After several prominent starring roles, the Halo franchise's poster boy, Master Chief, is taking a back seat on this ride.

                Instead, Halo 3: ODST is all about an elite squad of space marines called "Orbital Drop Shock Troopers" that are essentially futuristic versions of World War II airborne soldiers. As their title suggests, these armor-clad bad boys drop into a war zone from orbit, shock the enemy, then troop around acting manly and tough. That is, all of them except your character, known only as "the Rookie", who follows his squad into combat and successfully pulls a rookie mistake and crash lands in New Mombasa, Africa. The Rookie awakens 6 hours after the combat drop and discovers he is completely off course and all alone.

                The game then introduces you to the dimly-lit streets of New Mombasa, which will act as a level select menu in which you can run around and shoot nasty aliens. The player is tasked to embark on a tour of the city with the guiding hand of New Mombasa's artificial intelligence known only as "the Superintendent", who leads you toward clues regarding your team's whereabouts. ODST then bucks the typical bombastic Halo feel and delves into a murder mystery atmosphere, complete with a sultry soundtrack consisting of wailing saxophones and soft pianos.  

                After you discover a clue (which could range from a sniper rifle with a bent barrel or a damaged helmet), the player takes control of the character from whom the clue is associated. A flashback ensues and Halo's majestic (and violent) tone resumes. These flashback levels occur in daylight and hold a much more exciting and action-packed focus than the Rookie's depressing jaunt through New Mombasa. Expect grand set pieces and vehicle sections galore.

                Unfortunately, the suspenseful storyline devolves into a typical sci-fi tale about three-quarters through the campaign and ultimately doesn't add much to the Halo franchise's overall arc. Strong character performances could have made up for some of the bland storytelling, but the voice acting in ODST is laughably poor. In fact, Tricia Helfer (Battlestar Galactica), who plays an ODST officer named Dare, provides the most respectable dialogue and she isn't even a trained actress.

                Halo 3: ODST is quick to remind you that your squad of Marines isn't a Spartan like Master Chief. These normal soldiers can take considerably less punishment than their super human superior and players need to compensate for that fact. One should consider using that smoldering car for cover rather than a launching pad for that run-and-gun assault reminiscent of Halo titles past.

                Visually, Bungie Studios' latest outing looks great on the Xbox 360. Lighting and texture effects have been given a noticeable upgrade from the Halo 3 title that ODST was build upon, although character's faces have a lifeless and genuinely appalling look about them. Poor lip-synching distracts from the game's overall presentation and adds even more unintended hilarity at the aforementioned poor voice acting.

                In addition to a new campaign, Halo 3: ODST provides a new four-player cooperative mode called Firefight. Take one part Gears of War 2's Horde mode, add a little Left 4 Dead, then mix in Halo 3's multiplayer scoring system and you have Firefight. My friends and I found this mode remarkably enjoyable, especially when extra "Skulls" (game type modifiers) are activated. While some may find the lack of a new competitive multiplayer experience a bit disheartening, Halo 3's popular multiplayer mode has been included on a separate disc that boasts three exclusive new maps.

Bethesda’s Fallout 3 is currently perched on an insurmountable throne of prestige and power, amassing a quite impressive collection of awards and praise from gamers and press alike. After all, who wouldn’t want to explore a cataclysmic version of D.C. whilst gathering items and building experience?

Me. That’s who.

The possibility exists that I completely suck at the game and I fully expect a lot of heated feedback from the internets. This is just my opinion and view of the game. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t always down on Fallout 3. My interest in the game peaked, oh, around the same time they announced it existed. I watched every trailer and read nearly every preview I could get my hands on.

Here come the complaints:

Fallout 3 is essentially an old-fashioned JRPG. That’s right, a Japanese Role-Playing Game. The clichéd characters are in place, the story is essentially linear (with a few exceptions), and then there’s the classic tedious turn-based strategy. It seems , wishing to save some cash by reusing their Gamebryo engine from Oblivion, realized at some point in the development cycle that most of their weapons in Fallout 3 were of the ranged type and didn’t work well enough with the engine. Thus, VATS was introduced to inject archaic turn-based gameplay that even Final Fantasy would be ashamed to possess. Sure, you can move around to avoid being shot and/or maimed while your “mana” bar refills, but isn’t that basically the same as a “miss” status popping up? There’s a good chance the game’s bugs will get the best of you and a stray bullet will fly through that car you were hiding behind.

