Yeah, I never had an original Xbox, just a PC I built myself with a fresh install of Windows Vista Ultimate. Halo 2 Vista and Halo Custom edition are what got me into Halo and eventually led to getting a Xbox 360.
Yep. I was saving up to get a 360 to make a reach machinima with friends. Played CE and 2 on PC in the meantime, and "finishing the fight" motivated me to keep saving. glitches made it almost impassable. ugh. Even with particle effects being rendered in 2D across the screen, blocking everything on certain maps, multiplayer was easier there than competing with BXR on console.
I actually made a mod for Halo 2 Vista called Halo 2 Reclaimed trying to restore it back to a state as close as I could get it to the OG Xbox. I couldn't get it 100% correct though. This was pre-MCC. There are actually a ton of differences in Halo 2 Vista, and even MCC. Lots of visual differences, which have mostly been addressed in MCC at this point. But since our main concern is gameplay here, there are a lot of those bugs too. In fact, the whole "In Gravemind Legendary, you die as soon as the level starts" thing was introduced in Halo 2 Vista. The OG Xbox version actually gave you a couple of seconds to register that Brutes were in fact in front of you. Another difference is that human Flood forms cannot climb walls like in the original. This made certain enemies like the Rocket Flood on Quarantine Zone unable to climb up, so you end up just not seeing them at all. It also made Sacred Icon's final waves more awkward, as some of those forms stuck to a wall and couldn't climb up, increasing the wait time between waves. These bugs are still in the MCC.
I actually had a version I got working for free years ago on an old laptop (deleted Halo CE and 2 for room because I was planning on getting the latest xbox and MCC, hasn't happened yet still on 360) and it was the vista version (xbox live and all) and some of the sword glitches seemed harder to do for me than they had any right to, and not just because I was on keyboard and mouse (would have been the tick rate). But I always got confused the couple times I played through on legendary because the guide is like "snipe these rocket floods early" and I'm watching the area like "umm what rocket flood?" And of course there were times I was just standing around waiting because there were no enemies around and the next wave of flood didn't spawn. Maybe this is why that happened... glad to know.
Actually, Halo 2 Vista gravemind doesn’t kill you instantly, I always run vista, actually I speedrun it more than the normal one. But yes there’s no sword flying, ghosting, or Superbouncing, but you can use the 30 tickrate for that. There’s still no sword flying though lmao.
Hey I think I met you on discord a few years ago. I had just made an account and found a random halo server. You were the first person I talked to on discord.
Oh hey, I also did mods I think that predates yours. There were so many bugs and issues, crashing due to a invalid Unicode Char being shown (which I released a fix for which got me my first security job), the mod tools were awful, leading to memory patches and trainers being required for even playing some mods. Even the camera tools that spartan did had issues due to tickrate. Super bouncing still existed you just had to hit the ground much harder. There were a few hacks you could do to allow co-op campaign at the time, but overall there were so many crashes. I'm surprised Luke found some of these tools, but yeah performance was also pretty trash, for being 512x512 upgraded textures also had issues loading that required a patch. The dedicated server had so many issues with long term play, requiring hacks for ranking, afk kick, checking gamertag to prevent spoofing which could be used with cheat engine to bypass bans since they were only done by name 😮💨 there's also issues where many cutscenes would bug out leading to the "camera roll" like when using the co-op hack which I never figured out but reverting from save usually fixes it. I'm so sad that for mcc they used this version instead of porting it again properly 😩
I picked this up because I was a huge Halo: CE fan, and at the time I had no Xbox. I attempted to install, only to realize I didn't have a dedicated graphics card. So I snagged a cheap Nvidia card and still had struggles. Thankfully I have the MCC rnd a much better computer these days.
Shit we had a toshiba laptop a cheap one mfer didn’t have a camera or nothing I don’t even think we had WiFi yet the laptop was set up like a desk top 😭 I was downloading all the games for free i didn’t know shit about a graphic card and that cheap ass laptop ran everything some shit was laggy though but old Xbox games and shit worked
Your settings default to lowest settings because your computer component came out after the game. Most games try to check your specs and set the graphics accordingly. However since you are using stuff that didn't exist and it has no clue what it is. It will default to lowest settings. This is common with many games
Came here to say the same thing. Thought this was well known by now. Lol. Guess people still don't know though. A lot of Bethesda games do this exact thing, too.
Yes I thought the same thing because I've recently played Halo 2 Vista and it didn't look anywhere near this bad. I'm usually on board with Rocket Sloth but I feel they could have at least played around with the settings to see what's there. There's even an option to replace in-game models with cutscene models which are higher detail.
halo 2 project cartographer actually has one cool feature, a fully implemented infection mode with automatic team changing. That is the one reason that I play it from time to time apart from needing lower specs than mcc on potato laptop.
I don't know why but this video makes me feel... incredibly old seeing how many versions of Halo 2 there are, then their release dates only to realize OG Halo 2 has been around for 18 years, Vista for 15 and now MCC for almost 10, going on 8. All of which are huge chunks of my 24 year old life. Time flies... time fucking flies.
Facts man. Now were 26 MCC is nearly a decade old now. I remember it coming out in grade 12 my last year of high school. What a different time in life. Halo 2 almost 2 decades now. I almost cant believe its been that long. Seems like a lifetime ago. I was a young child then. Ah where did all the time go. If only we could go back....
bruh... im 28 this year... halo pc and custom edition were massive chunks of my childhood (I think halo & red faction were my first video games) I literally begged my dad for a vista PC to play this, and did so along time, I remember getting out of the map on turf, district, foundation and a bunch of other maps. Glitching campaign levels, making maps. playing other peoples made maps. this was a shocking port but still hella fun at the time. On PC CTF was huge, every lobby was Coagulation CTF so fun.
I’ll never forget playing through CE one night with my brother and my grandma came out of nowhere to visit and had the Limited Edition of Halo 2, I can’t be sure when this exactly was, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was within a week of its release and it blew our minds lol Best Halo out of the series to me, at that moment I had gotten a better taste of Halo Multiplayer when there were no party chats, the clan system was awesome, the ranks were fulfilling and you had the joy to get an invite to a filled lobby and play the bigger maps and Tower of Power- later the joy was wishing someone had gotten the DLC disk that had access to the Infection mode and threw you an invite.
Man, I'm about to tear up rn after reading that lmao. Man those were the times.. Tower of Power on Ascension was my all time favorite. I still remember my 10 year old voice using the voice masking feature which made you sound like a dying old man lmao
Well, if you think about it, since Vista takes away all those 30 tick skips and has them shooting faster, while also staying true to the original skulls with grunt bp, it's like you're just playing the xbox version but harder. If you're running it, either you are cheating, or you are asserting dominance by running the most difficult and frustrating version (frustrating in having to grab all skulls each login without the benefit of skips). And hey, if you think about it why not beat the ultimate challenge on the hardest of all versions, because that does technically make it harder meaning it really is the hardest challenge.
@@TheMsr47gaming1 year later but for a windows vista game this one runs with fairly no problem on win10. A lot of old games have problems running on newer windows versions... Or maybe my computer is bad enough to still run it
The reason Halo 2 is having such a resurgence is the fact that everyone is getting tired of the games big studios are just pushing out to meet 2 year deadlines, and not because they love the game they are making. It's taking us all back to a time where creators made games because they loved playing video games.
I totally agree. Personally, I've been discovering PS3 games for the first time in my life, and honestly I have enough games there to completely shun the current generation of same-y triple A games.
Instead they'll play games that were pushed out in 13 months, half complete, and crunched to high hell while the last half of the game is released on an entirely new generation of console...?
@@harveykaiba ya people don't realize that the game industry has been basically the same since the 80s if not 70s, big corporations making cash grabs with whatever the current trend/scam and smaller studios making it out of love
@@TheMsr47gaming how does that have anything to do with bringing back multiplayer for the original Xbox and the 360? The restored multiplayer maps? Halo Infinite is bombing and H2 is making a comeback. That's more than just the bounty.
You have to remember that MCC Halo 2 is relatively new, and that having a custom game browser that supports halo 2 is also pretty new to MCC. Beforehand, for many years, the Cartographer version of Halo 2 was the definite best way to get your multiplayer Halo 2 fix on PC. Even now, It's playercount is relatively healthy for this kind of small community, and there are a lot of advantages it has over the 343 implementation of Halo 2, and to date is still the definitive modern experience. It also argubly has a better CGB, ongoing support, seasonal events, and is still just a righteous good time, a healthy mix of new modes and old modes, new maps, fun customizations, etc. etc.
