The Lover
I love Halo, I love the universe, the characters, I write Halo fanfic and quite naturally love the games. I played so much Halo 3 it was the first game for which I received 1000 gamerscore, of course they went an expanded the achievements and screwed that up for me. But I was happy at the time. Naturally I’m going to love ODST right? Well hell yes! I love it to bits. It’s more Halo and for me more Halo will never be a bad thing.
But I’m not above criticising it’s flaws and Halo ODST has flaws. While they’ve done something just a little different from Halo 3, they’ve gone and made some new mistakes that mar the game. As I sit typing this in my Cortana pyjamas I want to make it clear I’m not above talking about the issues… later on.
Firstly it needs to be said that the full price tag for ODST is deserved. That’s without all the Halo 3 multiplayer content as well. I’m talking about the ODST disc, its absolutely a full game and not an expansion. It definitely feels like a larger step for the franchise the difference between Rainbow 6 Vegas and its ‘sequel’. It’s not a huge leap, its still obviously the Halo 3 engine under the hood, but the body work has been tweaked so that it looks and feels like a brand new vehicle. It’s staggering to think that this game was quite literally Bungie staff killing time. After the Halo Chronicles project was cancelled Bungie had some staff without a project to keep busy, the Halo Reach team was all ready up and running, so they financed the creation of some extra content for Halo 3 for this spin off team to work on, this is the result.
Playing as an ODST is a different experience from the usual Halo gameplay, but you might have to go back and replay Halo 3 to be reminded of just what a bad ass Master Chief is. The obvious visual difference is that your ODST is noticeably shorter when tackling Brutes and Hunters, who seem to tower over you, and Grunts represent a far greater threat than the bullet piñatas they’ve been in the past. Your stamina and health meters work as an only slightly nerfed version of the Master Chief’s shields. When you switch to Legendary difficulty you do get the full impact of your frailty and the lack of health regeneration is noticeable. It definitely adds a dynamic to the gameplay, battles become far more guerrilla styled and head shots and grenades become essential elements rather than moments of pride.
The level structure is a new twist that is far more engaging than Halo’s familiar A to B gameplay. As the Rookie New Mombassa is laid out before you, a city destroyed by battle, messages from survivors scrawled on walls and Covenant corpses lining the streets. The city is mostly dark, with some areas without power completely blacked out, and you will often use your new vision overlay to spot enemies and weapon pick ups in the darkness. It’s well worth playing the campaign through in single player to really soak up that feeling of behind enemy lines isolation as you wander the city, trying to find out what happened to your team. As you uncover clues to their whereabouts it unlocks a series of missions that have you playing as one of the other ODST’s. The ODST’s themselves are an interesting bunch of characters, rough scotch and soda characters bearing more of a likeness to the squad in BF: Bad Company than the overdone characters in Gears of War. Between the four of them they bring more character to the Halo universe than we’ve seen in the last four games combined.
The games plot is one of its more surprising elements, it’s actually quite good. Unlike the usual world ending adventures of Master Chief the plot of ODST matches the gameplay, it’s a lot more personal and subtle. Halo fans will be tickled pink at the inclusion of elements like ONI, represented by the ODST units Recon clad female member Dare, and the enigmatic Covenant Engineers playing an important role.
One of ODST’s stand out features is its new mode Firefight. While it’s easy to make comparisons to Horde mode from Gears of War, Firefight feels like a more evolved version of the same concept:. Working as a team is paramount, so much more than it was in Horde mode, as enemies like the Brute Chieftain require cooperation to defeat. Firefight also gives you access to vehicles which adds a whole new level to the fun. The only mark against Firefight is that you play in areas you’ve all ready tackled in the single player campaign. A shame as fans have come to expect a high level of quality from Bungie’s multiplayer maps.
So what’s wrong with ODST?
Your main character, the Rookie, is a cipher, completely devoid of both face and dialogue. This lack is further amplified by the larger than life personalities of your team mates Romeo, Dutch, Mickey and Buck (voiced by man crush Nathan Fillion). It would make sense from a design point of view if this was your only playable character, to subconsciously project your own personality on to, but you spend about two thirds of the game playing as the other four guys during the flashbacks. It leaves the Rookie feeling like an unimportant character.
