[starman]

Remember Marathon?

Have an XBox?

Get Halo.

Halo is what Marathon could have been had it been made today. All the elements of Marathon are there - the marine, the female AI, citizens yelling "they're everywhere!", the same weapons, all of it. This time, the storyline's changed, you have marine backup, and it's MUCH more expansive. However, at the core of this game is the Marathon we all know and love.

If you hate the "evil empire", well, that's too bad for you because you're really missing out on an excellent experience that all Mac Marathon fans should relish.

Mike

[Scotttheking]

Ok, you like the XBOX, we get the idea, so cool it.

[starman]

Oh, I'd bet you wouldn't be all over me if I was raving about the iPod.

And here I thought I could help out some of the old Marathon vets. You do realize that Marathon was a Mac game, right?

Mike

[Camelot]

Originally posted by starman:
<STRONG>Halo is what Marathon could have been had it been made today. </STRONG>

Let me think about this...

Bungie created Marathon

Bungie created Halo

Microsoft bought Bungie because they saw Halo and needed something that would sell XBoxen

If they had their way, Halo would have been XBox-only

&lt;paranoia&gt;
Personally, I don't need any more MS hooks into my life. XBox is just MS's way of getting weaning more info about you. They already know what web sites you visit (IE), what TV programs you watch (Ultimate TV and WebTV/MSNTV), your travel plans (Expedia), car preferences (CarPoint), what applications you run (Windows XP), and now what games you play (XBox). XBox is just another .NET hook into your life. No thanks.

[Millennium]

If it doesn't have the phrase "Frog blast the vent core!" then it isn't Marathon.

[Leonard]

I'll wait till it comes out on the Mac. I can wait. I just started Giants: Citizen Kabuto and I'll probably be on that for a couple of months.

The advertisement for HALO looks excellent. The ring-like planet looks interesting.

[druber]

this is a mighty innocuous post to get bent out of shape about. mention bungie and people get this hang-dog just-saw-my-ex-girlfriend look. i mean, i don't send bill christmas cards, and i probably won't buy an xbox, but i don't remember any battle for bungie where m$ outbid apple or anything. bungie found a way, not just to stay afloat, but to prosper in tough economic times. go getem', says me says i.

if they had their way it'd be x-box only? i haven't seen any evidence to this--the fact that bungie's still working on a pc/mac version speaks against it. i think part of what made bungie attractive was that it was already a part of multiple markets. granted, i wouldn't call it a true marathon successor until people find some reference to 'frogblast' in the game. too many itchy trigger fingers all around..

[mitchell_pgh]

The jury is still out on the XBOX... I'm going to hold off until I hear more about the reliability. Remember, the guts are basically a crap PC.

[mr. burns]

*pauses rogue leader*

halo? i'll pass.

*continues playing rogue leader*

[seanyepez]

It's not a "crap" PC inside. Inside you'll find a 733-megahertz Pentium III variant and a GPU based on a GeForce3. Enough capping. It's a marvel of engineering.

Marathon was one of the best games of all time. For Halo, I think I'll shell out the $300 for an Xbox. Then again, I should just wait until they release a PC/Mac version of the game.

Does anyone know if the Xbox will be able to play multiplayer with PC/Mac clients when they are finally released?

[jamesa]

Originally posted by seanyepez:
<STRONG>Does anyone know if the Xbox will be able to play multiplayer with PC/Mac clients when they are finally released?</STRONG>

Yes, I do know - and the answer is no.

It's looking unlikely that 'net play will even be made available for the Xbox version of Halo. The Mac/PC client will excel in that department

-- james

[Jansar]

I read the reviews, I saw the screenshots, and any game that relives Marathon is a terrific addition to my gaming collection. However, I'm still wondering why most of you in this forum want to go buy an Xbox, simply because Halo arrives a little earlier. Why not wait until it's available for the Mac, so you can play it on your already existing machine made by a company other than Microsoft. Most of the games (and all of the good ones) made for these consoles will also be made for your computer, and nowadays more and more games are being released for the Macintosh platform. In my opinion, the Xbox does not look promising. I'd rather go buy a GameCube.

[Leonard]

Originally posted by jamesa:
<STRONG>

Yes, I do know - and the answer is no.

