Well it’s here; the highly anticipated sequel to the Halo series is upon us. Released on September 22nd, Halo 3: ODST, puts you not in the shoes of the super powered Master Chief, but in the unlikely shoes of several significantly weaker Orbital Drop Shock Troopers. After seeing the trailers and footage from E3, I was certainly excited to finally get a chance to play through this game, especially the new Firefight mode. But I also assumed that there would be additional online content, because, as far as I’m concerned, that’s the REAL reason to play a Halo game. Well, some of you may be in for a bit of a disappointment with this potentially overpriced title. Don’t get me wrong, there is a lot of content, for the right subset of players, it’s just not everything I expected.
Halo 3: ODST takes place during the events of the beginning of Halo 2. It starts in a drop ship where we view your squad discussing the suicidal mission ahead of them. You are to be launched from a ship above New Mombasa to land on the Prophet of Regret’s ship. Right as you are about to land on it, the ship enters slip space, and if you recall, followed by Master Chief as they are heading to a Halo Ring. Each of the ODST squad members’ pods are launched into different directions as they crash land to the ground. You awaken 6 hours later as the rookie on the team, and you’ve got to figure out what just happened and you need to find your now missing squad mates.
From here, the story jumps back and forth throughout the day as you play as the various members of the squad and finally in the end put all of the pieces together and figure out what the heck is going on.
The story in the game is compelling and keeps your attention, but really, I didn’t care much for it. Perhaps I’m biased though, as I was really just anxious to beat the campaign so that I could get to the multi-player games!
The campaign felt pretty short as it only took 3 friends and me about 4 hours to complete it on the cooperative heroic difficulty, though; it was significantly harder than the Halo 3 campaign. It reminded me a lot of the single player in Section 8. It really seems to be just setting you up for the new multiplayer Firefight mode. Basically your objectives are to go to a rally point, then have wave after wave of enemies come at you, then repeat.
Though the game is linear in it’s development, the city of New Mombasa is actually semi-sandboxy. You have waypoints marked on your map telling you where to go, but how you get there is really up to you. Now, the ODST trooper doesn’t have shields like the Master Chief does, so you’ll find that if you go charging into battle guns-a-blazin, you are going to get lit up like a Christmas Tree. So being that the environment supports climbing through tall buildings and choosing your paths, you are able to flank the enemies and utilize lots of cover to your advantage.
ODST troopers are no Spartans. The rechargeable shields you are used to are replaced by your stamina. Once your stamina is depleted, you have a limited amount of health that will not replenish itself until you find a med pack scattered throughout the level. So you really have to be sneaky when you’re fighting the covenant now. This alone made the game really hard.
A new silenced pistol and silenced machine gun were added and they really up the ante. The pistol alone has a high rate of fire and allows you to get one-shot kill headshots on lots of the enemies. The flashlight has been replaced with a new VISR system built into your helmet provides access to a map and when it’s dark, highlights your enemies in red, weapons in blue, friends in green and landmarks in yellow.
Now, the feature I was really waiting for was the new Firefight multiplayer mode. Like the Horde mode in Gears of War 2, Firefight mode puts you and 3 of your friends up against the odds facing wave after wave of enemy covenant that both outnumber and out gear you. On top of that, after each series of waves, Halo Skulls are enabled that make the encounters significantly more difficult by allowing the enemies to dodge your attacks, throw tons of grenades, prevent you from recharging your health until you melee, or even making your ballistic weapons ineffective against armored foes.
The Firefight mode is a blast when you have a good group of friends playing with you. You each share a pool of lives that gets replenished after every 5 rounds. It is also is very difficult and it requires significant teamwork and communication. You can’t be a hero, or you are going to burn right through that pool of lives. Each map has a measly 10-point achievement associated with it that is granted upon scoring 200,000 points as a team. It took a buddy and me one and a half hours to score that many points on easy mode. Picking up an additional 2 players and upping the difficulty to normal we were able to achieve that score in 45 minutes. So luckily, there is a lot of game play in the Firefight mode.
As with the other Halo Games, the graphics seem a bit dated. You won’t see any real improvements in the quality over Halo 3, but the environments still look great, especially the skyscrapers of New Mombasa. The campaign is jam packed with pre-rendered cut-scenes that look pretty decent. It really makes you feel like you are staring in a motion picture, as all of the lead characters.
Being that there are a lot of cut-scenes, the voice acting in the game is actually very well done. You really start to get attached to the characters, and of course, all of the funny one-liners are there from both your squad mates and the covenant as they close in on you.
Now, the absolute best feature for me in the game was the AMAZING sound track. I always thought the sound track in Halo 3 was great, but ODST’s music just blew me away. It’s spectacular and credit absolutely needs to be given to the game’s composer and musicians!
Halo 3: ODST is really just a prequel to Halo 3. You aren’t gaining that much additional content, new features or anything really mind blowing. The game’s second disc contains only the multiplayer portion of the original Halo 3, with all of the downloadable maps, along with 3 new ones. So if you don’t currently own Halo 3, ODST would be a great purchase for you. But if you already own it, you are only gaining a 4 hour campaign that you might play 2 or 3 times, and a Firefight mode, which is pretty fun, but I actually fear for it’s future as once you have all of the achievements, what should motivate you to play it? At least in Halo 3 multi-player matches you get the satisfaction of knowing you just pissed someone off as you crammed a plasma grenade up their ass. Am I right? So; the game play is fun as you would expect, but it is short. The new ODST features are really cool and provide some nice challenges for you. All in all, the total package is decent, you just don’t get much content for your money.
