCC.

[RyanBride]

Your settings default to lowest settings because your computer component came out after the game. Most games try to check your specs and set the graphics accordingly. However since you are using stuff that didn't exist and it has no clue what it is. It will default to lowest settings. This is common with many games

[DrewSwenson]

I picked this up because I was a huge Halo: CE fan, and at the time I had no Xbox. I attempted to install, only to realize I didn't have a dedicated graphics card. So I snagged a cheap Nvidia card and still had struggles. Thankfully I have the MCC rnd a much better computer these days.

[wot]

Super bouncing, sword flying, etc STILL WORK in Halo 2 MCC, they are not gone. They are just more difficult to pull off because of the increased FPS

[Glaceonics]

I don't know why but this video makes me feel... incredibly old seeing how many versions of Halo 2 there are, then their release dates only to realize OG Halo 2 has been around for 18 years, Vista for 15 and now MCC for almost 10, going on 8. All of which are huge chunks of my 24 year old life. Time flies... time fucking flies.

[Veckoza]

The reason Halo 2 is having such a resurgence is the fact that everyone is getting tired of the games big studios are just pushing out to meet 2 year deadlines, and not because they love the game they are making. It's taking us all back to a time where creators made games because they loved playing video games.

[alexanderelderhorst]

Well, if you think about it, since Vista takes away all those 30 tick skips and has them shooting faster, while also staying true to the original skulls with grunt bp, it's like you're just playing the xbox version but harder. If you're running it, either you are cheating, or you are asserting dominance by running the most difficult and frustrating version (frustrating in having to grab all skulls each login without the benefit of skips). And hey, if you think about it why not beat the ultimate challenge on the hardest of all versions, because that does technically make it harder meaning it really is the hardest challenge.

[nihongo_jouzu]

You have to remember that MCC Halo 2 is relatively new, and that having a custom game browser that supports halo 2 is also pretty new to MCC. Beforehand, for many years, the Cartographer version of Halo 2 was the definite best way to get your multiplayer Halo 2 fix on PC. Even now, It's playercount is relatively healthy for this kind of small community, and there are a lot of advantages it has over the 343 implementation of Halo 2, and to date is still the definitive modern experience. It also argubly has a better CGB, ongoing support, seasonal events, and is still just a righteous good time, a healthy mix of new modes and old modes, new maps, fun customizations, etc. etc.

[maxmeister]

halo 2 project cartographer actually has one cool feature, a fully implemented infection mode with automatic team changing. That is the one reason that I play it from time to time apart from needing lower specs than mcc on potato laptop.

[nayncat]

I’ll never forget playing through CE one night with my brother and my grandma came out of nowhere to visit and had the Limited Edition of Halo 2, I can’t be sure when this exactly was, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was within a week of its release and it blew our minds lol

Best Halo out of the series to me, at that moment I had gotten a better taste of Halo Multiplayer when there were no party chats, the clan system was awesome, the ranks were fulfilling and you had the joy to get an invite to a filled lobby and play the bigger maps and Tower of Power- later the joy was wishing someone had gotten the DLC disk that had access to the Infection mode and threw you an invite.

[icarusgaming]

The flipped Wraith definitely used to be in MCC. I distinctly recall that happening to us at launch

[DGCpicturesEntertainment]

Cr1tical: $20K for anyone who beats H2 Laso without dying.
Me: Raise it to $2B and I'll consider.

[AlejoConejo-vbln]

I was able to install Halo 2 Vista in Windows 7 back in the day but it would crash towards the end of Outskirts when you enter the highway. I didn't have Xbox back then so I could only play CE, Custom Edition, and the first two levels of 2. And yet I was still a massive Halo fan.

[DeadGothicRed]

I will never forget how excited I was and how bad I wanted to play Halo 2 already. My parents got me the original Halo edition xbox and it came with the Halo 2 E3 demo video and I'd re-watch it over and over. I stayed home from school that day and played Halo 2 all day.

[necronomicoy]

Playing Halo 2 Project Cartographer back when I started college is what made me fell in love (again) with the franchise, it has such a nostalgic, early 2000's vibe that is so hard to find nowadays, and like you said, it basically runs on anything today, so finding out that I could run this on my 4gb Ram 54mb video-integrated graphics laptop was such a happy moment for me

[OmegaProductions]

Funny thing is, there was a time when I was a kid where I wanted Halo 2 Vista so bad I’d do anything to get my hands on it. At the time I didn’t have an Xbox and my PC only had XP, so all I had to play was CE. I played it to death but I eventually wanted to branch out and Halo 2 was my first target, given it was also on PC.

I remember my desperation got so bad that I just lied to my parents and got them to buy a copy of Halo 2 Vista thinking it was compatible with my PC. When my dad found out he basically told me that it wouldn’t work on my computer. I was a dumb kid so I didn’t understand I needed Windows Vista.

Short story short, I never played Halo 2 Vista. I ended up getting a 360 eventually and my first experience with Halo 2 was when I bought a Limited Edition copy at my school fair for $5. I still own that copy to this day.

I eventually torrented Halo 2 Vista years later, but yeah…really dodged a bullet there.

[SirDragonClaw]

As a game dev a good 80% of these "issues" are completely obvious. Take the reduced bloom and screenspace effects, that's because you are running at a higher resolution but the filter kernel used for bloom was designed for a fixed resolution. Screen tearing doesn't mean the game is running poorly btw, it generally means its running at a higher refresh rate than your monitor, you can lock this in your gpu control panel. Also it defaulted to low because the GPU you are using is newer than the game and not in its lookup table, so it defaults to low as a precaution, very normal.

On a screen and gpu from 2006 many of these issues wouldn't have really existed.

[unfathomable]

I hope that 343 makes the music for it louder without having to mix the audio in options myself

[novaleader]

What does screen tearing have to do with optimisation? That just means Vsync either isn't working or it's not on...