I still prefer MCC Halo 2 for multiplayer myself, simply on the ground of its controller support being nicer and more versatile. Also it's just less sweaty. Like Halo 2 online is pretty sweaty even on MCC, but being less accessible means the average joe isn't gonna be on Project Cartographer.
@@Robbie_Haruna I can respect that! The good thing is that it's pretty easy to be engaged in both versions of the game. Sometimes my friends and I play Cartographer for the superior (and maybe a bit sweaty lol) H2 experience, sometimes we lazily bounce into MCC so we can mix with others games. I think the communities are very different but can coexist nicely :) You actually probably should do this, because depending on when you play, sometimes MCC has more active players, sometimes Cartographer has more active players.
@@Robbie_Haruna Since when has Halo 2 not been sweaty? Since its launch, Halo 2 was extremely sweaty with BXR, BR double burst, super jumps, and other glitches. I don’t think Silent Cartographer is any different to any version of Halo. It’s only on PC and aiming tends to be more competitive, but that doesn’t make it sweaty.
@@SpectorEuro4 Well when the game first launched way back when it wasn't terribly sweaty for a good while simply because people hadn't figured out all the exploits by that point and info spread via the internet much slower than today. But in general Halo 2 is among the sweatiest Halo games and considering nobody that's just interested in the game at a casual for fun level is going to bother with Project Cartographer it means you're getting a stronger concentration of sweaties. Like most of the people playing Project Cartographer are those people who don't like the differences between what MCC has and the original, but those are also minor enough so nobody that isn't a hardcore Halo 2 player is going to notice them enough to the point that they're going to go out of their way to download the vista port of Halo 2 and hunt down a mod to make the Vista port solid. Plus like you said, the fact that it's the PC port means it's gonna just be innately more sweaty with Keyboard and mouse being more prominent (and also lacking the same level of controller customization that the MCC had.)
I was able to install Halo 2 Vista in Windows 7 back in the day but it would crash towards the end of Outskirts when you enter the highway. I didn't have Xbox back then so I could only play CE, Custom Edition, and the first two levels of 2. And yet I was still a massive Halo fan.
It's funny you mention that I also used to play Halo 2 Vista in Windows 7 and it would crash prior to entering the temple in Regret, reinstalling it never worked and I was stuck there for years
I got some shady build with broken games for Windows live, it would only let me play Cairo station and asked to sign in after, which didn't work, so I had to play Cairo and use my imagination for the rest 😅
I will never forget how excited I was and how bad I wanted to play Halo 2 already. My parents got me the original Halo edition xbox and it came with the Halo 2 E3 demo video and I'd re-watch it over and over. I stayed home from school that day and played Halo 2 all day.
DUDE THAT DEMO OMG THAT BRINGS BACK MEMORIES. wasn’t that in the extras of halo ce or something? i remember watching it like crazy but i can’t remember how you would actually watch it lol
Playing Halo 2 Project Cartographer back when I started college is what made me fell in love (again) with the franchise, it has such a nostalgic, early 2000's vibe that is so hard to find nowadays, and like you said, it basically runs on anything today, so finding out that I could run this on my 4gb Ram 54mb video-integrated graphics laptop was such a happy moment for me
This was my first experience with Halo 2. I played it on my mom's old computer, a really shitty one. On 'The Arbiter' the games fog didn't render properly, it was just a solid yellow wall about 5 meters in front of me. I could never hit over 15 FPS. I still finished the game, I have no clue how
Funny thing is, there was a time when I was a kid where I wanted Halo 2 Vista so bad I’d do anything to get my hands on it. At the time I didn’t have an Xbox and my PC only had XP, so all I had to play was CE. I played it to death but I eventually wanted to branch out and Halo 2 was my first target, given it was also on PC. I remember my desperation got so bad that I just lied to my parents and got them to buy a copy of Halo 2 Vista thinking it was compatible with my PC. When my dad found out he basically told me that it wouldn’t work on my computer. I was a dumb kid so I didn’t understand I needed Windows Vista. Short story short, I never played Halo 2 Vista. I ended up getting a 360 eventually and my first experience with Halo 2 was when I bought a Limited Edition copy at my school fair for $5. I still own that copy to this day. I eventually torrented Halo 2 Vista years later, but yeah…really dodged a bullet there.
My favourite little tidbit about Halo 2 Vista is that a sole developer screwing around caused the game to be delayed release by a few weeks because he included a picture of his ass in the mod tools for when the compiler experiences a .ass error due to improper axis scales. It was only caught right before release and resulted in a delay while Microsoft had to slap ESRB correction stickers onto every copy that had been already printed to add the Partial Nudity tag to the rating until they could remove the image in future re-prints.
You forgot the fact that we're also getting the Halo 2 E3 Demo Map in the intro. That's like the Holy Grail or Ark of the Covenant of Halo 2 content right there.
Project Cartographer it's actually really neat, I often go back there just to enjoy the original halo 2 menus, the majority of the graphical issues are fixed, there's a game browser, you can activate/ deactivate skulls while you're playing. And works on any windows version
I didnt have an xbox, so Halo PC and Halo Vista were my loves. The online play was a blast. So many customs, so many fun modded maps. All just launchable like any moden Valve multiplayer game. It was so great.
it could also mean that the vsync implementation is bad and isn't actually synchronizing to your monitor's refresh rate. back when MCC released on PC there were awful screen tearing issues there as well, whether or not vsync was turned on, made much worse if you had framerate capping on (which, at the time, was required to fix some glitches). being an MCC flight tester was... interesting.
Nah I think Project Cartographer is still the best at least for the multiplayer and server browser that MCC doesn't have... Yes you have a custom browser but no dedicated custom servers or modded map support in game.
Halo 2 for Windows Vista was copy/pasted to The Master Chief Collection and other than the server list being replaced with matchmaking it was 1:1 with H2V As of 2022 with the Project Cartographer mod, H2V is the 2nd best version of Halo 2 behind the original. MCC H2 is the least functional version of Halo 2 with many _severe_ gameplay breaking bugs that have gone unaddressed for 8 years and more being added in 2018 with the revamp of MCC, which is why no one plays it... Calling H2V the worst version doesn't make any sense
The first time I ever played Halo 2 was the Vista port. There was a TH-cam video that had 31 separate winrar archive links in the description. You were supposed to download all of them and extract them into the same folder. It didn't work, and for some dumb reason I decided to do the whole thing again. For an even dumber reason, that actually made it work. I made a Games for Windows Live account before I made a steam one because of that, good times. I recently got GFWL working on Windows 10 to play Section 8 Prejudice but now I'm curious if there's still people playing Vista MP, or if it still even works to begin with.
I got into the series on PC, and "finishing the fight" was what got me to buy a 360 in 2011. The particle effects appeared as 2D across the screen, obscuring everything in my view. Sacred Icon took hours upon hours to complete. Basically unplayable.
As a game dev a good 80% of these "issues" are completely obvious. Take the reduced bloom and screenspace effects, that's because you are running at a higher resolution but the filter kernel used for bloom was designed for a fixed resolution. Screen tearing doesn't mean the game is running poorly btw, it generally means its running at a higher refresh rate than your monitor, you can lock this in your gpu control panel. Also it defaulted to low because the GPU you are using is newer than the game and not in its lookup table, so it defaults to low as a precaution, very normal. On a screen and gpu from 2006 many of these issues wouldn't have really existed.
Finally someone that understands. Back when this came out none of these were really issues because the hardware was accounted for. Modern systems break the vsync so you get tearing if you don't use external locks, effects being blown out because they used tricks to make things look good how they foresaw people playing the game and now we play far above those limits. I remember the game running very well and smooth as a kid, it even worked on XP with a hack to revert all the DX10 effects to DX9 (minus one level that would crash). The only things I saw making it a "Bad Port" was the actual messed up and missing effects and assets (like the leaves on trees missing), but golly gee I forgave it as a kid cause I could play Halo 2 now in 1600x1200 glory
Ar 9:14 screen tearing isn't a problem with the game, it can happen on any game. It's when you are making more frames than your monitor supports and so they start getting spliced together.
And this only really happened when playing the game on modern hardware, which to a degree you could say wasn't a fault of the games launch condition. Modern hardware breaks the games internal Vsync so you either got a game running way too fast or you got a game that barely stuck on to the 60fps cap causing all that tearing. The fix I remember doing back before MCC was on PC is I locked the framerate in Nvidia Control Panel (or AMD Catalyst when I was using my older PC)
I still have my copy of Halo 2 Vista that I got for christmas in like, 2013. I used to be SO Obsessed with it, and I played avidly until they finally turned off the servers, and even then I played Project Cartographer for a short while after. It's a bad port, but damn I absolutely loved it fsr lol. Simpler times.
