Bungie’s latest foray depicting the future sci-fi battle between man and the collection of alien races known as the Covenant no longer has you playing as the superhuman Spartan, Master Chief. The story of Halo 3: ODST follows the adventures of an elite group of soldiers known as Orbital Drop Shock Troopers, ODST. They’re sent on a mission to retrieve a ‘Class 1 Asset’ captured from the Covenant in New Mombasa, a place visited in both Halo 2 and Halo 3. As they’re being dropped to their objective, the ODST are caught in the aftershocks of a Covenant ship jump, causing the team to be separated.
Starting off as ‘The Rookie’, you’re given a brief introduction to some of the game’s intricacies and the difference between the Spartans and ODSTs. The thing is, the ODST isn’t really that different to Master Chief. Heck, they even look similar! They have a visor that acts like night-vision and objective/enemy identifier in one, which admittedly, is quite handy. However, the Intel map is a fairly arbitrary addition, as you never really need to set way points for yourself and it comes off as a waste. After all, this essentially a Halo game, which is a little bit of a shame given the supposed differences that were mooted.
Hey, you look familiar.
Back to the story, and this is probably one of the game’s strongest suits, if you can ignore the obligatory love interest. As the rookie, you make your way through a dark and decrepit New Mombasa, finding clues about the whereabouts of your squad mates. Upon finding each clue, you then play through the scenario of how that ODST ended up where they are. In the end, all the ODST come together to fulfill their primary objective set out in the intro. It’s actually quite a fascinating and varied journey for those willing to follow the proceedings and the focus on a character-driven piece proves to be a good move.
Since ODSTs were meant to be weaker than the Spartans, the experience was supposedly meant to require more stealth and regard for your own safety. Unfortunately, it’s only when you’re playing through the Mombasa Streets as the Rookie that any real conspicuous actions come into play, as you often sneak up on unsuspecting patrols. Furthermore, while you have a shield just like a Spartan, your health will not regenerate after it gets damaged, necessitating the use of health packs.
Otherwise, the game is typical Halo, with a few things done a little better and few annoyances still lingering around. You play your way through several, often large scale and well built, set pieces. Sometimes these will involve vehicles, sometimes not. However, if you’re expecting to see any new distinctly new weapons or vehicles, you’re not going to find them here. However, since you are essentially dropped into the middle of an intergalactic war, you’ll have heaps of large scale battles to scythe through, while picking up and using whatever you can find. The variety is quite astute, they're often only have the beginning scripted and the amount going on at one time is impressive. Typical to Halo though, the first half of the game is quite difficult, while the latter half tends to be much easier.
Aw... Come on!
One aspect that will no doubt please many, is the omission of the pesky third party in this intergalactic war, the Flood. Yep, there are no libraries to hack through, pesky parasitic swarms to wade through not organic levels to get lost in. However, a point of contention will be the length of the campaign. We finished Legendary co-op in around five hours. As a single player, you could easily play through one of the lower difficulties in around 3-6 hours. While the general content of the campaign is good, the lack of (promised) differentiation and weak moments (such as the corridors of the Data Hive) in the back end makes it disappointing. Oddly, the story driven nature is not ideally suited for co-op, particularly with strangers. It only takes one impatient player to skip an important cut scene, and with that goes any idea of why you are in a particular spot. Also, the save system is very finicky, with players losing their co-op saves if they aren’t careful.
The other primary addition to Halo 3: ODST has been ‘Firefight’. Various parts of the campaign are used in the grounds of Firefight, where you and up to three friends take up arms and defend your location against waves and waves of Covenant forces. Along the way, you get points and awards and the waves keep coming until you run out of lives. Sound familiar? Well, that’s pretty much because it’s like Horde from Gears of War 2 and Mercenaries from Resident Evil 4 and 5. While it’s more varied than Horde, it’s not as frantic, bite-sized or rewarding as the non-multiplayer Mercenaries. Still, if you still play Halo 3 multiplayer with friends, it will certainly be welcome variety and a blast to play.
Finally, for those who haven’t jumped on the extra multiplayer maps provided by Bungie in Halo 3, Halo 3: ODST comes with an extra disc that provides players with a full set of all available Halo 3 maps, including those that were later released as downloads. However, this seems like an unnecessary addition to the game. Even though ODST does have enough on it’s own to interest new players, the fact is that ODST is glorified fan service. So, most players will most likely already have access to the multiplayer maps and features anyway.
Automag Vs. Gravity Hammer. Taking bets now.
On that note, it was disappointing that the original decision to release Halo 3: ODST at a budget price was rejected. While you can find good release week discounts, the plain fact is that despite the quality of game, there is simply not enough here to justify purchasing Halo 3: ODST at full retail price. While it’s fun to play through what is essentially an expansion to a two year old game, players who don’t have access to multiplayer will be particularly miffed with the lack reason to keep playing through.
As mentioned, this is essentially a two year old expansion, so there haven’t been any huge advances in the technology powering Halo 3: ODST. However, the artistic work and direction is talented enough to pull of a few neat tricks. If you can look past the minor technical deficiencies, such as the caricatured animations in cut scenes, the game has a wonderful style to it. Furthermore, it runs as smooth as butter, which is certainly very welcome. As usual, the music is a highlight of the game, with excellent sombre tunes, but a little lacking in any epic finale. There are more people talking this time, and while the voicing is fine, the dialogue is somewhat typical army speak.
Halo 3: ODST probably tells the best and most interesting story of anything with Halo attached, is full of large scale set pieces and adds an entertaining new co-op mode. However, the lack of content and the essential failure of providing the promised differences make it difficult for the full retail price to be justified. Sure, it’s still a good co-op game and sits at the right end of the scale in terms of quality FPS, but unless you can snag a copy at reasonably below retail price, it's difficult to justify rejoining the fight.
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