Halo 2 For Vista

Read Tim's opinions on Halo 2 for Vista as a fine example as to why it simply annoys me so much. I rather liked Halo when it came out for the PC, and I'd like to enjoy Halo 2 as well. I can't though without upgrading to Microsoft's latest OS - and OS which doesn't really interest me in the slightest.

None of the gaming features touted for Vista are terribly impressive. Tim notes that "Tray and Play" is kind of neat - but some irrelevant to PC gamers. Installing before playing was just never a big deal (now, issues associated with installations ... like copy protection and such - that's another story ... and Vista, if anything, aggravates those). I'm a big fan of a standardized controller for PC's (and Mac's) - but let's face it ... nobody is going to use the 360 controller for Halo 2 instead of their keyboard and mouse.

And Tim's review of Xbox Live for Windows is hardly glowing. The real kicker? It has driver conflicts because Nvidia is still working out their Vista drivers. XP drivers? Oh yeah, those are fine.

So thanks Microsoft for keeping one of the finer games you've produced as a cheap and ineffective marketing toy. Having been a gamer on Windows XP for all these years, I'll go put some ice on my groin. Thankfully developers like Epic aren't following suit, so I can at least look forward to trying to run some new FPS games on XP.