I was in the Halo 2 Vista community, under the name of Sherbox. We even had a website where we posted mods and hacks. While I didn't had an OG Xbox I couldn't play the Xbox version. I definitely felt kinda empty with the port being superbounces "patched" (you just had to jump from a higher altitude and hit the texture as you would in H2X) and the shadders being kinda messed up. Mods were very limited too and the Multiplayer modding took over 4 years to be a thing until some people made it possible with a tool called Gravemind.
I play Project Cartographer because I got Halo MCC on steam, but it wouldn't run, it just crashed and gave me an error code that said "Cooked Content Not Found", so then I asked my mom to get me Halo CE Windows XP and Halo 2 Vista, but then I came across the Project Cartographer mod and I just fell in love with it
Halo 2 Vista was the first halo game I played...man what a time. But I find it kinda weird that you said that the playerbase of halo 2 PC was really small because in the name years I played I remember having a lot of people...like maybe over a hundred at certain times. It might be me because I was like 13 when my dad bought me the game. (Also my name on my TH-cam account is the same as the username I had when playing halo 2 Vista so hi to everybody who might remember...halo 2 days were the best of my life)
I am of the few who thought halo was originally a computer game until I found out halo 3 never got a pc port after reach came out. I didn't have internet until after reach came out and my only access to halo combat evolved was on my buddies old windows XP laptop
just so people know, H2vista was the version of the game used for MCC, they are basically the same build of the game with a few small graphical fixes to run smoothly. otherwise they are pretty much the same.The gearbox port for HCE is also used for halo CEA. So if MCC H2 is you're favorite version of the game, you like H2Vista.
@@NotSweetland yea but thats just changing what the particular skull does in gameplay, which i think you can do in mod tools as well, so i wouldn't really say thats a huge difference between the MCC vista and Regular Vista ports of the game.
Hey, I asked about Halo 2 for Vista on the first video! I used to play it with the Project Cartographer mod before MCC came to PC. I think it had a lot of Mexican (?) players.
I played this version of Halo 2 as a kid. It is what got me into Halo multiplayer and I had a lot of fun times online. Watching this video was a HUGE nostalgia trip. :)
I have my Halo 2 “Games for Windows PC DVD” right here on my bookshelf. No meme. I’m holding it right now. There’s also the first ever Steam game I bought, from Staples. WOW I think I also still have my grandfather’s vista laptop which I played it on so much during junior high. Imma have a retro weekend and quickly turn back to modern games if I can even get this stuff to run!
i remember pirating halo 2 vista and making a youtube video on how to do it. it got 200k views back then witch my 11 year old self was very happy lmao. shit maybe someone who saw that tutorial is watching this video manyy years later
This version is what got me into halo. My dad got it for me in 2007 and then I begged for a 360 so I could play halo 3. Didn't even realize the negatives as a kid lol
Oddly enough this was the version of Halo 2 I played the most. And to top that I was playing it on Windows XP with a hack that allowed the game to run on DX9, I remember it running very well on my system and only one level had to be skipped as it would cause crashes on DX9
They fall in line One at a time Ready to play (I can't see them anyway) No time to lose We've got to move Steady your hand (I am losing sight again) Fire your guns It's time to run Blow me away (I will stay, unless I may) After the fall We'll shake it off Show me the way Only the strongest will survive Lead me to heaven, when we die I am a shadow on the wall I'll be the one to save us all There's nothing left So save your breath Lying in wait (Caught inside this tidal wave) Your cover's blown No where to go Only your fate (Lonely I will walk alone) Fire your guns It's time to run Blow me away (I will stay, unless I may) After the fall We'll shake it off Show me the way Only the strongest will survive Lead me to heaven, when we die I am a shadow on the wall I'll be the one to save us all Wanted it back (Don't fight me now) Don't make me beg Blow me away Only the strongest will survive Lead me to heaven, when we die I am a shadow on the wall I'll be the one to save us all Save us all
h2 for vista, i had this, i played with a controller, it had aim assist, the carbine wrecked online, I was accused of hacking so many times, it was so fun, EDIT: it also had achievements!
This whole video was just "This version is different. It's different cause it has differences. The differences are bad. Cause they're differences." And then the only differences we saw were like a couple lighting glitches. I'll be honest, this looks perfectly playable.
Agreed, the only actual issues he mentioned that would impede gameplay were framerate related (ie screen tearing) because modern hardware breaks the in game Vsync and the fix for that is just to lock the framerate in your control panel. I guess also the tickrate thing but that also has its pros with how the game runs and is why they did it, mainly meant certain tricks weren't doable anymore. Was my favorite way to play the game until MCC came out on PC, and even then I still used the borked Co-Op mod because somehow the MCC version had even worse netcode (host has good experience while the person joining plays with 3 seconds of delay)
Years ago I made a video on how to get vista working on Windows 8+ by replacing some files so that it wouldn’t be forced to use Games for Windows Live. The video did great but the mic quality was horrible so I took it down. I have great memories of playing that horrible port of the game lol, and I still have my copy of the game.
Funny, I grew up on the Gearbox port of Halo CE and absolutely despised the visuals of Halo 2 only to have MCC season 8 make me realize I wasn't seeing the graphics as they were meant to be seen the entire time!
This was my first exposure to Halo 2, I had to play it on my family's computer as my own PC still had XP at the time, apparently I got pretty lucky as I didn't really encounter any major glitches or anything like that.
Bro, don't do my Vista dirty XD Fr tho, Halo 2 Vista I loved. I never played Halo on the original Xbox. CE and 2 on PC was my life. My parents saw how much I loved Halo, and got me an Xbox and Halo 3(despite money maybe not being in the best situation, lotta spaghetti dinners). H2 Vista I only have fond memories of. Mods back then blew my mind. I played at like 12fps though. I remember in 2009, going back to Vista engine tools trying to remake Der Riese. It did NOT happen. Now I'm knee deep in Infinite Forge making Der Riese. I accredit my passions to the abomination that was Halo 2 Vista
I actually bought the Windows Vista port back in 2010 or so, but my PC could barely run it for the time, and I remember the CD key didn't even work to play online, so I was basically stuck playing the campaign at low fps and low graphics. Years later when I got a modern gaming pc, i redownloaded it through the Project Cartographer mod and it's much better! People still play this version online in 2023, there are some servers still open; same with Halo CE and Custom Edition for PC. Great video!
Halo 2 Vista is the only Halo game in which I have 1000g, thanks to achivements unlocker. Game is just 2 times slower, no one wants to play it that way.
Played this for the achievements and my game would crash every time I completed a lvl LMAO, Was going for the legendary campaign achievement and sometimes the game would crash before the lvl would count so that was a pain. But all in all glad to say I didn't let vista beat me
Honestly I enjoyed Halo 2 Vista for what it was. It was kind of an unknown Halo PC game. I had fun back in the day modding it and screwing around with it.
I actually own a physical copy of of game, it is noticeably different than the XBOX version, but hey if you had a Vista back then instead of an XBOX and randomly picked up this game, you're still gonna have lots of fun, plus with many community made mods, the game becomes more fun. Edit: I also play Project Cartographer all the time just to live the classic Halo 2 online multiplayer with old modded gamemodes like Zombies, and you mentioned screen tearing, I get that too. Another edit, you're correct about the FOV, it is definitely different and I was hoping it wasn't just me.
@@XHN_SCRAPY ah a collector i see, i own almost every version of the original halo games, and their different variants. I own Halo CE and Halo CE G.O.T.Y., Halo 2, Halo 2 collectors edition, Halo 3, Halo 3 essentials, and so on. I really like collectors, they seem to appreciate things more and they keep a piece of history safe.
@@versedrhyme41 the fov is slightly different than Xbox. But you can change it lol nice, I have some Xbox games not as many as I used to sadly lol 🤣 had tons for lans. Screen tearing is an issue on the old dx9c? I use nvidia control panel to fix it for the most part. In-game AA messes with the game as well. You can see white lines where the geo/polys are lol it's nice now we can play uncapped but I stay at 60 fps and 165hz in the Cartographer menu. Nice to see some players are still playing. It was epic getting the game back in the day and unlocking achievements lol friends and people were like how'd you get achievements for halo 2!
Mcc require DirectX11 as minimum where Project Cartographer/Halo 2 Vista doesn’t Kinda sucks, but i get it that they do this to take advantage of newer gen hardware power
Back in the day there was a fan patch that would disable Games for Windows Live. This allowed the game to run on XP. Not sure if it did anything else since the game was supposed to use DirectX 10 which did not support XP. But with tha small fan patch it runs fine on XP so that was all marketing it seems. Of course, without GfW enabled, multiplayer was not available. So that was the trade off. For me personally I had XP and Vista dual booting on the same machine (I got a free copy of Vista for testing and filing bug reports of the public beta or something). On XP it performed decently but on Vista it was unplayable. So that probably did not help Halo 2 Vista sales since most people normally didn't upgrade their existing PC Windows anyway, and Vista had performance downgrades and driver problems, and nobody really cared that it revolutionized Windows security.