Likewise the environment of New Mombassa feels a little lacking in personality when playing as the Rookie. After the initial ohs and ahs of exploring an open world city in the Halo universe, it winds up being a bit dull. There’s little to do in the way of exploration and the relatively straight path is thinly disguised with arbitrary twists and turns. The hidden packages in ODST, audio messages left by the cities Superintendent AI on various devices like ATM’s and phones, are all too easy to find.
The single player campaign is also on the short side. With coop play there’s plenty of replay to be had with friends, but overall the game is shorter than Halo 3. On normal or easy mode it’s even possible to blitz through the game in mere five hours once you know the way.
Worst of all ODST is just far too easy on Legendary with a coop partner. The famously challenging difficulty level, that leering skull and those crossed swords, is essentially nerfed. In Halo 3 coop on Legendary evened the odds during the large scale confrontations splitting battles across multiple groups of enemies. In ODST the groups of enemies are usually smaller and easy to flank with a coop partner. It almost feels a bit cheap taking out a Brute Captain with a single melee to the back while his attention is focused on your hombre. Maybe I’ve just become so incredible good at Halo it didn’t feel that challenging, but more likely the game was just easier than I expected. Sections that had kept the pressure on in single player were a jaunty walk in the park in coop.
While ODST doesn’t have its own competitive multiplayer option the game comes with a separate disc containing the Halo 3 multiplayer game and all twenty four Halo 3 multiplayer maps. So that’s the original eleven maps plus the Legendary, Heroic and Mythic map packs and three new exclusive maps, Citadel, Heretic and Longshore. It’s basically the complete multiplayer experience. For the hardcore ODST is also the only way for regular joe’s to get Recon armour by completing all the Vidmaster achievements on both Halo 3 and Halo: ODST.
The bottom line is simply that this is Halo, the gameplay is relatively untouched, the enemies are the same, although taller, and the game even concludes with the same type of level Halo players are used to as their final challenge. The same combination of infantry and vehicular combat seamlessly blended together and humans fighting against an extremely alien enemy are intact, virtually unchanged from Halo: Combat Evolved.
Overall, if you dislike Halo, if you’ve played the other Halo’s and found that it isn’t for you; then chances are slim to none that you will enjoy ODST. It's not going to convert anyone and its not meant to, ODST is fan service for the established cult of Bungie. If you’re a long time fan and cult member all ready, following Master Chief from his first ride on a Warthog to now, well, you all ready know what to expect in fact you’re probably thinking about playing right now.
Well go on then, don’t let me stop you.
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The Hater
When I was first asked to review Halo 3: ODST I was a little wary since I hadn’t played a Halo game since the original; and I wasn’t a major fan. The series never caught my eye since then - not even Halo 3. This left me thinking to myself, “Why am I doing this review?”.
It has to be said that this is not for the hardcore Halo fans that would have bought this game day one. Nor is it for those who have liked the previous Halo games but thinks ODST is an unknown quantity. It’s for the person who has largely ignored the Halo franchise up to this point. So is it worth playing, and does it conjure a desire to play Halo 3?
I'll get to answering that and more in due time, but first I need to do all the normal reviewer stuff first. Halo 3: ODST is the newest entry in the Halo franchise; funnily enough its set between the evens in Halo 2 and Halo 3 on a separate planet to the ones found in other Halo games. You also don’t play as the series hero, Master Chief. You play as an Orbital Drop Shock Trooper, as given away by the name, who is looking for the rest of his squad and to find what happened to them after an attack on their initial drop.
It’s set up in a way that is different to any previous Halo game yet, while it is still a first person shooter, instead of it being completely linear, you now move in what could be called a hub world. It is here you will find mission beacons in which in turn will trigger a flashback about one of your squad mates which then pieces the story together. The story ends up feeling spastic and all over the place, as if the game has been set up this way to extend the length of the game artificially, since once you finish that part of the story arc there isn’t that much there. It makes you run around the world to find the next beacon to tell the next part of the story.
The hub world is set at night in New Mombassa and it’s mainly here that you get to use your flashy visor vision. This outlines everything in the world in a different colour corresponding what the object is. E.g. an enemy will be outlined in red and a structure will be yellow. It creates a really nice presentation and lets the world give a sense of darkness while still being able to see your enemies. Darkness is something this game does well and creates an eery mood thanks to the great music. Its a shame that you never have a need to see it thanks to your visor vision. Instead of bright worlds that have been in previous halo games that just feel too clean to be part of a war, it’s good to see that the Halo universe doesn’t have an endless supply of cleaners. Atmosphere is high in the night time sections and it’s fairly sad that the style of the hub world isn't as well transferred to the flashback sections or have more interesting things to do.
