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August 29, 2002 Link to this post
Aiming in PC Halo
There's a short article in the October issue of PC Gamer about PC Halo - and while much of what's in it is either common sense or speculation, there is an interesting discussion about aiming.
The Xbox version of Halo has been honored for the way it controls (after some practice), but obviously it can't achieve the fidelity of the mouse-keyboard format. To help, Xbox Halo has six different subtle targeting aids that allowed the levels to be designed with vertical options such as targeting an enemy high in a tower through a sniper scope. (Other console FPS titles have had to "flatten" the environments to make them gamepad-friendly.) On the PC, looking around with the mouse-keyboard combo is as instinctive as it is intuitive, and so most of these aids will be removed. "When we do this, it also impacts the balance of the game [e.g. head shots], and we have to compensate for these effects in the damage model," says Chu.
(Chu is Hamilton Chu, Halo's producer.) Can you tell this was written by a PC gamer? Bias aside, the removal of aiming aids should be welcomed by the hardcore who feel like their control has been taken away from them. We'll bring you a scan of this article as soon as the issue is off the shelves. (Louis Wu 08:52:12 UTC)