I never owned an original Xbox, I had to wait for the PC ports. I still own the physical PC copies of Halo CE and Halo 2. Up until the release of Windows 10, I was able to install and run Halo CE because the CD key was somehow limitless. Shortly after Win10 launched laptops and desktops did away with CD drives though, so no more Halo CE. Halo 2, on the other hand, became a pain in the ass very quickly because of that Windows Live garbage. I had to find ways to get around that requirement and it was just too much of a hassle.
I installed Halo 2 on 10 ezpz. Just needed the latest GFWL client and install the game, wait ForEvvver for live to do the first install and activate thing. But it works, so far I've had 10+ GFWL games work on 10.
Halo 2 Vista also has problems with GFWL I don't know if they are connection or activation problems, if you're playing and the GFWL disconnects your game is dead you basically have to return to the menu and lose all progress in campaign, that is one of the reasons I haven't been able to get the heroic and legendary achievements, in my case it has a 40-60 minutes time limit to kick me out, which in higher difficulties and without speed run strats is difficult to achieve given 60 Hz nature of the game. I've played with UPnP, Port forward and DMZ so no my connection is not the problem, I've played other games with GFWL GTA IV, it might be something to do with the key I used to activate the game (Since you can't buy it or get them normally anymore), but I don't think it's the main issue.
So im actually doing my take on Moist's challenge on Project cartographer simply because i have UE4 issues on my laptop. Will i win? No. Am i trying it anyways? yes.
I played halo 3 first, in 2018 i discovered halo 2 and ce and declared halo 2 my favorite halo game, i use to see so many videos saying how halo 2 may have been one of the worst halo games out there, but i still loved it for some reason, now its 4 years later and halo 2 is being treated like gold. Also Halo 2 Vista actually can be fixed with mods, i have seen one modpack that fixes a lot of lighting and other issues with halo 2 on vista, this is actually the version i use to play (before getting the original xbox version with my xbox 360) and it was great, i actually had no idea how underrated this version of the game was, most likely because it is near impossible to get it to run on a modern computer without 3rd party mods
Halo 2 Vista aka Halo 2 PC (2007) or aka Halo 2 Project Cartographer is still a great game to play. it has its problems, but hey its still great to play. There are many new features the community brought to Halo 2 PC, graphical fixes, Multiplayer is back, Dedicated Servers are still there, everything works as it should. idk about playing Laso on Halo 2 Vista but hey try it and find out! lol some glitches have been brought back, you can play stock h2v gametypes, dedicated servers can now have many mods enabled in the gametypes and what not. skulls are in the Cartographer menu now for fast activation. uncapped fps is a thing. you can play H2X which brings back halo 2 xbox type gameplay fire rates etc. the server list is a great way to hop in and play a game or two or more for hours on end. no quit banning, betrayal banning, no banning unless you are cheating. tons of custom maps available right in the custom maps repo and section of the game when you want to play a new map in the pregame lobby settings. SP is another monster. Coop is a thing, sort of atm, splitscreen anyone? idk. been on hold for a bit. game is still a fun halo 2 to play. and if you like match making, just hit quick match and it will put you in a random server. Halo 2 Vista has been fun since 2007, found it best buy many years ago. i have many copies, some new and sealed and different languages. nice video btw.
I have been trying to log into my GFWL, and it does not let me sign in at all. I have tried resetting my password but it wont let my sign in for the achievements😔
Fun fact, part of why Halo 2 Vista was delayed (in fact a major reason why) was that one of the file extensions used was ".ASS". this in and of itself is fine, but what wasn't was that one of the developers included a picture of their actual ass as the icon for all ".ASS" files within the game. For ESRB that would have been enough to change the rating to "Adult Only" instead of "M for Mature".
I played Halo 2 Vista with Project Cartographer maybe a few years ago now, 1 or 2? Maybe more? But it's what taught me how to use a keyboard in gaming as I was finally getting my first PC that was able to play games really, now I have a full on gaming PC setup and I'm pretty used to the keyboard now rather than the controller like before
I played both Halo 1 and 2 on PC and thought they were great. Of course the only time I actually played them on console was at friends' houses, and never noticed any of the problems. Although it could just be nostalgia clouding my memory. Halo 2 is still my favorite game in the series, and I was glad it came to PC otherwise I would have missed out
It's not even that's it's locked to Vista either- before MCC, I was still playing Halo CE & 2V every now and again on Windows 10 relatively fine. Also yeah, setting everything to low typically makes games look worse lel
I used to play Halo 2 vista a lot on windows 7 since I never had an original xbox but loved playing halo 2 with my cousin. I remember it would always crash before getting into the gravemind mission and it would say "CD Key is Invalid", and I would have to install patches, and a lot of things to get it to work, I did finish Halo 2 on vista and it was amazing, and I can still see the achievements I made in my xbox one.
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Funnily enough, playing this version of Halo 2 on my college PC was what got me into Halo (and later Xbox) in the first place.
Same i remember playing this on my cousins PC when i was like 8 and that got me into gaming in the first place
Me too back in 2008 my uncle bought a new PC with this new game that I have never seen, I wanted to try it out and since then I fell in love with Halo
It's still good on vista. It's just. Not as as good as the others. The story is still there.
Yeah, I never had an original Xbox, just a PC I built myself with a fresh install of Windows Vista Ultimate. Halo 2 Vista and Halo Custom edition are what got me into Halo and eventually led to getting a Xbox 360.
Yep. I was saving up to get a 360 to make a reach machinima with friends. Played CE and 2 on PC in the meantime, and "finishing the fight" motivated me to keep saving.
glitches made it almost impassable. ugh. Even with particle effects being rendered in 2D across the screen, blocking everything on certain maps, multiplayer was easier there than competing with BXR on console.
I actually made a mod for Halo 2 Vista called Halo 2 Reclaimed trying to restore it back to a state as close as I could get it to the OG Xbox. I couldn't get it 100% correct though. This was pre-MCC. There are actually a ton of differences in Halo 2 Vista, and even MCC. Lots of visual differences, which have mostly been addressed in MCC at this point. But since our main concern is gameplay here, there are a lot of those bugs too. In fact, the whole "In Gravemind Legendary, you die as soon as the level starts" thing was introduced in Halo 2 Vista. The OG Xbox version actually gave you a couple of seconds to register that Brutes were in fact in front of you. Another difference is that human Flood forms cannot climb walls like in the original. This made certain enemies like the Rocket Flood on Quarantine Zone unable to climb up, so you end up just not seeing them at all. It also made Sacred Icon's final waves more awkward, as some of those forms stuck to a wall and couldn't climb up, increasing the wait time between waves. These bugs are still in the MCC.
I actually had a version I got working for free years ago on an old laptop (deleted Halo CE and 2 for room because I was planning on getting the latest xbox and MCC, hasn't happened yet still on 360) and it was the vista version (xbox live and all) and some of the sword glitches seemed harder to do for me than they had any right to, and not just because I was on keyboard and mouse (would have been the tick rate). But I always got confused the couple times I played through on legendary because the guide is like "snipe these rocket floods early" and I'm watching the area like "umm what rocket flood?" And of course there were times I was just standing around waiting because there were no enemies around and the next wave of flood didn't spawn. Maybe this is why that happened... glad to know.
Actually, Halo 2 Vista gravemind doesn’t kill you instantly, I always run vista, actually I speedrun it more than the normal one. But yes there’s no sword flying, ghosting, or Superbouncing, but you can use the 30 tickrate for that. There’s still no sword flying though lmao.
Hey I think I met you on discord a few years ago. I had just made an account and found a random halo server. You were the first person I talked to on discord.
Well, here's to hoping 343 reads this comment and fixes them in the coming months.
Oh hey, I also did mods I think that predates yours. There were so many bugs and issues, crashing due to a invalid Unicode Char being shown (which I released a fix for which got me my first security job), the mod tools were awful, leading to memory patches and trainers being required for even playing some mods. Even the camera tools that spartan did had issues due to tickrate. Super bouncing still existed you just had to hit the ground much harder. There were a few hacks you could do to allow co-op campaign at the time, but overall there were so many crashes. I'm surprised Luke found some of these tools, but yeah performance was also pretty trash, for being 512x512 upgraded textures also had issues loading that required a patch. The dedicated server had so many issues with long term play, requiring hacks for ranking, afk kick, checking gamertag to prevent spoofing which could be used with cheat engine to bypass bans since they were only done by name 😮💨 there's also issues where many cutscenes would bug out leading to the "camera roll" like when using the co-op hack which I never figured out but reverting from save usually fixes it. I'm so sad that for mcc they used this version instead of porting it again properly 😩
I picked this up because I was a huge Halo: CE fan, and at the time I had no Xbox. I attempted to install, only to realize I didn't have a dedicated graphics card. So I snagged a cheap Nvidia card and still had struggles. Thankfully I have the MCC rnd a much better computer these days.
