Crash Landing
Games like ODST make me wish for a simpler time: a time of PC gaming. It seems like eons ago, but I remember when a developer would make a game, and if they wanted to add content, they would release an expansion pack for another $20 or so. They realized that charging full price for a game they had already released just because they added a few more levels or missions would be a rip off and, more likely than not, no one would buy it. Yet here comes Halo 3: ODST, brazenly waving it's ridiculous $70 price tag at the general populace like it's the goddamn olympics, showing for all the world what is essentially another five hours of a game you played over two years ago.
Halo 3 ODST is, by no means, a terrible game. It plays almost exactly like Halo 3 with a few tweaks. First, since you're just a human dude, you can't perform the more crazy moves that Master Chief had in his arsenal like the infamous super jumping or dual-wielding. Also, you don't have a regenerating health bar and shield like the Chief, instead having "stamina" which acts as a regenerating shield and health, which can only be replenished with health packs from stations scattered through the game world. Yes, there is now inexplicably an open world aspect to ODST. But, as with Wolfenstein, the streets are completely devoid of life other than the very few covenant patrols wandering around, making it seem like a complete waste of time. Indeed, walking around the city seems like a rather dull intermission between missions, which are scattered through the city in the form of your teammates equipment. You're also given a new VISR vision helmet, which gives you a quasi-night vision that illuminates enemies and items of interest in brightly colored lines. It's one of the few new features in ODST that seems to make any kind of positive difference in gameplay, albeit the designers seem to force the concept upon you by making it so damn dark most of the time. You're also given a map and "intel", which I was able to completely ignore and still finish the game.
The missions are almost identical to Halo 3's missions. Go over here. Kill those tanks. Open this door. You're never charged with any real overwhelming enemies or any epic confrontations. Everything you're tasked with doing is rather vanilla.
The graphics in ODST look almost exactly like Halo 3, meaning they're rather dated by today's standards. Halo 3 looked sort of dated even when it was first released and it has not improved in the slightest. Character face models look particularly terrible, with Captain Dare's face being probably the worst I've seen on next-gen's outside of Oblivion.
Firefight mode is the single gameplay mode addition to ODST. There is the potential for fun there, but it certainly isn't as fresh as it was when Gears of War 2 perfected it.
The story can be described as lacking. You're an Orbital Drop Shock Trooper known as The Rookie. Your mission is originally to land on a Covenant ship but things go wrong and you crash onto New Mombasa. Throughout your time on the lovely destroyed planet, you find the abandoned equipment of your squad, each time putting you in the shoes of said squadmate to find out how this situation came to be. You play as all the members of your squad, but the relative short playtime with each character prevents you from empathizing or caring in the slightest about them. None of them are ever developed past "guy with big laser" and none of them stand out in the slightest. There's also a half-baked love story muddled in, which is about just terrible in how nonsensical it ends up being.
Listen, Halo 3: ODST is not a terrible game, contrary to the lack of good points I've mentioned. There's still Halo 3 inside the core of the game, there's still very good four-player co-op (though, not all locally inexplicably), and people will still be playing on Live with this game till the end of time. If you really love Halo 3, I'm sure you've already bought ODST. If you've already grown bored of Halo 3, you will find nothing new to like here. There are far more worthy games of your money dollars coming in the near future.
Oh, and there's no new multiplayer. It's still just Halo 3's with a couple new maps.
