The March print issue of MacAddict has a review of Halo by Niko Coucouvanis; it's on pages 38 and 39. They give the game 5 stars (which translates to "Awesome!" in their rating system). They review the game in typical MacAddict style:
Jarvis Badgley, via Louis Wu of HBO, noticed a good, if belated, review of Halo for the Macintosh over at MacOSXHints by robg.One thing I can say-- this review has to be the third or fourth time I've seen a Mac user write that the game actually performs better at higher resolutions than at 640x480, a behavior pretty much the opposite of what I've experienced with Halo on PCs.
The 2003 Game Hall of Fame article is up at Macworld, but it doesn't mention Halo outside of its "upcoming games" section, as they say Halo was released too late to be considered this year.
Good grief, what was there to consider?
Well, maybe Stuntmutt will have to modify one of his new characters in One One Se7en, as it appears that Mac Halo doesn't suffer from the same performance bottlenecks that PC Halo does-- at least not according to Corey Tamas of Macgamer, who rated Mac Halo 99 out of a 100.
Jean-Luc Dinsdale from InsideMacGames has (predictably, if also accurately) gushed about Halo on the Mac, calling it "the most advanced, the best produced, the most amazing first-person shooter to have ever graced [the] Mac". (All you Half-Life fans, make sure you read that last part carefully.The four-page review is quite thorough, but overall they give the game a 9.25 out of ten (what are they using, the Richter scale?) The review also ends with an important note for those who haven't yet gotten over the Microsoft buyout:
A site called IceTeks (Technology Made Cool, for those who aren't advanced students of sloganology) has reviewed PC Halo and concluded it to be one heck of an awesome game. Put the accolades on the pile over there, boys, and the bar is around the corner. Welcome to the party. Thanks Blue's News.
ReviewGamer gave PC Halo an 8.96 out of 10 score overall; the review is almost completely positive, in comparison to most recent reviews. Thanks Blue's News.
For a game that on the Xbox received almost unanimous praise, Gearbox's PC port seems to inspire reactions ranging from ambivalence to adulation, with some deeply divided opinions in between. In some cases, those opinions are divided even within the same review.
HateKill rated Halo "worth buying", as opposed to Worth Playing. While they liked the AI and the "classic gameplay", they decided to "leave out the storyline and get onto the important stuff" in their review, which didn't bode well for the game from the start.
SourceGuy over at HaloMods has put up a short review of the BansheeWars mod by IronForge. The mod is currently running on HaloMods' own server.
There's another review of PC Halo up at WorthPlaying. This one gives the game an 8/10 overall, appreciating the deep storyline and the impressive AI, even if they admit the graphics are "not as impressive" as they were two years ago. People are so jaded, sheesh. Thanks Blue's News.
Four new Halo reviews today listed at Blue's News: Armchair Empire, PC Gameworld, Gamehelper Newswire, and VideogamesLife.
Paul Ryan, an editor at AceGamez, wrote to let us know they've reviewed PC Halo. They've also got a review of Halo for the Xbox there, for comparison's sake, if you're into that sort of thing.
They gave the PC version scores of 8, 9, 10 and 8 in the categories of gameplay, graphics, sound and lifespan, with a rating of 8/10 overall. The Xbox version received a perfect 10.
Two more PC Halo reviews today from Blue's News: LoadedInc and DeadAlfs. DeadAlfs (DeadAlves?) bemoaned the lack of co-op support (and invoked the all-to-common by now comparison to Serious Sam), giving the game an 8 out of 10 overall score.
The reviewer for 3DAvenue liked Halo pretty well. They gave it an 87 rating, and said it "defines FPS action."