My brother bought it and played it on his Windows 7 lol
Yea my broke ass has always been on console
Shit we had a toshiba laptop a cheap one mfer didn’t have a camera or nothing I don’t even think we had WiFi yet the laptop was set up like a desk top 😭 I was downloading all the games for free i didn’t know shit about a graphic card and that cheap ass laptop ran everything some shit was laggy though but old Xbox games and shit worked
Get a core i7 processor minimum you should be good
Your settings default to lowest settings because your computer component came out after the game. Most games try to check your specs and set the graphics accordingly. However since you are using stuff that didn't exist and it has no clue what it is. It will default to lowest settings. This is common with many games
Huh that’s really interesting actually
Came here to say the same thing. Thought this was well known by now. Lol. Guess people still don't know though. A lot of Bethesda games do this exact thing, too.
Yes I thought the same thing because I've recently played Halo 2 Vista and it didn't look anywhere near this bad. I'm usually on board with Rocket Sloth but I feel they could have at least played around with the settings to see what's there. There's even an option to replace in-game models with cutscene models which are higher detail.
some newer games will do the reverse and max out the settings because it assumes its better hardware
@@spaghettiupseti9990 haha never seen that myself since it's mostly older games I've played but yes. It's funny as hell
halo 2 project cartographer actually has one cool feature, a fully implemented infection mode with automatic team changing. That is the one reason that I play it from time to time apart from needing lower specs than mcc on potato laptop.
Super bouncing, sword flying, etc STILL WORK in Halo 2 MCC, they are not gone. They are just more difficult to pull off because of the increased FPS
Some people who tried the LASO no death challange lowered their FPS in the Nvidia control panel and capped it at 30.
I don't know why but this video makes me feel... incredibly old seeing how many versions of Halo 2 there are, then their release dates only to realize OG Halo 2 has been around for 18 years, Vista for 15 and now MCC for almost 10, going on 8. All of which are huge chunks of my 24 year old life. Time flies... time fucking flies.
As a fellow 24 year old, I feel ya.
Facts man. Now were 26 MCC is nearly a decade old now. I remember it coming out in grade 12 my last year of high school. What a different time in life. Halo 2 almost 2 decades now. I almost cant believe its been that long. Seems like a lifetime ago. I was a young child then. Ah where did all the time go. If only we could go back....
bruh... im 28 this year... halo pc and custom edition were massive chunks of my childhood (I think halo & red faction were my first video games) I literally begged my dad for a vista PC to play this, and did so along time, I remember getting out of the map on turf, district, foundation and a bunch of other maps. Glitching campaign levels, making maps. playing other peoples made maps. this was a shocking port but still hella fun at the time. On PC CTF was huge, every lobby was Coagulation CTF so fun.
The flipped Wraith definitely used to be in MCC. I distinctly recall that happening to us at launch
It actually was fixed about one or two patches ago lol.
It was in MCC. Was only pretty recently patched in a couple updates ago as someone else had said.
@@Robbie_Haruna i was gonna say. i just ran through halo 2 legendary a couple months ago and i swear i remembered that
I’ll never forget playing through CE one night with my brother and my grandma came out of nowhere to visit and had the Limited Edition of Halo 2, I can’t be sure when this exactly was, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was within a week of its release and it blew our minds lol
Best Halo out of the series to me, at that moment I had gotten a better taste of Halo Multiplayer when there were no party chats, the clan system was awesome, the ranks were fulfilling and you had the joy to get an invite to a filled lobby and play the bigger maps and Tower of Power- later the joy was wishing someone had gotten the DLC disk that had access to the Infection mode and threw you an invite.
I remember that disc. My mom bought it for me. $24.99, iirc, for the Multiplayer Map Pack.
i still have that disc lol. never seen anyone of my friends have it
Man, I'm about to tear up rn after reading that lmao. Man those were the times.. Tower of Power on Ascension was my all time favorite. I still remember my 10 year old voice using the voice masking feature which made you sound like a dying old man lmao
Where was the voice masking feature built into halo 2 for built into the xbox or was it some other mod?@@JonathanX95xboxlive
Well, if you think about it, since Vista takes away all those 30 tick skips and has them shooting faster, while also staying true to the original skulls with grunt bp, it's like you're just playing the xbox version but harder. If you're running it, either you are cheating, or you are asserting dominance by running the most difficult and frustrating version (frustrating in having to grab all skulls each login without the benefit of skips). And hey, if you think about it why not beat the ultimate challenge on the hardest of all versions, because that does technically make it harder meaning it really is the hardest challenge.
I really wanna run this game and now you made me wanna window Vista it
@@TheMsr47gaming1 year later but for a windows vista game this one runs with fairly no problem on win10. A lot of old games have problems running on newer windows versions... Or maybe my computer is bad enough to still run it
The reason Halo 2 is having such a resurgence is the fact that everyone is getting tired of the games big studios are just pushing out to meet 2 year deadlines, and not because they love the game they are making. It's taking us all back to a time where creators made games because they loved playing video games.
I totally agree. Personally, I've been discovering PS3 games for the first time in my life, and honestly I have enough games there to completely shun the current generation of same-y triple A games.
Instead they'll play games that were pushed out in 13 months, half complete, and crunched to high hell while the last half of the game is released on an entirely new generation of console...?
@@harveykaiba ya people don't realize that the game industry has been basically the same since the 80s if not 70s, big corporations making cash grabs with whatever the current trend/scam and smaller studios making it out of love
And or the 20k that's on the line for who ever streams it
@@TheMsr47gaming how does that have anything to do with bringing back multiplayer for the original Xbox and the 360? The restored multiplayer maps? Halo Infinite is bombing and H2 is making a comeback. That's more than just the bounty.
You have to remember that MCC Halo 2 is relatively new, and that having a custom game browser that supports halo 2 is also pretty new to MCC. Beforehand, for many years, the Cartographer version of Halo 2 was the definite best way to get your multiplayer Halo 2 fix on PC. Even now, It's playercount is relatively healthy for this kind of small community, and there are a lot of advantages it has over the 343 implementation of Halo 2, and to date is still the definitive modern experience. It also argubly has a better CGB, ongoing support, seasonal events, and is still just a righteous good time, a healthy mix of new modes and old modes, new maps, fun customizations, etc. etc.
Cart is life
I still prefer MCC Halo 2 for multiplayer myself, simply on the ground of its controller support being nicer and more versatile.
Also it's just less sweaty. Like Halo 2 online is pretty sweaty even on MCC, but being less accessible means the average joe isn't gonna be on Project Cartographer.
@@Robbie_Haruna I can respect that! The good thing is that it's pretty easy to be engaged in both versions of the game. Sometimes my friends and I play Cartographer for the superior (and maybe a bit sweaty lol) H2 experience, sometimes we lazily bounce into MCC so we can mix with others games. I think the communities are very different but can coexist nicely :) You actually probably should do this, because depending on when you play, sometimes MCC has more active players, sometimes Cartographer has more active players.
@@Robbie_Haruna Since when has Halo 2 not been sweaty? Since its launch, Halo 2 was extremely sweaty with BXR, BR double burst, super jumps, and other glitches. I don’t think Silent Cartographer is any different to any version of Halo. It’s only on PC and aiming tends to be more competitive, but that doesn’t make it sweaty.
@@SpectorEuro4 Well when the game first launched way back when it wasn't terribly sweaty for a good while simply because people hadn't figured out all the exploits by that point and info spread via the internet much slower than today.
But in general Halo 2 is among the sweatiest Halo games and considering nobody that's just interested in the game at a casual for fun level is going to bother with Project Cartographer it means you're getting a stronger concentration of sweaties.
Like most of the people playing Project Cartographer are those people who don't like the differences between what MCC has and the original, but those are also minor enough so nobody that isn't a hardcore Halo 2 player is going to notice them enough to the point that they're going to go out of their way to download the vista port of Halo 2 and hunt down a mod to make the Vista port solid.
Plus like you said, the fact that it's the PC port means it's gonna just be innately more sweaty with Keyboard and mouse being more prominent (and also lacking the same level of controller customization that the MCC had.)
