I remember when I wrote my last Halo review, and it was Halo 3 and it made many people upset.
...
Yeah, so, ODST.
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Halo ODST is an overpriced expansion that offers nothing new or innovative. What it does offer, however, is placed in an excellent package, with great pacing, intense combat, and ever-addictive multiplayer.
Since nobody cares about Halo's single player--oh wait nevermind. So, Halo's much-lauded single player modes have often been the series' premiere selling point, at least until Halo 2. Halo 3's single-player was a haphazard smash-up of a dozen cliches smeared over the toasted carcass of good level design and good pacing. ODST's single player is as lite and unfulfilling, but it does return to form with a decently-told story with likable characters, something Halos 1 and 2 were good for.
Halo: ODST sticks to the story of the Orbital Drop Shock Troopers--those redshirts who took slightly longer to die in Halo 2, the ones who drop out of spaceships in giant eggs in a manner akin to being shat out by a colossal metal barracuda and are supposedly bad-ass because of this. Seriously, these guys are triumphed as the best of the best, yet possess no particular distinction besides cooler armor and a more impressive means to make an entrance. Yes, I do feel like a spectacular bad-ass when I'm chewing through Wraiths with a Spartan Laser like a rapist through a teenager girls cheerleader uniform, but I've ALWAYS felt that way when I play Halo. It's not a particularly new feeling.
However, because you aren't "John Spartan"--or indeed, anything more spectacular than a mild-mannered rookie--your ability to absorb damage is significantly lessened. The typical Halo strategy of rushing into engagements guns akimbo, grenades sailing through the air like Easter Eggs from hell, doesn't work here. You no longer stand toe-to-toe with your myriad foes. Rather, they are a wall of opposition that can only be chewed through with slow, purposeful precision. You have no shield and no regenerating health, you take hits like a *****, you can't dual-wield or hijack vehicles...basically, you are reduced to the exact same mechanics as Halo 1, which goes to show how much the series has changed since then.
Your team mates are relatively interesting, though all are such shallow stock characters with little depth or motivation. There's some cliched love story subplot and all that jazz, but it's basically Halo cutscenes but with less aliens or Spartans and more...Nathan Fillon and a bunch of other people. It's nice, I guess, to get a wider viewpoint on the conflict, see how the "regular joes" handle a war that has neccessitated super-human soldiers for victory, but honestly, they don't DO anything with it. Their "unique" perspective--as the bit players in a greater war--only proves to showcase just how awesome Spartans are, and does little to examine the human aspect of warfare, nor delve into the issues or philosophies behind replacing expressive, emotion humans with blank-faced, monotonic supermen.
However, as in all Halos, the failings of the single-player are trumped by the successes of multiplayer. Halo has been a series that has always been on the cutting edge of innovating the newest and biggest multiplayer trends, and this one is no chump in that category, as this barrier-pushing, front-end game series presents...a cut and paste knock-off of Gears 2's Horde mode, but with a SCORE system. Actually, getting points for shit is a nice way to keep us playing, as the new "firefight" mode would be pretty repetative and dull without any sort of "goal". It is never-ending and the fights tend to blur into a very inflexible pattern. You'll use the same four guns, deal with the same five enemies, and while no encounter is ever unchallenging--you'll see first hand just how dangerous those bullet-soaking Grunts can be when they rain plasma death on you from above--it does seem strangely lazy on Bungie's part.
In fact, the whole game is light. The single-player brings nothing new to the table (even with its AMAZING soundtrack), and the narrative's sole saving grace is the optional side-story you can find around the "open-ended" hub world, which lets you listen to the ever-engaging story of a girl making her way through New Mombasa as it is first invaded. The multiplayer is Gears with a shittier engine, and the whole concept--of being a "vulnerable" character in Halo--falls completely flat. Halo's engine doesn't lend itself to careful run and gun mayhem like Call of Duty or intense, cover-chewing shootouts like Gears of War. Crouching is difficult, as it requires you hold down the stick at all times, the few scoped weapons you find are useful, but the plethora of useless Brute pistols and assault rifles make things even more difficult. When you could pick up the biggest, baddest shit and run rampant in a stream of destruction, Halo shined the brightest, unifying old-school kill-crazy gameplay with modern mechanics and A.I. As it stands, ODST is just a poor man's Call of Duty with more aliens and a far, far inferior plot.
