InsaneBear

Review: Halo 3: ODST

Score: Good
Difficulty played on: Heroic
Time to beat: 6 hours
Loved the most: Tie between the music and the story-telling structure.
Hated the most: Lack of thoughtful modification to the Halo formula given the player’s new role.

If you’ve been exposed to any form of electronic media in the past six months, you’ve probably heard of a little game called Halo 3: ODST, which tells the story of what happened on Earth following Master Chief’s departure in Halo 2. Or is it an expansion? That’s where a lot of the confusion comes in with Bungie’s experimental new title. They price it like a full game, and in theory, the concepts behind the game should generate an entirely new Halo experience, but at the same time, they rely quite heavily on Halo 3‘s assets and formulas throughout. The end result is a very fun Halo game that will likely satisfy some gamers with its proven techniques and disappoint others with its lack of innovations.

Before you even start the new campaign you’re greeted by some truly atmospheric tunes that set the game’s emotional bar throughout. But most of us probably didn’t fork over 60 hard earned dollars to listen to Marty O’Donnell’s menu score, so let’s move onto the campaign.

In classic Halo fashion, the game starts out with a brief cut-scene introducing us to all of our new allies before we’re thrown into the action. From the get-go, the light-hearted camaraderie of your Orbital Drop Shock Trooper squad is established, and it is made clear that you, as “The Rookie”, are not really a part of the group yet.

Keen eared gamers will notice that Firefly‘s Nathan Fillion, Alan Tudyk, and Adam Baldwin voice three of your five comrades, and Joss Whedon’s masterful space-western is a clear influence throughout ODST (does anybody else think Pelicans look awfully similar to Fireflies?). This is especially apparent in the romantic sub-plot between your squad leader, Buck, and Captain Veronica Dare, an Office of Naval Intelligence operative with her own secret mission. Their light on love, heavy on hate relationship reeks of Mal and Inara’s burning tensions, but unfortunately, ODST‘s character models and animations lack the subtlety to match the voice overs.

Surprisingly though, your allies’ character models are really the only things that don’t look great in this game. Considering it’s running off of Halo 3‘s 2007 engine, that’s pretty impressive. The satisfying visuals are probably due in part to the fantastic art direction of all Halo titles. The environments, enemies, weapons, and so on are all supremely crafted to give a distinct Halo look while getting tweaked enough to stay fresh and draw the eye.

The moon-lit city of New Mombasa that you’re dropped into aids in giving a very different vibe than past Halo games as well. And the lack of actual moon lighting also gives the developers an excuse to throw a night-vision mode in the game. While the basking, green glow and stark contour outlines of the night-vision mode do mesh with the environment pretty well without robbing it of its natural beauty, I have a bit of a pet peeve for visual filters. I just think it makes more sense to design a level that can be seen in the first place, without a filter that’s radically different from the initial view. But either way, the game looks good.

A different mood isn’t the only thing ODST‘s hub-world of New Mombasa offers though; it marks a radical departure from the traditional Halo structure, or any FPS’s structure for that matter. Rather than jumping into an action-packed assault mission with a clear objective like the intro levels of previous installments in the series, your trooper wakes up in his assault pod six hours after the drop is disrupted by the Prophet of Regret’s escape into slip-space. You blow the door to your pod and jump to the dark and barren streets of a city ravaged by war. The eerily unpopulated streets serve as a sort of open world, albeit a heavily restricted one, where you must search for your scattered squad-mates.

This illusion of non-linear structure (because you still have to find your squad-mates in a specific order) is very different from any previous Halo level. There are very few enemies roaming the streets and with a little bit of stealth, the player can avoid combat all together. That can be difficult though, considering you’ll undoubtedly want to search for the 30 audio-logs hidden throughout the world, which are often in close proximity to enemies. Now mind you, when I say that you’ll undoubtedly want to search for these bits of back story, I say so purely as an achievement whore. Taken in the light of story-telling, these audio-logs contribute to the terribly uninteresting story of a single New Mombasa citizen and her struggles in the volatile city earlier in the day. They really do feel utterly cliche and tacked on, much like the mindless “Glass this” phrases scrawled on the walls of buildings. Just because other games are doing these things doesn’t mean this one should.

But if that weren’t enough motivation to blow searching for the diaries off, perhaps frustratingly copy-pasted level design is. The hub world essentially looks the same no matter where you are, especially considering how dark everything is, so it can become confusing and frustrating to remember which nooks and crannies you’ve already searched. And because you have to press up on the D-pad to activate way point markers, I probably spent the first hour of the game even more frustrated with the terrible level design while searching for my objectives. I mean, really, why are way points not automatically displayed like in every previous Halo game?

But just because Bungie executed the hub-world poorly doesn’t mean it isn’t a good idea. I really did enjoy the Black Hawk Down-like search for my scattered allies, and the isolation of the city streets pairs with a fantastically film-Noir inspired score to give the game a real fresh feeling that holds a lot of potential. Where ODST really picks up though, is when the player, as The Rookie, finds the broken remnants of his squad-mates one by one. Upon discovering a bent sniper rifle or a helmet smashed through a monitor you get to relive that squad member’s memories through flashback missions. This level structure allows the player to play as every squad member at different parts of the day from the second the pods hit the ground to the game’s climax.

