Half-Life 2 on Xbox Reviewed

[-:Nighthawk:-]

Nah, I was thinking GTX. :P The point wasn't the system I personally have (which is far inferior to what's mentioned above), but rather that there is always better hardware out there that can give you smoother framerates at higher resolutions with more features enabled.



Those dual-core AMD processors, while ridiculously expensive, seem to do pretty dang well on most games. Some interesting differences between theirs and Intel's offerings along those lines, but that's another subject for another time.

[Gpig]

Nighthawk. I had an athlon xp 2500+, 512 RAM, and an Nvidia 5600 ultra that I got for $100 several years ago. The RAM I already had and the athlon xp 2500+ wasn't that expensive when I got it. I played through it and though the game looked great and ran great. I now have a 7800 GT and I the only difference is that the water boat scene does look a lot better. All the rest looks very similar. So yeah, you can easily enjoy Half-Life 2, HL2M, and other Half-Life games at a better framerate, resolution, and quality settings than you would get on an xbox. If you already have a decent cpu, you could get it running better than I did with a current generation 100 dollar graphics card.



So yeah, to say that it costs 500 dollars is not only accurate, it was accurate back when Half-Life 2 came out and may be overshooting it now. It's not like FEAR where it looks terrible and runs terrible on bad computers but looks great on good computers.

[-:Nighthawk:-]

Unless someone you knew unloaded it to you for dirt cheap, the price you're quoting as being several years ago is still far less than the cheapest going rates. Pricewatch puts a mobo/2500+ as over $100 by themselves, without adding in the RAM and video card, which would double that price (and we haven't even gotten a case, power supply, or monitor). You're talking about a minimum $300 investment for the most base-level new PC, which will play HL2 like crap still. Even at the $500 mark, we're not talking about great framerates.



Upgrading your existing system is a different matter, but that's comparing apples to oranges imho.



The difference in HL2 performance won't be so defined as it is with something like FEAR, because HL2 was designed to be able to be run on older systems. That said, even if you're displaying the same scene, being able to run at likely double the resolution with AA/AF/transparency AA should be making a huge visual difference. If you can't tell the difference between the two the rest of the time... I don't know what to tell you. :)



Meanwhile, an XBOX will cost you $150, and will play HL2X nicely. It doesn't matter what price you put on a PC; a new one won't be nearly as inexpensive as playing the XBOX version, and that's the key issue here.



So while I see where you're coming from, and I don't own an XBOX or plan on getting HL2X, there really isn't any realistic way to argue against the fact that a) HL2 doesn't look nearly as good on a $500 PC as it does on a $5,000 PC, and that b) you can get HL2X and an XBOX for far less than you can get HL2 and a capable PC for. Any other points you want to make, I'll probably agree with, but those were the two points I was arguing.

[Gpig]

Oh, I meant I bought the graphics card for a $100 a few years ago. I worded that poorly. Yeah, I see your point, 150 for an xbox is the cheapest way to run it. I'm just saying that most people already have kind of fast home pc's even if they aren't into gaming. They could just buy a really cheap AGP graphics card and an extra stick of RAM for the price of an xbox and be running it better than the xbox. But that still is inconvenient for the person to install and it depends on if their computer is faster than like 1.5 GHz or not(a lot of the family computers people have seem to be, they're just missing the graphics card).



The only other issue I have is that apc shouldn't cost $5,000 unless the person is buying it custom built with like water cooling and other superfluous crap. I got my 7800 GT and SLI motherboard for $450, which is pretty expensive(you'd think at that price I'd go ahead and spend the extra $100 for a GTX), an athlon 3500+ for $200, and a gig of ram for around a $100 or so. I do remember that my computer cost less than $800 and it was good enough for me to play Quake 4 single player at 1600x1200 on high all the way through, make FEAR look amazing, to play the Half-Life 2 water level at the highest settings without a hitch, and to enjoy DoD:S with HDR on.



Even if you were buying your very first computer, it shouldn't go for more than $3000 even if you buy an extremely fast cpu, a GTX, raptors in RAID, and have to buy every basic computer part. Although you could SLI GTX's and drive the price higher, that would be stupid to do until next year since that computer can already run everything on high now.



Shit, what was I talking about? Oh yeah, I think it had something to do with Half-Life 2.

[hugo-rj]

A cheap pc (xp 1700+ with a 6600gt and 512mb) will deliver smooth experience in HL2. If you use the tv-out you can play at 800x600, no AA, no AF, medium textures and so on, and it will still look better than the xbox version.



Not to say it was not a great accomplishment by valve, btw. Great job, and xbox users are free from using steam, wich is the real advantage, since steam sux A LOT.



So, with xbox hl2, you pay less, play like the same thing resting on the sofa and don't even have to bother with steam. So, HL2X owns pc version for that reason *cough* steam *cough*.

[AlphaFist]

Edited by [user="297553"] @ [time="1133522804"]

i brought halflife 2 for xbox and its really cool the graphics i think are pretty much the same as the pc version.Has anyone got any good links for a halflife 2 guide because im stuck on chapter 10



why bother buying a cheap pc why not get an xbox... theres no gliches or freezing or anything

V.C. Sniper wrote..

GREAT JOB ON XBOX HALF-LIFE 2 VALVe!!! You guys done a great job.

yeah good job on fitting this massive game onto one cd