Battleangel

Appeared on SUPRNOVA (alt link) yesterday. Suffice to say, people were falling over themselves to get the file in question. I’d say that this counts as a new record for the site. At the time of writing this, there are something like 1500+ seeders and 3000+ leechers. I wish every posted file rendered that kind of interest. Oh well, download it while there is still time. This is one of those (un)fortunate events that can attract some really undesired attention.

Here’s an official statement from Gearbox btw:

First off, I’d like to explain exactly what this leaked version of the game is. About 1.5-2 months ago, we invited a bunch of domestic and foreign press to the Gearbox offices to spend some time with the dev. team and to play some Halo. When the press people left, we gave them a limited version of the then-current beta (beta 1.5). This version of the game did not have any online multiplayer and had a very limited single player game.

There are screenshots from the beta here.

About the JAGISO pre-gold version: From what I can tell it is the same version as the 1.5 beta. Give or take. My best guess is that all of the betas floating around the net are actually the same version. But I might be wrong here.

About Radeon cards: Someone suggested forcing Pixel Shader to 2 and Vertex Shader to 1.1. Can be done using the Rage 3D tweaker.

About net multiplay: While the game doesn’t support this you can still try to set up a VPN or whatever. Might also work to start the game with a command line switch containing target IP. You can also try out HaloServ.

About vehicles in multi: They don’t spawn as they should. So you’ll have to create a custom game type where you set a custom vehicle config. And no, you can’t have both types of Warthogs in the same game yet.

First impressions:

So. Here it is. Not exactly close to “gold” as some would indicate. Some of the omissions from this beta are full single player mission maps as well as internet multiplayer. As for more detailed differences I am not qualified to say. I haven’t played the XBOX version just so you know (I know, I’m probably the only “nerd” on this planet who hasn’t). This also makes me a little less biased I hope. Quite frankly I don’t care how it compares to the XBOX. This is the PC scene and here we compare it to PC games. Enough said.

HALO reminds me Unreal 2 in many ways. Gfx side scaled down of course. But there is a feel to it that is just so damn hot. In all its simplicity this is a no frills, almost arcade-like, FPS that does almost everything right. Granted the multiplayer experience might seem sparse to someone who are used to more complex games. I.e. more weapons and combinations. But since this is HALO there are vehicles to make up for this. You get used to not carrying 7-9 weapons around .. and running someone over with a Warthog is just downright entertaining. Plus the maps are a bunch of fun. I can’t imagine ever going back from the broad landscapes of Battlefield 1942 and Tribes to the dense tunnels of Doom and its likes. That is ancient history to me.
The physics engine is just as fun as you would imagine. Throw a grenade at a Warthog and it will do some really crazy aerial acrobatics, throwing its passengers free to experience souped up Newtonian mechanics. Hurl another grenade down a hallway and watch people come flying by you.
The gfx engine is impressive but you can see that it is dated. Some people will surely not get over this. Too bad for them because they will miss a barrel of fun. I agree however that since they went to all this trouble porting the game they could have tweaked the engine some more.
The overall coolness more than makes up for any of the potential shortcomings.

Kind of pointless to rant too much about a game that is not yet released. We’ll just have to wait and see what the final game brings. I’m just relieved to see that it wont be a total fiasco. The only real snag here is that the game should have been released last year. Then it would have been revolutionary. Now it is up against games like Breed and Half Life 2 and it might just be flavourless fun. But fun nevertheless. More than you can say for most games.