Prepare to drop!
(review originally posted at http://blog.hntdaab.co.uk)
Its an undeniable fact – Halo is one of our favourite pastime’s landmark franchises, up there next to Metal Gear Solid, Mario and Half Life. It has sold over 27 million copies over all the games. In 2007, Halo 3 was released to “finish the fight” to a rapturous audience. Now its expansion/semi sequel is released to perhaps a bit less hype. After all the story of the Chief is over. Who wants to play another Halo game? Well, ODST is a new style of Halo game linking itself back to the entire trilogy providing a good final point for the Halo series.
ODST is set during the events of Halo 2 and leads into Halo 3. Instead of you jumping in as the all powerful, super-human alien butt kicking machine known as Master Chief, you instead deploy as “The Rookie”, the newest member of a team of Special Forces of the UNSC. These are the Orbital Drop Shock Troopers of the title who are deployed into New Mombasa mere moments before an enemy ship enters slip space above the city effectively detonating a nuke in low orbit overhead, scattering the Rookie and his squad to the four corners of the city. You wake up six hours after the drop, suspended over the ruined streets. After escaping your pod and dropping to the deck, your task is to set off into the city in search of your squad.
And what a city it is. Its obvious that Bungie has spent most of their time getting the city looking just perfect, rather than making an engine from scratch. The setting really looks perfect, showing a side to the Halo universe not shown before, with police vehicles littering the streets as well as kiosks and a complete traffic setup. It feels like a city which has been wrecked by war. Additionally, the city also provides some gameplay advantages with signs showing the way between various key points. It also plays host to one of the best characters in the game, the city’s AI the Superintendent – taking the role of the AI assistant to the player (a role previously taken by Cortana) he is your guide through the urban wreckage. He is also the game’s hint system, showing the directions to secrets, supply depots and other important features. However, he communicates through a selection of preset phrases that have added comedy – especially when “property damage” flashes up in big white letters when you blow one of the cities landmarks up.
ODST utilises this setting to provide a new setup for the campaign. All the missions are in fact flashbacks to time between your drop and the Rookie’s awakening. The main part of the game is effectively a free roaming section, though channeled down certain corridors by the city’s layout. You creep around looking for any evidence relating to whats happened to your squad. When you activate them, you are taken back to the point that put the item there, be it a helmet embedded in a tv screen or a crashed fighter on a statue and relive it from the point of view of a squad mate. These flashback missions are the backbone for game, providing several different set-ups for each of the exciting missions. I thoroughly enjoyed them all, though as usual there are a few awkward bits where the difficulty ramps up. The free roaming sections also allow you to go back to the central areas of the missions and see them in the darkness, after the fighting has died down. Its dripping with atmosphere, which is increased by the audio logs you find a-la Bioshock.
These tell a side story, which reveals another side to the Superintendent and also provides a civilian viewpoint on the Covenant attack. These tapes are scattered around in phone boxes, recruitment centres and medstations. As well as granting achivements, they also unlock new supply areas where you can rearm and heal up, as well as providing you with a good set of wheels to ride around in.
I mentioned creep for a reason. The change in protagonist isn’t just a plot device, it also fundamentally changes the gameplay. Instead of being an all powerful genetically modified super soldier, you are instead just a well trained human in some body armour. You’ll need to utilise stealth over sheer firepower in order to survive. As a human you can’t jump as high, throw grenades as far, use equipment or dual wield. In addition your health is also tweaked. Instead of both health and shield regenerating, your health can only be healed by medipacks scattered frequently around the city in med centres. This adds a little to the tension in the game, as well as giving it a throwback charm to Halo 1. This is also apparent in one of the new weapons, a silenced pistol that shares many of the characteristics of the pistol in Halo 1 (the awesomeness being the key one). The other new weapon is a silenced version of the SMG. Unlike in previous games in the series, where most of the time the starting weapons were crap, in ODST the pistol and smg are in fact some of the best weapons in the game. The automag is good for sneaking around taking out the odd guy with headshots while the SMG just sounds and looks cool.
After you have finished with the campaign, the game also gives you another co op mode. Firefight is the traditional survival game, where up to four players have to survive a set of waves in order to win the game. The game however will throw in the skulls from Halo 3, slightly tweaking the difficulty on the fly and making the bonus rounds really worth their extra points. The mode has the promise to be as good and addictive as Nazi Zombies but unfortuantly lacks matchmaking, meaning you better hope your friends list is stacked with ODST players wanting a game. Additionally, this is the only mode that uses your customised ODSTs in a system similar to the character customizer in Halo 3. These characters, and some levels, are unlocked by playing through the campaign. This benefits the game in two ways. First, most players will now play the campaign as opposed to skipping it and second, you now know there is a better chance your team mate actually knows what they are doing.
As with any Halo game, the graphics are top notch. Although the engine has aged since its release in 2007, this game manages to still look up to date due primarily to a clever use of shaders. The game stil runs at 540p so it can look a little jagged on the edges when at 1080p. Other than that there seems to be a general improvement, with the character’s face and general models looking a lot better. The new weapons also look a lot better than the older ones, though this may in part be due to the lighting they appear under. Overall, the game is still very pretty.
When it comes to achievements and other features, ODST is once again bursting. The achievements are all either singleplayer or co op based and all of them are easily do-able, with only two being mutually-exclusive. ODST also still contains the theatre mode of Halo 3, allowing you to share you videos of both firefight and the campaign.
To any Sci-Fi fans, the cast of ODST is one of the main draws of the game. The voices of the main squad include most of the cast of Firefly, namely Nathan Fillion as Buck, Adam Baldwin as Dutch and Alan Tyduk as Mickey. If that wasn’t enough to get the fans rolling in, the game also feature the actress behind Number Six in Battlestar Galatica, Tricia Helfer as the ONI spy, Dare. The voice acting is of an exceptionally high quality, making it feel even more like a movie than Halo 3 ever achieved. It is a bit surreal seeing the squad (who also lended their likeness to the game in a few cases) almost acting out their old Firefly roles (seriously Nathan Fillion’s character is almost a carbon copy of Mal) but in the ODST armour sets. In addition the audio logs are all well acted, with what appears to be the best South African voice actor even heard in any game. They are a real joy to listen to.
As well as the new ODST campaign and firefight, the game also comes with a second disk called Halo 3: Mythic. This is a complete version of Halo 3’s main selling point the multiplayer. If has all the features of the main Halo 3 game (apart from the campaign of course) and comes packed with all the available downloadable maps as well as 3 maps exclusive to the disk. This seems a good idea, but many of the people buying ODST will probably own Halo 3 and its DLC anyway and its a good chance that the extra maps will be released as DLC soon.
To conclude, Halo 3: ODST is a brilliant package for every 360 owner. For those already in the Halo fanbase, its an alternative take on the adventures you’ve been through before. For those who have been put off by the gameplay of the main series, the tweaks made may make it more to your liking. And to those yet to experience Halo, this edition will guide you into the story from an outside perspective while also giving you the complete multiplayer suite to get frag in. I’d get ready to drop.
I give Halo 3: ODST 92%