I was able to install Halo 2 Vista in Windows 7 back in the day but it would crash towards the end of Outskirts when you enter the highway. I didn't have Xbox back then so I could only play CE, Custom Edition, and the first two levels of 2. And yet I was still a massive Halo fan.
It's funny you mention that
I also used to play Halo 2 Vista in Windows 7 and it would crash prior to entering the temple in Regret, reinstalling it never worked and I was stuck there for years
I got some shady build with broken games for Windows live, it would only let me play Cairo station and asked to sign in after, which didn't work, so I had to play Cairo and use my imagination for the rest 😅
No game will ever bring me the feels Custom Edition gave me.. Maps like YoYorast Island, Hugeass, Coldsnap etc... Best maps I've ever played.
@@bomjahed You had a pirated version then. The crack allowed you to play further.
heck, up until a year ago I only had CE... then my brother bought the old Vista halo 2, then got MCC... now I've tried them all after all these years.
Cr1tical: $20K for anyone who beats H2 Laso without dying.
Me: Raise it to $2B and I'll consider.
I will never forget how excited I was and how bad I wanted to play Halo 2 already. My parents got me the original Halo edition xbox and it came with the Halo 2 E3 demo video and I'd re-watch it over and over. I stayed home from school that day and played Halo 2 all day.
did you have fun?
@@fenexus404 The most fun I think I could have ever wanted. I was in such awe to everything.
@@DeadGothicRed thats nice :)
DUDE THAT DEMO OMG THAT BRINGS BACK MEMORIES. wasn’t that in the extras of halo ce or something? i remember watching it like crazy but i can’t remember how you would actually watch it lol
@@colelinson1229 it was an option on the dashboard on the halo edition xbox I had.
I hope that 343 makes the music for it louder without having to mix the audio in options myself
Remember beating this game on Heroic as a kid. What a grind it felt at the time lmao
Playing Halo 2 Project Cartographer back when I started college is what made me fell in love (again) with the franchise, it has such a nostalgic, early 2000's vibe that is so hard to find nowadays, and like you said, it basically runs on anything today, so finding out that I could run this on my 4gb Ram 54mb video-integrated graphics laptop was such a happy moment for me
This was my first experience with Halo 2. I played it on my mom's old computer, a really shitty one. On 'The Arbiter' the games fog didn't render properly, it was just a solid yellow wall about 5 meters in front of me.
I could never hit over 15 FPS. I still finished the game, I have no clue how
Skill
Funny thing is, there was a time when I was a kid where I wanted Halo 2 Vista so bad I’d do anything to get my hands on it. At the time I didn’t have an Xbox and my PC only had XP, so all I had to play was CE. I played it to death but I eventually wanted to branch out and Halo 2 was my first target, given it was also on PC.
I remember my desperation got so bad that I just lied to my parents and got them to buy a copy of Halo 2 Vista thinking it was compatible with my PC. When my dad found out he basically told me that it wouldn’t work on my computer. I was a dumb kid so I didn’t understand I needed Windows Vista.
Short story short, I never played Halo 2 Vista. I ended up getting a 360 eventually and my first experience with Halo 2 was when I bought a Limited Edition copy at my school fair for $5. I still own that copy to this day.
I eventually torrented Halo 2 Vista years later, but yeah…really dodged a bullet there.
Hold up, you had a school fair and copped the collectors edition for $5 dingos? Damn.
@@yeejay6396 Yep, couldn’t believe it myself when it happened. I was lucky I had just enough pocket change for it, haha.
You could play it on XP tho. All you needed to do was copy a DLL into your win32 folder.
Your dad should've just google'd it for you
@@FumbleSquid That's what I did back in the day
My favourite little tidbit about Halo 2 Vista is that a sole developer screwing around caused the game to be delayed release by a few weeks because he included a picture of his ass in the mod tools for when the compiler experiences a .ass error due to improper axis scales.
It was only caught right before release and resulted in a delay while Microsoft had to slap ESRB correction stickers onto every copy that had been already printed to add the Partial Nudity tag to the rating until they could remove the image in future re-prints.
You forgot the fact that we're also getting the Halo 2 E3 Demo Map in the intro. That's like the Holy Grail or Ark of the Covenant of Halo 2 content right there.
My first experience with halo was halo 2 project cartographer, had me hooked since
Project Cartographer it's actually really neat, I often go back there just to enjoy the original halo 2 menus, the majority of the graphical issues are fixed, there's a game browser, you can activate/ deactivate skulls while you're playing.
And works on any windows version
I didnt have an xbox, so Halo PC and Halo Vista were my loves. The online play was a blast. So many customs, so many fun modded maps. All just launchable like any moden Valve multiplayer game. It was so great.
Those two PC ports got me through Halo's console exclusivity until the series made its triumphant return with MCC in 2019!
What does screen tearing have to do with optimisation? That just means Vsync either isn't working or it's not on...
it could also mean that the vsync implementation is bad and isn't actually synchronizing to your monitor's refresh rate. back when MCC released on PC there were awful screen tearing issues there as well, whether or not vsync was turned on, made much worse if you had framerate capping on (which, at the time, was required to fix some glitches). being an MCC flight tester was... interesting.
Halo2 Grunt Birthday party was the best version. It was actually useful and didnt get annoying after 5 minutes
Nah I think Project Cartographer is still the best at least for the multiplayer and server browser that MCC doesn't have... Yes you have a custom browser but no dedicated custom servers or modded map support in game.
Halo 2 for Windows Vista was copy/pasted to The Master Chief Collection and other than the server list being replaced with matchmaking it was 1:1 with H2V
As of 2022 with the Project Cartographer mod, H2V is the 2nd best version of Halo 2 behind the original. MCC H2 is the least functional version of Halo 2 with many _severe_ gameplay breaking bugs that have gone unaddressed for 8 years and more being added in 2018 with the revamp of MCC, which is why no one plays it...
Calling H2V the worst version doesn't make any sense
The first time I ever played Halo 2 was the Vista port. There was a TH-cam video that had 31 separate winrar archive links in the description. You were supposed to download all of them and extract them into the same folder. It didn't work, and for some dumb reason I decided to do the whole thing again. For an even dumber reason, that actually made it work. I made a Games for Windows Live account before I made a steam one because of that, good times.
I recently got GFWL working on Windows 10 to play Section 8 Prejudice but now I'm curious if there's still people playing Vista MP, or if it still even works to begin with.
GFWL works, buuuut only Singleplayer, No multiplayer. you'll have to install Halo 2 Project Cartographer for that good old fashioned MP gameplay
Project Cartographer: Am I a joke to you?
I got into the series on PC, and "finishing the fight" was what got me to buy a 360 in 2011. The particle effects appeared as 2D across the screen, obscuring everything in my view. Sacred Icon took hours upon hours to complete. Basically unplayable.
As a game dev a good 80% of these "issues" are completely obvious. Take the reduced bloom and screenspace effects, that's because you are running at a higher resolution but the filter kernel used for bloom was designed for a fixed resolution. Screen tearing doesn't mean the game is running poorly btw, it generally means its running at a higher refresh rate than your monitor, you can lock this in your gpu control panel. Also it defaulted to low because the GPU you are using is newer than the game and not in its lookup table, so it defaults to low as a precaution, very normal.
On a screen and gpu from 2006 many of these issues wouldn't have really existed.
Finally someone that understands. Back when this came out none of these were really issues because the hardware was accounted for. Modern systems break the vsync so you get tearing if you don't use external locks, effects being blown out because they used tricks to make things look good how they foresaw people playing the game and now we play far above those limits. I remember the game running very well and smooth as a kid, it even worked on XP with a hack to revert all the DX10 effects to DX9 (minus one level that would crash). The only things I saw making it a "Bad Port" was the actual messed up and missing effects and assets (like the leaves on trees missing), but golly gee I forgave it as a kid cause I could play Halo 2 now in 1600x1200 glory
Ar 9:14 screen tearing isn't a problem with the game, it can happen on any game. It's when you are making more frames than your monitor supports and so they start getting spliced together.
And this only really happened when playing the game on modern hardware, which to a degree you could say wasn't a fault of the games launch condition. Modern hardware breaks the games internal Vsync so you either got a game running way too fast or you got a game that barely stuck on to the 60fps cap causing all that tearing. The fix I remember doing back before MCC was on PC is I locked the framerate in Nvidia Control Panel (or AMD Catalyst when I was using my older PC)
Makes me respect cartographer. It needs more promo
Games for Windows LIVE is tied to x360 LIVE. That's why you can use messaging and what not. When x360 LIVE dies, so does GFWL.
2:54 sword flying works on MCC, it was patched in several years ago.
