Top Gaming Moment # 30: May 29th & 31st, 2007

Source: Gamespot (Halo 2), GameSpot (ShadowRun) & Metacritic

Everyone knows that I love the PC, and for the most part avoid consoles. Now and then I give credit to consoles, where credit is due, but I will never give up my PC gaming. That said, even I cannot defend some of the recent tragedies that have befallen PC gaming this past year.

Enter Games For Windows Live and the Vista OS, Microsoft’s new brain children that were both born ugly as sin.

Promising Xbox 360 vs. PC online play for the first time, Games For Windows Live is the PC version of Microsoft’s XBL. Too bad it does such a terrible job. Read my coverage on why it’s so bad here. Anyway, the first two games to take advantage of GfWL where Halo 2 and Shadowrun. Both were colossal failures on PC and both required Microsoft’s Vista OS to play.

Read more about why these two terrible games and the horrible mesh of Vista and GfWL made the list after the jump!

First off, let’s talk about Halo 2. The PC version came out over 3 years after its release on the original Xbox. Scoring a mediocre 72 on Metacritic, Halo 2 on the PC had nothing to offer PC gamers who were already playing the much newer FPS’s available. On top of that, it required the Vista OS, which at the time, was still shunned by almost every PC gamer (and still is for the most part). The OS cost hundreds of dollars and most gamers could see no need to cough up that much loot to play a 3 year old game.

About the only thing it did offer those 8 people who actually went out and purchased both Vista and Halo 2 on PC was the ability to use GfWL to rack up achievements if they had a gold membership (points that you could share with your existing XBL account). Big deal! All the gold membership offered was a quick match button that most often dropped you into an empty server.

Not really worth it. The silver membership server browser worked better anyway, but did not allow you to rack up multi-player achievements. The game didn’t even take advantage of Vista’s DX10 uber-graphics. Oh and did I mention the auto-aim nonsense? If you used a compatible Xbox 360 controller you got a massive advantage over the standard mouse and keyboard, with no way to detect if another player was using one or not. I could go on, but I think you all get the picture; Halo 2 on PC was a flop.

Next up, Shadowrun. What can I really say that has not already been expressed by gamers everywhere? Shadowrun just down right sucked. Scoring a 68 for PC on Metacritic and garnering hateful rants from Shadowrun Universe fans everywhere (Shadowrun being on my favorite gaming Universes of all time); to say the game did poorly is an understatement. Besides having elves and dwarves, the game had nothing to do with the pre-existing Shadowrun Universe.

The game itself was buggy as all hell, with huge gaps in animations, next to no maps and a pathetic bot AI. The automatic game finder was next to useless, and the PC-only servers where next to empty at all times (for good reason). Shadowrun was the first game to offer direct 360 vs PC play, but since nobody I know has EVER said they wanted that, it made no difference in Shadowrun sales (or any other game using that ability since). Oh and unlike Halo 2, now both 360 AND PC gamers get a glorified auto-aim setup which just screamed LAME! Requiring the uber expensive Vista OS didn’t help either. Like Halo 2, it also failed to take advantage of DX10. Shadowrun may very well be the most scorned game of 2007.

Both games required Vista, but did nothing with that OS, or its DX10 abilities. Both games used GfWL, but the cross-platform ability didn’t (and still doesn’t IMO) hold any attraction to gamers, on either platform. Making PC gamers pay for any sort of multi-player feature backfired big time since asking for money for something that has been free for over a decade (without REALLY REALLY making it worth while) is just asinine. Both games were supposed to set the bar for Microsoft’s new Games For Windows label but only served to make gamers very wary of the whole idea. Last, but not least, both games either sucked, or where just down right old and had next to no redeeming qualities; only high costs and annoying problems.

Thats why Halo 2 and Shadowrun’s pathetic attempts to wow gamers with their crummy games and inability to do anything with the super expensive Vista OS and ill-conceived Games For Windows Live checks in at number 30 on Sarcastic Gamer’s top 100 Gaming moments of 2007!

Click here for the rest of Sarcastic Gamer’s Top 100 Gaming Moments from 2007 all in one place!

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