Speaking of glitches and technical failures, the game’s overall lack of polish contributed to my lack of immersion in the game world. I played the game both pre-patch and post-patch with hardly any discernible difference in quality. The game would crash any time I accidentally pressed the Windows button or if I tried to log into Windows Live. Several times the game just wouldn’t boot up. When I did get it to run, the right-side of my screen would flicker constantly if Windows Sidebar was running in the background.

Visually, the game’s character models look like 2005 all over again. I was playing Fallout 3 using ultra-settings on my PC and cringed every time I saw someone’s piercing Riddick-like eyes glaring coldly back at me. Why, in a game centered on character-driven story and player interaction, do all the non-playable walking mannequins look so inhuman? The character models could at least appear to be walking on the ground instead of skating across a freshly-waxed linoleum floor. This lack of character model polish is unacceptable in a world where Mass Effect exists and is certainly unexpected from a successful developer like .

Perhaps the biggest flaw I encountered while playing Fallout 3 was the lack of direction it presented to the player. I understand this may have been a development decision in order to force the player to explore the game thoroughly and seek out every nook and cranny, but that’s not how I wanted to play Fallout 3. For instance, I never discovered how to create items or weapons. When I did stumble upon a workbench I was informed I needed a specific number of worthless junk I had thrown away two hours earlier in favor of a cool weapon I happened upon. With the inclusion of an item creation system why should the player be limited to the number of items they can carry? It would make more sense to allow the player to be able to explore as many aspects of the game as possible, not to force them to choose between surviving with their existing gear or inventing a neat dirt-flinging trebuchet out of a sling-shot and a scrap of metal.

I placed learning the item creation feature of the game on the backburner in order to complete the main quest in a timely fashion. To my dismay, the ending of the game doesn’t allow for any backtracking without booting up an older save file. Why can’t my exploration of the Fallout universe continue once the main quest is over? It seems like a very blatant omission from the tried-and-true mechanics of recent western-style RPGs with whom Fallout claims to share company.

There came a point late in the game when I had to traverse a long “dungeon” and take on several super mutants. After many quick-saves and quick-loads, I realized I didn’t have enough supplies to conquer the area. I return to the main area and begin to stock up when I realize I’m out of bottle caps, the game’s currency system. Selling my precious items was certainly out of the question, so I can either earn caps by stealing a ton of money from characters (and gaining negative morality) or I can do side quests until my brain melts from absorbing too much mediocrity. I never focus on side quests until the main story is completed anyway, so I decided I could probably accomplish my mission with a little strategy and elbow grease. I struggled through what should have been a quick 30 minute dungeon that managed to last more than three hours because the last super-mutant in the area had 100% head-shot accuracy every time I rolled out to toss a grenade, my last usable weapon. I literally reloaded the same save over twenty times with the same result.

The experience system is often nonsensical and unfortunately shares its problems with many other games in existence. Earning experience for every task you complete and every enemy you kill shouldn’t give you points to assign wherever you please. For example, Fable 2’s system of delivering experience to aspects you frequently use to earn said experience makes much more sense and eliminates the need for constant menu-surfing. If you shoot 30 enemies with your laser rifle and only slash 5 foes with a knife, shouldn’t you be more practiced in the ways of shooting? Why should a player be able to build-up a talent they hardly use?

Pointing your reticule directly at an enemy’s head from 15 feet away while standing completely still and missing 50 percent of your shots is nonsense. To use an arbitrary number as a guide telling bullets to miss a target is one of the most infuriating aspects of any game that includes first-person mode and a gun. It would be a totally different story if my character were running at top speed on two broken legs and a fractured skull at level 2, but the majority of my issues occurred around level 8 through 10 with a medium to high level of talent points invested in the weapons skill slots.

Fallout 3’s story has a nice premise and setting, but the actual story and writing ultimately failed to execute in ways that appeal to me. I never really felt an emotional connection to any of the characters in the game and often found myself wondering why I should be chasing an old cagey scientist I don’t even care about. I always expected the story to open up sooner than three quests from the end when you take up your father’s cause and try to replenish the water supply in the wasteland.

To clarify, I finished Fallout 3 in less than fifteen hours and hated nearly every moment of it. I really wanted to like the game and tried very hard to enjoy my time with it, but too many issues cropped up for me to have fun while playing Fallout. Obviously the grand majority of gamers have had a completely opposite reaction to the game and I can certainly see how people could herald it as a great experience. I’ll be sure to play through the game another time and hope for the best, but first I’ll need to remove this terrible taste from my mouth.

Drop me a reply in the thread and let me know what you think. Did anyone have a similar experience?

Edit: Giantbomb's formatting took out a couple pronouns. Fixed.