I still have my copy of Halo 2 Vista that I got for christmas in like, 2013. I used to be SO Obsessed with it, and I played avidly until they finally turned off the servers, and even then I played Project Cartographer for a short while after. It's a bad port, but damn I absolutely loved it fsr lol. Simpler times.
Cool shout out to Project Cartographer. I remember playing that back in 2019 and early 2020 just wishing that MCC would come out for PC already.
I had OG Halo 2 Vista way back in the day and still have my physical copy but it's now obsolete with the Project Cartographer mod.
I was in the Halo 2 Vista community, under the name of Sherbox. We even had a website where we posted mods and hacks. While I didn't had an OG Xbox I couldn't play the Xbox version. I definitely felt kinda empty with the port being superbounces "patched" (you just had to jump from a higher altitude and hit the texture as you would in H2X) and the shadders being kinda messed up. Mods were very limited too and the Multiplayer modding took over 4 years to be a thing until some people made it possible with a tool called Gravemind.
Sherbox, haven't seen you in year's... lol
@@XHN_SCRAPY hahaha almost a decade
@@ericquevedo8055 yeah a very long time before I had white hair 🤣 the good ol days!
I play Project Cartographer because I got Halo MCC on steam, but it wouldn't run, it just crashed and gave me an error code that said "Cooked Content Not Found", so then I asked my mom to get me Halo CE Windows XP and Halo 2 Vista, but then I came across the Project Cartographer mod and I just fell in love with it
Halo 2 Vista was the first halo game I played...man what a time. But I find it kinda weird that you said that the playerbase of halo 2 PC was really small because in the name years I played I remember having a lot of people...like maybe over a hundred at certain times. It might be me because I was like 13 when my dad bought me the game.
(Also my name on my TH-cam account is the same as the username I had when playing halo 2 Vista so hi to everybody who might remember...halo 2 days were the best of my life)
I am of the few who thought halo was originally a computer game until I found out halo 3 never got a pc port after reach came out. I didn't have internet until after reach came out and my only access to halo combat evolved was on my buddies old windows XP laptop
just so people know, H2vista was the version of the game used for MCC, they are basically the same build of the game with a few small graphical fixes to run smoothly. otherwise they are pretty much the same.The gearbox port for HCE is also used for halo CEA. So if MCC H2 is you're favorite version of the game, you like H2Vista.
Yes, xbox and pc mcc are literally h2 vista.
Grunt birthday party skull no longer discharges a plasma blast to me that’s a huge difference.
@@NotSweetland yea but thats just changing what the particular skull does in gameplay, which i think you can do in mod tools as well, so i wouldn't really say thats a huge difference between the MCC vista and Regular Vista ports of the game.
Hey, I asked about Halo 2 for Vista on the first video!
I used to play it with the Project Cartographer mod before MCC came to PC. I think it had a lot of Mexican (?) players.
Yup! Lots of memories lmao. Learned some basic Spanish specifically to talk to guys in those servers lmao
Pretty sure Tombstone isn't a Halo 2 original dlc map, thought it was originally in Halo CE and called Hang Em High.
I played this version of Halo 2 as a kid. It is what got me into Halo multiplayer and I had a lot of fun times online. Watching this video was a HUGE nostalgia trip. :)
I have my Halo 2 “Games for Windows PC DVD” right here on my bookshelf. No meme. I’m holding it right now. There’s also the first ever Steam game I bought, from Staples. WOW
I think I also still have my grandfather’s vista laptop which I played it on so much during junior high.
Imma have a retro weekend and quickly turn back to modern games if I can even get this stuff to run!
i remember pirating halo 2 vista and making a youtube video on how to do it. it got 200k views back then witch my 11 year old self was very happy lmao. shit maybe someone who saw that tutorial is watching this video manyy years later
Halo 2 vista was all I had since I didn't have an Xbox at the time. So many memories & friends I made. And so many maps I downloaded.
This version is what got me into halo. My dad got it for me in 2007 and then I begged for a 360 so I could play halo 3. Didn't even realize the negatives as a kid lol
$20k bounty for Halo 2 LASO ✔️
Cut content/missions being restored ✔️
OG Xbox Live restoration project ⁉️
*I am unable to can*
XBC was actually what people opted to use most of the time instead of xlink kia, rip XBC
Oddly enough this was the version of Halo 2 I played the most. And to top that I was playing it on Windows XP with a hack that allowed the game to run on DX9, I remember it running very well on my system and only one level had to be skipped as it would cause crashes on DX9
Do you guys use Project Cartographer for superbouncing? You gotta join us for some bouncing shenanigans
that "Beach Battle" map kinda looks like the halo psp thing
But the cartographer project was amazing
This version was my first Halo game. It had its faults but it was playable. You have to force external Vsync.
4:40 there was a crossplay featured on a game called shadowrun which was wild considering the time.
They fall in line
One at a time
Ready to play
(I can't see them anyway)
No time to lose
We've got to move
Steady your hand
(I am losing sight again)
Fire your guns
It's time to run
Blow me away
(I will stay, unless I may)
After the fall
We'll shake it off
Show me the way
Only the strongest will survive
Lead me to heaven, when we die
I am a shadow on the wall
I'll be the one to save us all
There's nothing left
So save your breath
Lying in wait
(Caught inside this tidal wave)
Your cover's blown
No where to go
Only your fate
(Lonely I will walk alone)
Fire your guns
It's time to run
Blow me away
(I will stay, unless I may)
After the fall
We'll shake it off
Show me the way
Only the strongest will survive
Lead me to heaven, when we die
I am a shadow on the wall
I'll be the one to save us all
Wanted it back
(Don't fight me now)
Don't make me beg
Blow me away
Only the strongest will survive
Lead me to heaven, when we die
I am a shadow on the wall
I'll be the one to save us all
Save us all
I was playing on project cartographer prior to mcc PC, was fun and I remember chuckling when the plants were gone
h2 for vista, i had this, i played with a controller, it had aim assist, the carbine wrecked online, I was accused of hacking so many times, it was so fun, EDIT: it also had achievements!
This whole video was just "This version is different. It's different cause it has differences. The differences are bad. Cause they're differences." And then the only differences we saw were like a couple lighting glitches. I'll be honest, this looks perfectly playable.
Agreed, the only actual issues he mentioned that would impede gameplay were framerate related (ie screen tearing) because modern hardware breaks the in game Vsync and the fix for that is just to lock the framerate in your control panel. I guess also the tickrate thing but that also has its pros with how the game runs and is why they did it, mainly meant certain tricks weren't doable anymore. Was my favorite way to play the game until MCC came out on PC, and even then I still used the borked Co-Op mod because somehow the MCC version had even worse netcode (host has good experience while the person joining plays with 3 seconds of delay)
Years ago I made a video on how to get vista working on Windows 8+ by replacing some files so that it wouldn’t be forced to use Games for Windows Live. The video did great but the mic quality was horrible so I took it down. I have great memories of playing that horrible port of the game lol, and I still have my copy of the game.
The bounty is hard enough on MCC since it has more skulls. But LASO means ALL SKULLS (besides envy) so scarab skull
Funny, I grew up on the Gearbox port of Halo CE and absolutely despised the visuals of Halo 2 only to have MCC season 8 make me realize I wasn't seeing the graphics as they were meant to be seen the entire time!
This was my first exposure to Halo 2, I had to play it on my family's computer as my own PC still had XP at the time, apparently I got pretty lucky as I didn't really encounter any major glitches or anything like that.
Ide say the OG grunt birthday party is very advantageous, assuming the plasma explosion damages near by enemies?
As buggy as Halo 2 vista was, it sported some of the best mods and custom map creations in Halo history that really flew under the radar :(
Bro, don't do my Vista dirty XD
Fr tho, Halo 2 Vista I loved. I never played Halo on the original Xbox. CE and 2 on PC was my life. My parents saw how much I loved Halo, and got me an Xbox and Halo 3(despite money maybe not being in the best situation, lotta spaghetti dinners). H2 Vista I only have fond memories of. Mods back then blew my mind. I played at like 12fps though.
I remember in 2009, going back to Vista engine tools trying to remake Der Riese.
It did NOT happen.
Now I'm knee deep in Infinite Forge making Der Riese. I accredit my passions to the abomination that was Halo 2 Vista
Project Cartographer works fine for me. Not perfect, but buying it on MCC when I already have it for free seems a bit redundant.
I actually bought the Windows Vista port back in 2010 or so, but my PC could barely run it for the time, and I remember the CD key didn't even work to play online, so I was basically stuck playing the campaign at low fps and low graphics. Years later when I got a modern gaming pc, i redownloaded it through the Project Cartographer mod and it's much better! People still play this version online in 2023, there are some servers still open; same with Halo CE and Custom Edition for PC. Great video!