It's looking unlikely that 'net play will even be made available for the Xbox version of Halo. The Mac/PC client will excel in that department

-- james</STRONG>

Another reason to wait for the PC/Mac version of the game.

I really haven't followed HALO's development, it is going to be MacOS X compatible, isn't it? I would guess carbonized.

[juanvaldes]

Originally posted by Leonard:
<STRONG>

Another reason to wait for the PC/Mac version of the game.

I really haven't followed HALO's development, it is going to be MacOS X compatible, isn't it? I would guess carbonized.</STRONG>

Well, I was going o say yes, because I though I read somewhere that it was, but I couldn't find it. But it really should be since its' still some 4 months away from release.

[ShortcutToMoncton]

With all luck, it'll be MacOS X only. Remember - you'll need crazy hardware to run Halo properly (the XBox is a 733Mhz Pentium with a custon GeForce3), so it'll be only playable on machines that have shipped VERY recently. Plus, it almost seems like they really haven't done much work on the computer versions at all, so it would be nice to see if Cocoa could really give the programming speed boost Apple (and Omni) claims it does....

Anyway, just a hopeful guess....

greg

[bluedog]

Originally posted by ShortcutToMoncton:
<STRONG>With all luck, it'll be MacOS X only. Remember - you'll need crazy hardware to run Halo properly (the XBox is a 733Mhz Pentium with a custon GeForce3), so it'll be only playable on machines that have shipped VERY recently. Plus, it almost seems like they really haven't done much work on the computer versions at all, so it would be nice to see if Cocoa could really give the programming speed boost Apple (and Omni) claims it does....

Anyway, just a hopeful guess....

greg</STRONG>

Halo was well underway LONG BEFORE the evil empire BOUGHT Bungie. I'm sure the coding was heavily rehashed to get it to run with decent framerates on that poor Pentium3. A 500mHz PPC G3 or G4 should be enough horsepower for the game. Its the eyecandy that will suffer if you don't have good 3d hardware.

If you want to play it on your Mac do yourself a favor, buy a Radion or GeForce3 for decent screen performance. Remember MHZ is meaningless in determining relative performance. The G3 holds its own against intel and the G4 blows it out of the water for floating point and vector calculations. Although Halo may not use the altivec for much of its coding, ANY decent G3/G4 with good video hardware will be able to play it. (Read ANY as any one with a decent 3d card and enough RAM running 450-500mHz or better.

[I'mDaMac]

Originally posted by seanyepez:
<STRONG>It's not a "crap" PC inside. Inside you'll find a 733-megahertz Pentium III variant and a GPU based on a GeForce3. Enough capping. It's a marvel of engineering.

Marathon was one of the best games of all time. For Halo, I think I'll shell out the $300 for an Xbox. Then again, I should just wait until they release a PC/Mac version of the game.

Does anyone know if the Xbox will be able to play multiplayer with PC/Mac clients when they are finally released?</STRONG>

Last I heard it was actually an intel celeron in those machines. Personally I'll wait for a Mac version. Playing Marathon/Halo on anything but a Mac is just wrong.

I passed on the X-Box and got a GameCube (already have a PS2). Gamecube has the innards we Mac users are familiar with: IBM PPC CPU and ATI GPU. Good 'nuff for me.

[ShortcutToMoncton]

Ahhhhh...you didn't read my post correctly, Bluedog. I said it's a 733 Pentium (III, actually) with a custom GeForce3 in there. That is a decently fast machine...and it's good to keep in mind that this is NOT quite a computer. This is a box built specifically to run games as well as the hardware possibly can...extra CPU uses (such as OS, multimedia extras, etc.) have been eliminated or minimized. Even with all this, some people report that Halo still gets relatively choppy in high-action areas.

This doesn't really bode well for that 450-500MHz G3 or G4 you're talking about (with a GeForce2 or Radeon...I'm not sure if a GeForce3 would make a noticable difference with that CPU speed). The computer version should have many options to turn down or off, of course, so that might be the deciding factor.

As well, note that Halo was developed on WINDOWS machines long before Microsoft came sniffing around - that's what Bungie used. The Mac version may or may not have been up to snuff parity with those builds before they left for Redmond; I'm not sure about that. Since then, as far as I can see they've done more or less absolutely nada on the computer versions (and especially the Mac version, I'd say - the PC one might have been useful with the XBox). That's a Very Long Time - in fact, MythIII was coded in that period. A year of work is a lot of changes....

greg

[SmileyDude]

I'm not a Microsoft fan by any means, but I do think that in the spirit of accurate information, I do need to speak up a bit.