Rent it for a fun, drunken weekend, and then forget about it almost immediately.
...
Yeah, so, ODST.
---
Halo ODST is an overpriced expansion that offers nothing new or innovative. What it does offer, however, is placed in an excellent package, with great pacing, intense combat, and ever-addictive multiplayer.
Since nobody cares about Halo's single player--oh wait nevermind. So, Halo's much-lauded single player modes have often been the series' premiere selling point, at least until Halo 2. Halo 3's single-player was a haphazard smash-up of a dozen cliches smeared over the toasted carcass of good level design and good pacing. ODST's single player is as lite and unfulfilling, but it does return to form with a decently-told story with likable characters, something Halos 1 and 2 were good for.
Halo: ODST sticks to the story of the Orbital Drop Shock Troopers--those redshirts who took slightly longer to die in Halo 2, the ones who drop out of spaceships in giant eggs in a manner akin to being shat out by a colossal metal barracuda and are supposedly bad-ass because of this. Seriously, these guys are triumphed as the best of the best, yet possess no particular distinction besides cooler armor and a more impressive means to make an entrance. Yes, I do feel like a spectacular bad-ass when I'm chewing through Wraiths with a Spartan Laser like a rapist through a teenager girls cheerleader uniform, but I've ALWAYS felt that way when I play Halo. It's not a particularly new feeling.
However, because you aren't "John Spartan"--or indeed, anything more spectacular than a mild-mannered rookie--your ability to absorb damage is significantly lessened. The typical Halo strategy of rushing into engagements guns akimbo, grenades sailing through the air like Easter Eggs from hell, doesn't work here. You no longer stand toe-to-toe with your myriad foes. Rather, they are a wall of opposition that can only be chewed through with slow, purposeful precision. You have no shield and no regenerating health, you take hits like a *****, you can't dual-wield or hijack vehicles...basically, you are reduced to the exact same mechanics as Halo 1, which goes to show how much the series has changed since then.
Your team mates are relatively interesting, though all are such shallow stock characters with little depth or motivation. There's some cliched love story subplot and all that jazz, but it's basically Halo cutscenes but with less aliens or Spartans and more...Nathan Fillon and a bunch of other people. It's nice, I guess, to get a wider viewpoint on the conflict, see how the "regular joes" handle a war that has neccessitated super-human soldiers for victory, but honestly, they don't DO anything with it. Their "unique" perspective--as the bit players in a greater war--only proves to showcase just how awesome Spartans are, and does little to examine the human aspect of warfare, nor delve into the issues or philosophies behind replacing expressive, emotion humans with blank-faced, monotonic supermen.
However, as in all Halos, the failings of the single-player are trumped by the successes of multiplayer. Halo has been a series that has always been on the cutting edge of innovating the newest and biggest multiplayer trends, and this one is no chump in that category, as this barrier-pushing, front-end game series presents...a cut and paste knock-off of Gears 2's Horde mode, but with a SCORE system. Actually, getting points for shit is a nice way to keep us playing, as the new "firefight" mode would be pretty repetative and dull without any sort of "goal". It is never-ending and the fights tend to blur into a very inflexible pattern. You'll use the same four guns, deal with the same five enemies, and while no encounter is ever unchallenging--you'll see first hand just how dangerous those bullet-soaking Grunts can be when they rain plasma death on you from above--it does seem strangely lazy on Bungie's part.
In fact, the whole game is light. The single-player brings nothing new to the table (even with its AMAZING soundtrack), and the narrative's sole saving grace is the optional side-story you can find around the "open-ended" hub world, which lets you listen to the ever-engaging story of a girl making her way through New Mombasa as it is first invaded. The multiplayer is Gears with a shittier engine, and the whole concept--of being a "vulnerable" character in Halo--falls completely flat. Halo's engine doesn't lend itself to careful run and gun mayhem like Call of Duty or intense, cover-chewing shootouts like Gears of War. Crouching is difficult, as it requires you hold down the stick at all times, the few scoped weapons you find are useful, but the plethora of useless Brute pistols and assault rifles make things even more difficult. When you could pick up the biggest, baddest shit and run rampant in a stream of destruction, Halo shined the brightest, unifying old-school kill-crazy gameplay with modern mechanics and A.I. As it stands, ODST is just a poor man's Call of Duty with more aliens and a far, far inferior plot.
Rent it for a fun, drunken weekend, and then forget about it almost immediately.