I actually still play halo 2 vista to this day, it was the only copy I could access in highschool and now here I am
I have Vista, but got to it late (in 2014). It was a stroll down memory lane and had a ton of fun on it! Really miss the old Halo days
Halo 2 Vista is the only Halo game in which I have 1000g, thanks to achivements unlocker. Game is just 2 times slower, no one wants to play it that way.
Played this for the achievements and my game would crash every time I completed a lvl LMAO, Was going for the legendary campaign achievement and sometimes the game would crash before the lvl would count so that was a pain. But all in all glad to say I didn't let vista beat me
Honestly I enjoyed Halo 2 Vista for what it was. It was kind of an unknown Halo PC game. I had fun back in the day modding it and screwing around with it.
I actually own a physical copy of of game, it is noticeably different than the XBOX version, but hey if you had a Vista back then instead of an XBOX and randomly picked up this game, you're still gonna have lots of fun, plus with many community made mods, the game becomes more fun. Edit: I also play Project Cartographer all the time just to live the classic Halo 2 online multiplayer with old modded gamemodes like Zombies, and you mentioned screen tearing, I get that too. Another edit, you're correct about the FOV, it is definitely different and I was hoping it wasn't just me.
i own roughly 20 copies, some new and sealed, different languages etc. trying to find more, getting difficult as time passes.
@@XHN_SCRAPY ah a collector i see, i own almost every version of the original halo games, and their different variants. I own Halo CE and Halo CE G.O.T.Y., Halo 2, Halo 2 collectors edition, Halo 3, Halo 3 essentials, and so on. I really like collectors, they seem to appreciate things more and they keep a piece of history safe.
@@versedrhyme41 the fov is slightly different than Xbox. But you can change it lol nice, I have some Xbox games not as many as I used to sadly lol 🤣 had tons for lans. Screen tearing is an issue on the old dx9c? I use nvidia control panel to fix it for the most part. In-game AA messes with the game as well. You can see white lines where the geo/polys are lol it's nice now we can play uncapped but I stay at 60 fps and 165hz in the Cartographer menu. Nice to see some players are still playing. It was epic getting the game back in the day and unlocking achievements lol friends and people were like how'd you get achievements for halo 2!
@@XHN_SCRAPY I still play Project Cartographer all the time, perhaps we'll meet in a game. My username is my Xbox gamertag, VersedRhyme41.
I haven't gotten used to the fact that someone who would've been my age (20) back in 2004 would be nearly 40 now in 2022.
I was 15 so yeah I feel old now lol
Halo 2 was the biggest leap Forward in the series ever made. Best nostalgia
Yes it definitely was.
Best game ever
Mcc require DirectX11 as minimum where Project Cartographer/Halo 2 Vista doesn’t
Kinda sucks, but i get it that they do this to take advantage of newer gen hardware power
one thing you forgot to mention was the wacky physics it had.
Yay! I'm early to one of my favorite TH-camrs!
Ay same
Name checks out
Back in the day there was a fan patch that would disable Games for Windows Live. This allowed the game to run on XP. Not sure if it did anything else since the game was supposed to use DirectX 10 which did not support XP. But with tha small fan patch it runs fine on XP so that was all marketing it seems.
Of course, without GfW enabled, multiplayer was not available. So that was the trade off.
For me personally I had XP and Vista dual booting on the same machine (I got a free copy of Vista for testing and filing bug reports of the public beta or something). On XP it performed decently but on Vista it was unplayable. So that probably did not help Halo 2 Vista sales since most people normally didn't upgrade their existing PC Windows anyway, and Vista had performance downgrades and driver problems, and nobody really cared that it revolutionized Windows security.
I never owned an original Xbox, I had to wait for the PC ports. I still own the physical PC copies of Halo CE and Halo 2. Up until the release of Windows 10, I was able to install and run Halo CE because the CD key was somehow limitless. Shortly after Win10 launched laptops and desktops did away with CD drives though, so no more Halo CE. Halo 2, on the other hand, became a pain in the ass very quickly because of that Windows Live garbage. I had to find ways to get around that requirement and it was just too much of a hassle.
I installed Halo 2 on 10 ezpz. Just needed the latest GFWL client and install the game, wait ForEvvver for live to do the first install and activate thing. But it works, so far I've had 10+ GFWL games work on 10.
Halo 2 Vista also has problems with GFWL I don't know if they are connection or activation problems, if you're playing and the GFWL disconnects your game is dead you basically have to return to the menu and lose all progress in campaign, that is one of the reasons I haven't been able to get the heroic and legendary achievements, in my case it has a 40-60 minutes time limit to kick me out, which in higher difficulties and without speed run strats is difficult to achieve given 60 Hz nature of the game.
I've played with UPnP, Port forward and DMZ so no my connection is not the problem, I've played other games with GFWL GTA IV, it might be something to do with the key I used to activate the game (Since you can't buy it or get them normally anymore), but I don't think it's the main issue.
So im actually doing my take on Moist's challenge on Project cartographer simply because i have UE4 issues on my laptop. Will i win? No. Am i trying it anyways? yes.
I played halo 3 first, in 2018 i discovered halo 2 and ce and declared halo 2 my favorite halo game, i use to see so many videos saying how halo 2 may have been one of the worst halo games out there, but i still loved it for some reason, now its 4 years later and halo 2 is being treated like gold. Also Halo 2 Vista actually can be fixed with mods, i have seen one modpack that fixes a lot of lighting and other issues with halo 2 on vista, this is actually the version i use to play (before getting the original xbox version with my xbox 360) and it was great, i actually had no idea how underrated this version of the game was, most likely because it is near impossible to get it to run on a modern computer without 3rd party mods
Halo 2 Vista aka Halo 2 PC (2007) or aka Halo 2 Project Cartographer is still a great game to play. it has its problems, but hey its still great to play. There are many new features the community brought to Halo 2 PC, graphical fixes, Multiplayer is back, Dedicated Servers are still there, everything works as it should. idk about playing Laso on Halo 2 Vista but hey try it and find out! lol some glitches have been brought back, you can play stock h2v gametypes, dedicated servers can now have many mods enabled in the gametypes and what not. skulls are in the Cartographer menu now for fast activation. uncapped fps is a thing. you can play H2X which brings back halo 2 xbox type gameplay fire rates etc. the server list is a great way to hop in and play a game or two or more for hours on end. no quit banning, betrayal banning, no banning unless you are cheating. tons of custom maps available right in the custom maps repo and section of the game when you want to play a new map in the pregame lobby settings. SP is another monster. Coop is a thing, sort of atm, splitscreen anyone? idk. been on hold for a bit. game is still a fun halo 2 to play. and if you like match making, just hit quick match and it will put you in a random server. Halo 2 Vista has been fun since 2007, found it best buy many years ago. i have many copies, some new and sealed and different languages. nice video btw.
I have been trying to log into my GFWL, and it does not let me sign in at all. I have tried resetting my password but it wont let my sign in for the achievements😔
Fun fact, part of why Halo 2 Vista was delayed (in fact a major reason why) was that one of the file extensions used was ".ASS". this in and of itself is fine, but what wasn't was that one of the developers included a picture of their actual ass as the icon for all ".ASS" files within the game. For ESRB that would have been enough to change the rating to "Adult Only" instead of "M for Mature".
Halo 2 always looked like Halo 3 on extremely low graphics settings, this has somehow become even more soupy
But it looked so good
You can sword fly in MCC it’s just way harder to hit
I played Halo 2 Vista with Project Cartographer maybe a few years ago now, 1 or 2? Maybe more? But it's what taught me how to use a keyboard in gaming as I was finally getting my first PC that was able to play games really, now I have a full on gaming PC setup and I'm pretty used to the keyboard now rather than the controller like before
I played both Halo 1 and 2 on PC and thought they were great. Of course the only time I actually played them on console was at friends' houses, and never noticed any of the problems. Although it could just be nostalgia clouding my memory. Halo 2 is still my favorite game in the series, and I was glad it came to PC otherwise I would have missed out
It's not even that's it's locked to Vista either- before MCC, I was still playing Halo CE & 2V every now and again on Windows 10 relatively fine.
Also yeah, setting everything to low typically makes games look worse lel
I used to play Halo 2 vista a lot on windows 7 since I never had an original xbox but loved playing halo 2 with my cousin. I remember it would always crash before getting into the gravemind mission and it would say "CD Key is Invalid", and I would have to install patches, and a lot of things to get it to work, I did finish Halo 2 on vista and it was amazing, and I can still see the achievements I made in my xbox one.
The upside down wraith happens on MCC too!
Isn't the Earth City map similar to the E3 2003 demo?