Halo 2 Vista delayed due to nudity?
Halo 2 has been delayed thanks to nudity arising from a code error. Sure Bill, a code 'error'.
“It has come to our attention that an unfortunate, obscure content error which includes partial nudity was included in our initial production of “Halo 2” for Windows Vista. As such, we have updated the initial game packaging at retailers with a label, so customers are aware before purchasing the game. Additionally, we’ve developed an online update which can be downloaded from www.halo2.com to remove the content," read the statement from Microsoft - now to be officially recognised as Bill Gates House of Porn.
The Vista version of Halo 2 has been the victim of reoccurring delays in the past due to problems with some of the new technologies being included in the updated, DX10 version of the console best-seller.
Obviously, Microsoft is very wary of getting stung by the ESRB who has come down hard on games with mature content hidden inside in the past. This was infamously the case with the GTA 'Hot Coffee Mod' and also Bethesda's newest Elder Scrolls title, Oblivion.
The delay has pushed the game's release back from this week until the 8th of June, so mark that date in your calendar if for some reason you actually want to play this graphically updated version of a mediocre, two and a half year old console port.
In the mean time, you can check out our impressions of the Halo 3 Multiplayer Beta, or just get to the forums and speculate whether it was Master Chief or Cortana who was 'flying low', so to speak.
Previous Article
34 Comments
Discuss in the forums ReplyI'm happy for little Johnny to play games containing mindless (but entertaining) violence, but god forbid he should see a virtual breast.
Maybe if they were less uptight about sex they'd be less inclined to go shooting up schools and colleges?
The good-ol'-nudity problem, eh? Childish and stupid...
That's crap, I have Halo2 Vista, there's a few higher res textures, but that's it. They don't even support widescreen formats, so instead of 1440x900 res I'm stuck at 1024x768 -.-
And it's definitely not DX10, it only uses DX9
Wish I could return the game, was such a waste of money. Bleh.
not to ruin your hissy fit, but how would it run Dx10 on dx9 hardware? upgrade your 7900GS to a GF8 series card and we'll talk again
:) :) :) :)
Master Chief got pwned by Joe. :)
Coop always makes any game better though, so by that notion Left4Dead will be the most awesome game ever made since Serious Sam coop.
Interesting point.
See, now I'm just curious as to what the actaul content was.
I've also noticed that the way that some news articles have been written made it sound like hot coffee was MS's fault.
http://www.pcgamersblog.com/50226711/halo_2_vista_wont_support_directx_10.php
http://videogames.netscape.com/story/2006/12/12/halo-2-vista-wont-support-directx-10/
http://www.gamespot.com/features/6169711/index.html
Sorry to say, but, Halo2 does not support DX10. Of course, if you have a GF8 series it'll run "better" but that's it.
True, but so did Halo 2 on xbox. Why pay £30 to microsoft to get a console port thats two and a half years old that they've only bothered with to showcase their new tech anyway? I used to have the game for Xbox and played coop to death on that with Bauul until my brother sold it.
Halo 2 Vista? Don't see the point in buying it. Nowadays you can get an Xbox really cheap from gamestation anyway so why not get it and the original halo 2 to play it as it was meant to be played and only spend about £20 more.
Ugh. I need to stop this ranting.
Not that it's a bad game, as Joe points out the co-op was great fun, if only because you couldn't really die, and saying "yeah I'll cover you!" before gutting your teammate in the back with the sword thing was great fun too (sorry Joe). But it's not worth another £30 for basically the same thing again. Hmm, though of course with all future releases what the publishers have played for it remains to be seen.
do you think maybe some people like playing FPS's with a mouse instead of an effing gamepad? :| maybe? ...I do.
Or in other words, when you get an error in the map editor (hinting that there's a map editor bundled?) you'll get a naked ass!
Let's see:
2 year old graphics - Check
2 year old intro - Check
2 year old sounds - Check
exact same game play as original - Check
Charging full retail price with a straight face - Priceless.
Wrong. Find me a single case of violent school shootings in the US where violent videogames contributed in any way or reason for the suspects motivation to commit murder. Then, try to explain how seeing a boob on TV would have prevented such an act. You can't because people don't shoot up schools for stupid reasons like violent videogames and breasts on TV aren't the solution to the worlds problems.
Germany heavily censors violent content in their games and television and is more open sexually than the US and they have had their fair share of school shootings. While I find the seemingly "fear of nudity" in the mainstream media in the US to be silly, making broad statements such as that is pretty dumb. Also, there have been plenty of recent games with nudity in them such as God of War I and II. They even had sex mini games. It's not a matter of "America" censoring content, it's a matter of the ESRB rating being accurate and developers being forthcoming with what they have in their game. If the back of the box on GoW didn't say "Nudity and Strong Sexual Content" and then someone played the game and saw all the tits and sex the ESRB would be the one to take the blame when a bunch of uptight soccer moms decided to sue them.
See, the ESRB has to maintain its credibility and decrease its chances of being sued by some uptight soccer mom. If they let anything slide then people will start to question the validity of the group and eventually what we'll end up with is something much worse. The reason they are getting so strict on the developers is because they need to be able to cover their asses when something pops up in the game that wasn't previously there.
I'd much rather keep the ESRB the way it is now and deal with their strictness than have some politically charged special interest group in charge of dealing with game ratings. Trust me, the strictness of the ESRB is MUCH better than what a lot of people would like to see.
Personal taste I guess.. my only point was there *is* a reason why people will like playing Halo 2 on a PC vs spending more money and getting a Xbox if they didnt have one already.
Next up: Halo 2 for Windows delayed due to upsetting arrangement of toiletries in the 4th floor washroom at Redmond.
Are they rewriting the game? I thought it was just a port!
Which means in all likelhood it'll be buggy, difficult to use and overly complicated. In my experience in-house map building software aren't designed to be stable, or work very well, they just need to get the job done prior to release, very rarely are they actually any good compared to stuff desgined to be used by the public. I'm not saying all map editors shipped with games are bad, they're not when they're desgined to be used by the public, but if it's a carbon copy of the software Bungie used, it means it's not 0eben designed for public use, and therefor probably will be rather hard to use.
lmao!