HALO 3: ODST Review

What started out as an expansion pack, "Halo 3: ODST" for the Xbox-360 has undergone a name change and promotion to a full fledged game. Seeing as it is the first Halo game in over two years, it is interesting to see Bungie take the unorthodox route of stripping the iconic main character from the story in favor of a group of elite soldiers stuck in a war too big for them. Is this change of pace enough to grant your attention or are we still playing the same game from two years ago?

The story revolves around a squad of "Orbital Drop Shock Troopers" and takes place during the "Halo 2" timeline. The squad is tasked to drop into the city of New Mombasa during the height of the Covenant invasion. As anyone who's played through "Halo 2" knows, the Covenant drop ship initiates a hyperspace jump over the city causing the equivalent of a nuclear bomb to go off and leaves you and your squad stranded. Throughout most of the game you play as the Rookie, who wakes up six hours after the drop, stranded and confused. You are tasked with uncovering what happened to your squad by means of scouting out important clues. Once you reach one of these clues a new level begins where you get to play as one of your squad mates and uncover their fate. The way the story is delivered is definitely the high point of the game, as it has you playing a detective and drawing your own conclusions on the fate of your squad before the game uncovers all its secrets.

The original "Halo" games place you in the role of Master Chief, a 7-foot-tall super soldier with overpowering strength and an appetite for destruction. While this may sound pleasing to some, being so powerful and constantly mowing down your opposition doesn't add up well with the idea that humanity is fighting for survival. Being the bringer of death to every alien you meet takes away much of the emotional connection to the story. Putting you in the shoes of just another soldier should have fixed all these problems, but Bungie did not bother to change up the level design at all. When you play as the Rookie the game draws you into a stealthier route, suggesting that you avoid enemy patrols and use your silenced weapons with precision. The problem is that the enemy behavior has been stripped straight from "Halo 3", making them see you the moment you enter their field of vision, regardless of whether or not you are in the shadows. For the missions where you play as one of the squad mates, the classic Halo formula is put back in place. Levels are linear and require you to mop up all the enemies in view. Despite the fact that you are no longer a super soldier the game still forces you to use the same tactics people have been implementing in all other Halo games. The friendly AI does not help much either, seeing as they still fail to remain alive for over ten minutes and suck at driving. My biggest gripe with the game, however, is the health system. The developers had been saying that for this game your health would not regenerate automatically, that you would not have any shields and would be forced to implement new tactics. Well, instead of shields you now have a stamina meter, which makes the screen turn red as you take damage. Lose enough stamina and your health begins to drop. However, your stamina can be regenerated if you take cover and aren't being shot at for a few seconds. If this sounds just like the shield system in Halo then you are correct. All they did was stick a new name on it and hope you wouldn't notice.

Multiplayer-wise the game does have some nice features. A new mode called Firefight has been added, in which you and up to three other friends can battle against waves of enemies, much like Gears of War horde mode. Every wave activates new skulls which modify the strength and strategy of your enemies. This helps keep the fighting intense and varied, making this a rather addictive and enjoyable mode. To go along with it, Bungie added the entire Halo 3 multiplayer experience, including all maps and upgrades. For anyone late to the party, this is a pretty good deal.

The only way to differentiate "ODST" from "Halo 3" is by its presentation. Walking around the streets of New Mombasa as the Rookie, with a lone piano tune playing in the background succeeds in sucking you into the environment. Once again though, there are annoying problems impeding you from enjoying this to the fullest. In order to see anything at night you need to keep your night vision on, which adds a Tron-like outline to every object in the world. This makes the hard work of the art directors (who placed the lighting and smoke effects in very specific areas in order to set the atmosphere) pointless.

Overall, "ODST" is a disappointment. The premise of taking the war on a more personal level takes one step forward by a clever implementation of storytelling, but two steps back by failing at changing Halo's repetitive formula, something which should not be present in this game. Despite having a strong multiplayer component, the short campaign does not grant this game the full $60 price tag. Unless you have never played the Halo multiplayer and are craving to do so, or are the biggest fanatic of the Halo story, you should just wait until the price drops.