These flashback missions play in Halo‘s traditional linear style and tend to offer more thrills than the Rookie segments. There are some great vehicle-centric set-pieces as well as some good old run ‘n’ gun that make ODST a blast to play. One of my only quips with the actual gameplay is its total lack of deviation from the standard formula of its predecessors. Given how weak ODSTs are in comparison to the Master Chief, I find it disappointing that the gameplay wasn’t altered at all to emphasize team work, cover, or tactical thought. The same old style of play is encouraged, but all the enemies are tougher now and there are no regenerating shields to fall back on. I’m not sure if it was lazy development or if Bungie was just too afraid to branch out that far with the expectations of a typical Halo title burdening ODST, but I feel like the gameplay suffers because of it.

I was also extremely let down by the total exclusion of Elites from the game. Considering the New Mombasa segments of Halo 2 featured Elite enemies rather than the much less interesting Brutes, I was incredibly surprised to see ODST populated solely by the gorilla-ish foes of Halo 3. One can only imagine how cool it would have been to have had the Elites and Brutes still fighting amongst each other in the city streets like with Metal Gear Solid 4‘s warring factions, where the player can choose sides or play the lone-wolf. I really can’t even articulate how much of a missed opportunity this is.

Another unfathomable exclusion is that of the iconic Battle Rifle weapon. The weapon roster is essentially the same as Halo 3, but with the BR and dual wielding removed. The omission of dual wielding has been explained as the ODSTs being weaker than the Master Chief, but that just doesn’t make a lot of sense when you can swing away with the Brute Hammer. They also remove the player’s ability to use equipment for some reason, despite the enemy’s ability to use it. These things just don’t make sense to me.

In compensation for what they removed, Bungie added a suppressed SMG with a scope and allegedly brought back Halo: Combat Evolved‘s pistol with a silencer thrown on for good measure. The SMG’s questionably high recoil makes it inferior to the SMGs of previous Halo titles in my opinion, and whoever propagated the return of the Halo 1 pistol is a liar. The new pistol is no where near as powerful as the fabled and legendary magnum from eight years ago. The only useful addition to the arsenal is a larger capacity for grenades, which are invaluable against groups of Brutes or Hunters who are suddenly more than minor obstacles.

Luckily, The Rookie’s quest to unravel the mystery of his squad-mates’ whereabouts mixes with the action-packed flashbacks to keep us coming back for more until the very end. The interweaving story-arcs are really quite interesting and present a nice variety of mission-types in a plethora of different settings along the way. A Scorpion charge through the city and a Banshee escort in underground tunnels stand out as particularly strong points, but each and every level offers a good rush of fun. In fact, I was left wanting more after the credits rolled, but that’s probably just because the final mission doesn’t quite feel like a final mission. I’m not saying it’s Halo 2, but it’s definitely missing the epicness of Halo 1 or Halo 3.

As for the story, with the exception of the romantic sub-plot, which falls flat on its face, the main arc manages to keep pace with the fun gameplay. But there are a few spots that seem like they were over-looked, such as the absence of Elites, or the fact that the ODSTs are never once referred to as “Hell Jumpers” during the course of the campaign. And in the interest of not spoiling things, I’ll just say that there’s a very strange appearance of a new Covenant race which has never been seen before, and their presence is never really explained. I kept wondering to myself if they were mentioned in one of the Halo books that I hadn’t read, but even if they were, a player shouldn’t need such a comprehensive knowledge of the universe. The new aliens really do play a pretty big role with some city AI stuff too, and the nature of that was never made quite clear to me. These story blemishes just seemed very strange to me in such an otherwise enthralling package.

When it comes to the value of Halo 3: ODST, it’s really a matter of perspective. The campaign only takes six hours to complete on Heroic, but it’s definitely worth playing again with up to three other friends. And the much-hyped Firefight mode, essentially Halo‘s take on Horde mode, is a blast if you have friends to play with. The mode pits up to five players against wave after wave of increasingly difficult enemies on any of eight different maps (more if you count night-time variants). However, I find the lack of any sort of match-making service for the mode a very interesting oversight. I simply don’t know four other people with ODST, and playing Firefight alone isn’t a lot of fun, so I just don’t understand what Bungie’s thought process was here.

But at least in the absence of Firefight I can experience the full Halo 3 multiplayer package, all downloadable maps as well as three brand new ones included, on the game’s second disc. The value in this is really a matter of how you feel about Halo 3‘s multiplayer. If you really like it, and for some reason you haven’t already downloaded all the map packs, then this is a great bargain. If on the other hand, you think Modern Warfare made Halo‘s peer-to-peer based and less progressive multiplayer obsolete, then this probably isn’t for you.

So should you get Halo 3: ODST? I’d argue that if you liked previous games in the series, you’ll probably like this one as well. Its approach to story-telling is really interesting and commendable, and the gameplay is consistently fun too. The hub-world might be less than stellar, and it is kind of disappointing that the classic formula is adhered to so strictly, but when it’s said and done, this is a fun game, or expansion, or whatever. Personally, I feel like the premise would have worked better had it not been chained to the Halo name, but that’s through no fault of the rich and diverse universe of that franchise. Rather I feel like the fan expectations of a Halo title restrict it from growing into something unique and different. But hey, we’ve got what we’ve got, and that’s a slightly uneven but very fun Halo game. Plus, NATHAN FILLION!

Author: Cody

Tags: bungie, firefly, halo 2, halo 3: odst, microsoft, nathan fillion, review, xbox 360