HALO ODST

[Fiach]

This game is XBOX 360 exclusive.

OK, I am a HALO fan, I loved the series 1-3, this is set around about the time of Halo 2, but instead of Master Chief, you play as a team of Orbital Drop Shock Troopers. Not as the complete team, you find pieces of equipment belonging to other members of the team and play their parts as "flashbacks".

Because of this narrative style, it would probably be better to run through the game, get a grasp of whats going on, then replay the game at a more leisurely pace and savour the story, but then that means that the story's authors have failed in their duty to the player. On saying that, the game is short enough, that a replay would be no great hardship. Theres lots of plot running in the background, but its quite fragmented in little downloaded vignettes that you get from accessing certain telephones, kinda like finding little journals/tapes of characters in other shooters.

This in my mind really destroys any narrative flow. You play this game for about 7 hours max, so you dont get enough time to build up any empathy for the characters, which is a shame, because this game is extremely story driven.

Halo 1-3 had one guy, you were part of an epic saga, through which strode this larger than life character called Master Chief, he was like a cross between John Wayne and Clint Eastwood, here you play a more fragile character, (which is no bad thing), making you adopt a different strategic style of play. but you empathised with MC, because you spent so much time in his company, he kinda was the core of the game.

This game really is Halo lite, Sure you have the familiar surroundings, enemies a couple of new weapons, you have the vehicles, but there is a big gaping hole, where MC used to be.

The game is really hampered by the graphics, they are great, but ...... its Mombassa at night, so its quite dark, you can alleviate this darkness by pressing the X button, which changes your viewing style, kind of like an image intensifier, it makes the surroundings much brighter, but it rims the outlines of everything in in different colours, eg. furniture in orange, bad guys in red and good guys in green, but you know, Batman was so last month! Yup, the ugly head of Batmans detective mode has reared itself again. Yes there are daylight sections, and they look awesome, its hard to believe its the Halo 3 engine, but it is.

The game play, well the controls are slick, Halo always was an extremely well polished poster boy for the gamepad FPS brigade, the controls are just awesome, very tight and accurate.

I actually ran out of bullets in one section, its not because I am particularly bad at FPS games, but some of the Covenant are bullet sponges, but to actually run out of bullets in a FPS is just bonkers, I had to backtrack to a previous area and scurry around in the dark looking for ammo. To me this is a cardinal sin and is just plain crazy. But the two gun rule (you can only carry two) has always been there and always been a pet bug bear of mine, sure there lots of Covenant pistols around, but I dont like them, never have, never will.

Most people buy Hao for the Multiplayer and you have that here in spades! There is a second DVD that has all the Halo MP maps contained within its shiny flatness ..... but alot of people would have these already as DLC, so maybe not that great really.

Anyway a 7/10, no master chief, its set in the Halo 2 timeline, so not many surprises for people who have played Halo 2 and the narrative is fragmented.

Its worth a buy in awhile when the price drops, but not worth a full price purchase, its short enough for a rental, for the Halo completist (like me), its a pretty essential purchase, but a disappointing entry in the Halo catalogue.

Fiach : Playing games, so you dont have to.

[Art Blade]

nice read, thanks Fiach :)

I played the last HALO on PC, I reckon it was Halo2. All I remember now is the wheel in space, an artificial habitable loop. Apparently not a long lasting memory for me, I completely forgot about the entire story though. I remember that I wasn't quite so happy with it, probably the controls were still dedicated to console and graphics were not stunning back then. I guess it's a title perfect for a console, but once again not so well ported.

[PZ]

Even though I don't own an XBox, I appreciate reading your reviews because it gives me a sense of how the game plays  :-X

[Fiach]

Well tbh, M$ were very precious about Halo and it was released maybe 5 years later on PC, the GFX were only old XBOX gfx, on top of that, the whole foundation of the story would have been laid in Halo 1, I played Halo on PC and found the controls fine, so I dont understand you having a problem with them.

The story would have taken a huge twist in Halo 2 as well, so it would have made no sense to you, basically when the covenant eventually found earth (halo2) and were attacking, the Covenant had a kind of civil war going on, necessitating you teaming up with the Arbiter to kill the bad Covenant guys, but you got there totally out of context.

Its like getting a game and a level skip cheat, then just playing the last level.

In all fairness, Halo didnt get where it is by being bad, its place in FPS history is well deserved.

But to my mind, ODST is just there to tie up loose story threads and add a bit of background, I reckon it will point the Halo series in a new direction as it references a number of possible plot points and direction as you play it.

[Art Blade]

Maybe I didn't have problems with those controls, but what you said above makes me understand why I didn't quite get my head around it :)