So I had said around the time that Halo 3 ODST was released that I wasn't going to review the game. Well, this isn't so much a review as my opinion of the game. This isn't a full review. Just a quick expression of my feelings about the game.
The beginning of Halo 3 ODST starts with you on the bridge of a command ship as your moving into the atmosphere of Earth. Specifically over New Mombasa. Then you are dropped. The dropping part was pathetic. There was little to no vibration and practically none at all when the pod crashes. This was a jarring experience for me because I was expecting some vibration.
The story is plodding, told through the perspective of the various ODST troops in your squad. You are the Rookie, a silent new guy. Which is probably, again, the single most annoying thing in video games. It doesn't make you feel like part of the story it makes you feel removed from it. I hope that ALL game companies in the future will STOP doing this. It just smacks of laziness not of trying to immerse the player more fully. And in this case, Master Chief does speak. So this wasn't exactly a precedent that needed to be adhered to.
In general each of the ODST's stories were interesting and certainly the best part of the game. By the time you reach the last 2 or 3 missions of the game you feel like a real bada$$. Most of the mechanics that the ODST needs to employ are basically a stick and move style similar to that of Modern Warfare just a lot more clunky. This is still the old Halo 3 engine and boy has it aged. Perhaps some additional improvements to the character models could have been made. Most of the character's faces are rendered terribly. When the Covenant are the best looking characters in the game you KNOW you need to update things. I felt the ODST guys should have just left their helmets on the whole time, if Bungie wasn't going to make any more effort to render the ODST faces than they did.
Halo 3 ODST comes with the game disc which has the Campaign and Firefight mode on it. Firefight is similar to Horde Mode in Gears of War where endless streams of enemies attack you and you must hold out and not let them destroy you. You will notice the similarity to this mode and the last couple missions of the campaign; subtle guys, very subtle. The game also comes with the Halo Multiplayer Game Disc which has all the downloadable maps on it and a couple unique ones. If you are ANY kind of Halo fan you probably have all the non-exclusive maps all ready. Thanks for the pointless purchase guys. Perhaps if the disc contained ALL NEW MAPS that would have been slowly rolled out for a premium price when HALO ODST was released; the package would have been a better value. Or perhaps a cheaper game with simply the codes for all the maps on XBOX LIVE MARKETPLACE. This would have been cheaper than stamping a new disc and perhaps it would have allowed the game to be $39.99 retail instead of a full $60.
I certainly enjoyed the little time I spent beating the Solo Campaign. I enjoyed looking at Halo in a new way. Especially near the end when you were playing a mission as the Rookie and not one of the other guys in your squad. But I was kind of missing Master Chief in the end. Wading into a bunch of Brutes and ripping them apart is so much more satisfying than running around looking for a angle on a sniper shot to kill them instead. If I wanted tactics I'd play Modern Warfare. One doesn't play Halo for realism, you play it to feel like a hero. Not just one of the group.
If Bungie had decided to give us Halo ODST main Campaign for 2000 points on XBOX LIVE MARKETPLACE and maybe Firefight for another 800 points if you wanted it. I would have been the first in line to grab the content as I have with everything Bungie has released since Halo; but this seemed like a rip-off to me when the game launched. Now having played Halo 3 ODST, it still seems like a rip-off. Honestly to ask your loyal fans to spend $60 of their hard earned money during a time of the year when SO MUCH other stuff is just about ready to come out; is insulting and greedy. But it probably won't keep me from playing Halo Reach, even if I'm not in the Beta.
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