If you’re a Halo fan, you know what to do, if not, become one.
Coming 2yrs after the release of Halo 3 is this tight little expansion, Halo 3 ODST. If you’re a Halo fan, you know what to do, if not, this game won’t change your mind…..8/10.
The Good – More Halo, that’s really good to me, which means top notch console first person shooter action. The storyline is a fresh take on the usual formula, you get to see different takes from different character perspectives. It all takes place during Halo 2, basically experiencing a portion of what went down in New Mombasa. Tight, intense gunfights that keep you on your toes, are quite exhilarating. There’s a very cool semi-open world aspect that lets you approach enemies from different angles on some levels. Enemy AI is as smart as ever in a Halo game, no two battles are quite the same, even approaching a gunfight multiple times yields different, if even slight, experiences. Nighttime scenes have an air of creepiness. The graphics engine still looks good two years later. Audio is as good as it gets on the 360, high quality effects, well designed surround direction, and some pretty incredible music all add to another awesome Halo experience. The new Firefight mode is supposed to be pretty fun, along the lines of Gears of War 2’s horde mode, haven’t had the chance to try it myself, but I trust it’s a blast with friends. The multiplayer portion comes on it’s own disc with all the previous Halo 3 DLC maps with 3 new maps as well.
The Bad – The campaign is kinda short, it should’ve lasted at least another hour and a half since the main game is maybe 6-7hrs. While I’m happy to shell out for a new Halo game, there’s a reason why it’s called “Halo 3 ODST”, it’s just an expansion of Halo 3….not a new Halo game, probably should have been 40$ instead of 60$. Sure you got some expanded multiplayer, but it’s still Halo 3’s multiplayer, and I’m not an online multiplayer anymore, so that 2nd disc is gonna go to waste for me. You’re not Master Chief, and the characters you do play as are nowhere near as cool as he is, they’re pretty bland actually. While the overall graphics engine still looks great, you would think they’d update the face tech, the characters without their masks look pretty bad. I can be wrong, but I always remembered Halo autosaving, you have to “Save And Quit” to do this here, so if you turn off the box in mid game, you’re screwed.
The Ugly – When you go into the map/objectives screen, the game doesn’t pause, which means if you’re looking at the map, reading objectives or what have you, you can still get hit by enemies…..umm, hello? Pause?!
