Halo & Halo 2 get 360 facelift

One year after the launch of Halo 2, Bungie felt there was no time better to announce the added bonus the Xbox 360 will bring to both Halo and Halo 2. An update on Bungie’s official website has revealed what kind of make over the Halo games will receive. First off, rumours of new textures and improved geometry have turned out to be untrue; the games will receive a visual boost rather than an overhaul. Both Halo and Halo 2 will run in widescreen at 720p with full scene anti-aliasing.

“To clarify, the “new” version of Halo or Halo 2 is simply the disk you have already. Pop it into your 360 and it’ll load up just like before. You will have to log into Xbox Live to enable Halo 2’s online functions, but both games will work immediately,” reads the post.

“But here’s another bonus – the hardware in the 360 can do a lot of nifty stuff, and specifically in the cases of Halo and Halo 2, it can display the graphics in wide screen, at 720p, with full scene anti-aliasing. And it doesn’t look kludgy, artifacty or smeary like an upscanning DVD player. The best way to describe it is that both games look like they’re running on a PC at those resolutions.“

A nice little value added extra if ever there was one, but those without HD capable sets are sure to feel a little left out. As for the multiplayer aspects of both games, they remain as they were, with Halo still unable to be played over Xbox Live.

“Do they work on Live? Like we already explained, they work exactly as they did before – that means System Link and split-screen for Halo, but – of course – no Live play (just like before!) – and for Halo 2 – System Link, Xbox Live and split screen as before. And yes, your existing Gamertag and Live Account will work just fine. I should note that split screen in 720p has obvious benefits.“

Further details of the Xbox 360’s backwards compatibility are said to be revealed on Friday.