Tancap Blog

In Halo 3: ODST instead of playing as Master Chief, you’ll be playing as an Orbital Drop Shock Trooper.  This changes a couple of key aspects of previous titles, but don’t mistake this game as a true sequel.

Halo 3: ODST’s single player campaign starts with the player being dropped in to the city of “New Mombasa”.  During the drop you get split off from your squad meeting.  The story is told both via cutscenes and as playing as different squadmates.  This allows for a different way of telling the story versus other Halo and for the most part is a welcome improvement.  Another new addition is the ODST visor.  It serves as a combination night vision and  friend or foe detector.  Health doesn’t regenerate like previous titles, but your “stamina” serves as a shield (and does regenerate).  There are also quite a few health packs to be had.  The end result is that you don’t ever really feel like you need to change your game plan much from when you were the Master Chief and I believe Bungie missed a major opportunity to make ODST truly stand out from the rest of the Halo series in this regard.  Likewise the rest of the gameplay remains for the most part unchanged.  You’ll take on various Covenant (an alliance of various aliens) forces using a variety of both projectile and energy based weapons.  Along the way you’ll get to play with some vehicles as well.  I can’t help feeling that there was some kind of internal argument going on at Bungie about how most of the “Rookie” segments should play out.  It feels like half of the development including the music was done in such a way as to push the player more towards exploration and investigation of the city after the battles your other squadmates participated in and the other half of the development was pushing those segments as combat themed in which the various items used to tell the stories are checkpoints.  The result is a vary awkward experience during most of the “Rookie” segments.  The story telling is done well even if the story itself is somewhat shallow.  My biggest problem with the single player overall is that while it certainly is solid, it could and should be a lot better.  The last few missions are so much better than the rest that you can’t help feeling that if more time was spent developing the single player campaign a truly great single player experience could have been accomplished

On the multiplayer side, the new addition is the cooperative Firefight mode that pits you and your friends against ever increasing waves of Covenant.  This mode is actually a great addition to the franchise.  Otherwise, ODST includes all of Halo 3′s multiplayer content with all the good and bad that comes with it.

At the end of the day we have another Halo game that has an overall superior, but short single player component and a new multiplayer mode.  If this was being sold as an add-on pack, it would be more than worthy buy.  But does ODST have enough to justify a purchase as a full game at $60? Probably not for all but those most hardcore Halo fans.

Scores

Graphics

Hasn’t changed much from Halo 3, but this means it looks pretty darn good.   However they don’t look as good as Modern Warfare 2 (for example).

Sound

Music choice does not fit the action that is occuring at several points during play as the “Rookie.”  The sound effects are solid.  Voice acting is OK, but nothing special.

Controls

Standard FPS on a console here.  Move along.

Gameplay

Makes some tweaks on the standard Halo gameplay, but doesn’t take it nearly far enough.

Originality

Tries to do a few things differently, but it is hardly an original title.

Overall Single Player

Good, but too short and doesn’t make enough changes to distinguish it from the rest of the Halo franchise.

Overall Multiplayer

New Firefight mode is done very well.  Included Halo 3 content is solid as well.

Reviewer’s Opinion

Not enough new content to justify a purchase.  If you don’t like any of the other Halo games you probably aren’t going to like this.

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