The XBox doesn't use a Celeron or a Pentium III. It uses the same core as the Pentium III, but with a cache size that's closer to a Celeron. But, in all reality, it's a different processor. In fact, it's a custom processor that Intel doesn't even sell to anyone else.

On top of it, it uses Nvidia's chipset and AMD's HyperTransport bus. This ain't no PC... far from it. It's no more a PC than the GameCube is a Mac.

For a interesting techie article on the X-Box, go to http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1561 -- they're supposed to have articles on the PS2 and GameCube as well soon.

As far as not supporting it because it's made by Microsoft, that's fine by me. I personally don't like to buy console's (the exception is portables for me), but if a game came out for the X-Box that looked really good, or if it's hackable to the point where I can load up M.A.M.E. or some other emulators (SNES replacement? ), then I might actually pick one up. Just because I like Apple to the point of not buying PCs, doesn't mean that in another area where Apple doesn't even compete I won't buy something that's good.

Buy what you want... just don't buy or not buy because it's Microsoft (or Apple or Sony or whatever...). Buy it because it's better than the alternatives.

Edit: Stupid UBB code... why can't simple HTML tags just get automatically translated???

[ 11-26-2001: Message edited by: SmileyDude ]

[MindFad]

Originally posted by mr. burns:
<STRONG>*pauses rogue leader*

halo? i'll pass.

*continues playing rogue leader*</STRONG>

:auses Rogue Leader::

I hear ya.

::Continues playing Rogue Leader::

[kbbaucom]

Two people have said that it's not Marathon without "frog blast the vent core." I don't remember the BOBs saying that in Marathon 1. I only remember it in Marathon 2. Did they say it in 1 also?

Scottthekink wrote:
"Ok, you like the XBOX, we get the idea, so cool it."

Umm... Lighten up, Francis. He's entitled to his opinion. I'm surprised you didn't lock down this thread already.

Millennium
"If it doesn't have the phrase "Frog blast the vent core!" then it isn't Marathon."

Ahhh... now there's a true Marathon fan that actually get's the point of this thread.

Historically, Bungie is one of the few companies that's put out A-list games that were significantly better than anything else at the time. It's one of the few companies that I would buy a product from, based soley on it's reputation. From what I've seen, Halo is every bit an excellent example of Bungie's tradition of quality and originality. Personally, I'm waiting for the Mac version. However, I don't blame anyone for buying an X-box. From what I've seen so far, Halo is really the only compelling reason to buy an X-box.

Let's just hope that the MS influence doesn't stifle Bungie's creativity with future products.

[schwa]

Originally posted by ShortcutToMoncton:
<STRONG>As well, note that Halo was developed on WINDOWS machines long before Microsoft came sniffing around - that's what Bungie used. The Mac version may or may not have been up to snuff parity with those builds before they left for Redmond; I'm not sure about that. Since then, as far as I can see they've done more or less absolutely nada on the computer versions (and especially the Mac version, I'd say - the PC one might have been useful with the XBox). That's a Very Long Time - in fact, MythIII was coded in that period. A year of work is a lot of changes....

greg</STRONG>

Actually, Myth III wasn't developed in-house by Bungie. They licensed the franchise to Take Two, who farmed out the development to MumboJumbo.

[G Barnett]

Having actually spent about 30 min at an EBX playing with Halo on their demo system I have two things to say:

1) I WILL be getting Halo when it's available for the Mac. Gameplay seems pretty good (despite the controller, see point 2), and the plot is definitely up to Bungie standards.

2) The Xbox's controller is an obscenely oversized, badly-designed hunk of junk. I can't wait to get Halo going on a good keyboard/trackball combo for the precision control the game deserves.


G Barnett

[ShortcutToMoncton]

Notice that I never mentioned one word about who coded Myth III. Please read the posts. I was referring to it because Take Two aquired the Myth rights around when Bungie was bought out by Microsoft. So, all the changes in XBox Halo took about the same amount of time to complete as the entire Myth III game....

greg