Oh wow, oh wow … HALO

It’s almost unbelievable isn’t it? Halo is finally out. About four days before the retail date. Obviously it’s not possible to join legit servers. Not yet anyway. I have no clue as to how the authentication system works. But my guess is that we can pretty much forget the default multiplayer method. It’s still possible to join direct ip of course but that is pretty lame. Currently the most promising option is v4 of Haloserv that is in dev. The author promises to expand the interface to a gamespy-like application and hopefully iron out the remaining bugs.

Something like the Unreal Tournament 2003 Gateway or Unreal4All would be nice to have. But one can’t always be that lucky.

About buying the game and skipping all this crap, I don’t think so. Besides the game is NOT running well with my 9700. And those bastards held on to this game for two years before releasing it and then they release a clone of the XBOX version. It’s just not worth it anymore, even if the game is entertaining.

UPDATE: At least FairLight was good enough to release a Private Server Patch. Works as the name implies. You can join multiplayer games but only on cracked servers. Both server and client have to apply the patch.
Actually, they also released a Public Server Patch, which essentially means that a cracked server running this patch will show up on GameSpy.

About the performance issues, I have been following some lengthy discussions on various forums and all I can say is that the situation seems bad. It’s almost like when GTA3 was released for the PC. I.e. no one gets good performance. And the game uses two year old technology. Wow.

Another game that also appeared over night was the add-on for Age of Mythology, The Titans.