Graphics let the game down, even though they don't look seriously dated thanks to its art style. It is built upon a slightly modified version of the Halo 3 engine so nothing ground breaking was to be expected. I was never impressed by the graphics in Halo 3 and this is no different. One exception would have to be the lighting; not only does the lighting give you a hint of what direction you need to travel it also helps set the mood of the hub world at night. Even though the graphics are not as good as people would have liked, the other saving grace is the sheer scale of the game. There are points where you can see far off in the distance with 10 or so (Flying Ship things) coming at you and you sit there and pick them off watching the pretty explosions. It reminds me of last years' Resistance 2, the graphics weren't fantastic but it handled scale very well.
For other players new to the franchise you may find some of the enemy designs outright laughable. Some look like fat gnomes, for a shooter that is taking itself seriously it seems someone at bungie was having a joke but people accidentally took him seriously. One of the best pranksters of all time? I’d be willing to bet that he is still laughing. OK, I'm just messing with the Halo fanboys in that last comment, other than the Grunts and the Bugs the enemy characters are big enough and ugly enough to make you scared. That seems to be a common them in the night sections, your all alone wandering around the city only to come across a patrol. Its here you have a few choices; you can either stand and fight them or run away like a little girl. Some times you have to run away because you only have a limited amount of ammo and the game makes you realise in the Hub world you need to pick your battles or end up dying over and over. I distinctly remember one situation when I ran away from a basic patrol consisting of 3 Grunts and a Brute) they started to shoot me but didn’t follow me, I then heard the Brute say something along the lines of “Don’t worry, let him go.” and I thought “Wow, what a crap solider”. After that I thought that it was impressive that a game doesn’t make you kill every god damn enemy on the screen before moving forward.
My main problem with the single player is that it is too short. Around a third of the game you are playing as the rookie, after the first few times retrieving a beacon it seems like a chore. Most of the other missions are much more interesting, you really don't face a lot of enemies and it seems to fall into the openworld trap of having nothing interesting to do while being in the world. I know people are going to tell me that this was a bungie side project and it was made in 4 months but is that really an excuse? Its going to be competing with Modern Warfare 2 and Assassins Creed 2. Games that have taken 2 years to make and will end up being games with a lot more time and love placed on making them.
But the point of this article is for people who are new to Halo and if they would like this game. The answer sadly is a no; purely and simply for one reason, the game feels old. For example; you have to grab health packs because of the lack of regenerative health, a lot of guns have no “Down the Sights” view, you are weaker than master chief and to some people that’s a good thing. It just feels like going back to play a game from 2007. Fitting, considering it is a Halo 3 expansion, but even Halo 3 had regenerative health. I think that’s why Halo lovers like this game, it feels like a classic Halo game, comfortable and it’s more of what they already liked so it must be good right?
Well the answer is sort of; at its core it’s a watered down Halo 3 in a new setting and you play as multiple characters (come on, give some credit to Nathan Fillion) The single player game isn’t a very compelling campaign overall. I think this is where the line between Halo fans that already own Halo 3 and those new to the franchise blurs. So much in the Single player isn’t explained to you as you’re playing; you don’t get told anything about the enemies and how to defeat them. For those that have beaten Halo 3 you have a major advantage over the new players. It’s just not very accommodating to the newer players.
Value terms have been discussed about this game so much that it boring. If your a Halo fan its well worth it, if your not a Halo fan there is so much content is seems like a bargain. You get EVERY Halo 3 multiplayer map (24 maps!), a decent length single player game and a horde like mode called Firefight. Think horde but with vehicles and you will be around the mark. So don't start thinking that this game has too little content to justify the entry price.
As a game Halo 3: ODST doesn't do anything bad per say but it doesn't do anything particularly well. It was a deflating experience for me, I wanted to like this game and what is has made me realise is that I would probably like Halo 3 a lot more. I did enjoy the missions outside of the Hub world and the controls are so smooth. This game feels like a quality game that is let down by a few strange decisions. To the Halo fans this would be a good game. To the rest I personally suggest finding a copy of Halo 3, it's cheap nowadays, before picking this game up.
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