Halo 3: ODST is a different spin on the Halo universe, attempting a more tactical, tech-driven approach to the Halo universe as opposed to running around, killing everything and being a super hero. In this game you do not play as Master Chief, but rather an assortment of ODST's - basically the Halo Universe's special ops guys.
Gameplay: 5.0
Unique gameplay concepts - What drives the game, and what is it similar to?
Halo 3: ODST is obviously based on Halo 3, using a slew of the Halo world's weaponry, game mechanics, etc. In pretty much every way, it's the same game as Halo 3 in terms of gameplay, with the exception of a few meaningless weapon changes.
However, the reason so many people play Halo 3 is because of their multiplayer. ODST has multiplayer in the form of their new game mode: Firefight. There's no versus competition, even no matchmaking system for firefight, so you're limited to only playing with people you know, online, or people on the same TV. Essentially, it's a Halo game with no multiplayer - the reason Halo 3 is popular at all. For a full-priced game, this seemed like a huge ripoff.
Firefight is the game's centerpiece. It's not a huge innovation to Halo gameplay - basically a campaign snippet in which endless enemies come and you have to not die. The enemies are easy to abuse if you can funnel them into one location, which is the only way to last for a long time on a reasonable difficulty level. Halo's AI never was anything better than somebody who just started playing the game, with increases to their damage dealt on higher difficulty levels, so playing firefight isn't anything special once the novelty of the idea wears off.
ODST does come with a campaign, but it is LOADED with dumb gameplay decisions. One of which is their somewhat non-linear storyline where you proceed through a level during the night, and then seem to go through the same area as a different character, during the day (supposedly in the past). During the night scenes, you are instructed to find some object to continue the story as the nighttime character is supposed to be investigating things that happened to other ODST's, for whatever reason. During the night and even sometimes during the day scenes, you must use your night vision (I call it "see mode") in order to see anything on your TV other than 95% blackness. Their night vision isn't really night vision, either, it's more of a wireframe mode making navigation almost impossible at times. This also is coupled with points where you need to toggle see mode so you're not blinded by light, which makes you wonder what the point of it is. If one of your backbones to your campaign is a button that makes seeing easier, and you have to constantly manage your ability to see the game, it kind of seems like you're focusing on the wrong thing to revolve your gameplay around.
ODST's campaign is, once again, nothing memorable. You're an ODST and you're supposed to move from point A to point B either killing stuff or endlessly searching for some random object. If you've played one Halo campaign, you've basically played them all.
Considering their best mode is firefight and it's a fancy campaign mod, this game barely felt worth playing. The lack of online matchmaking for their firefight mode was a huge fail. It's obvious the only reason people bought this game was because it said "Halo" on it.
They also really dropped the ball on their game saves and the way you unlock new campaign levels (as in you unlock the next level when you beat any given level). I played the first few levels of the campaign with a friend, then wanted to resume the campaign on my own from where I left off. Trouble is, they separated the saves so I played almost entirely through what I thought was the next level, thinking it was further in the game, then realized I just played the first level over again without even noticing. I even played the most recent level assuming it would move me forward to the next one when I was done, but nope.. back to the start. What the hell were they smoking there?
And yes, I played through the first level twice not once thinking "hey, isn't this a level I've already finished?", until it was almost over. That ought to speak to their lack of original campaign design if an experienced gamer can't tell what's new and what isn't. The fact that you already play through the same levels twice by design (once during the night and once during the day) trains you to think that seeing the same thing over and over isn't unusual.
Not to mention, their navigation during the night-time and having to walk around searching for an item in the dark is the complete opposite of a fun idea. That sounds about on par with "Marco Polo" the video game.
Presentation: 7.0
Graphical and audio presentation (animation, texturing, overall look & artistic style)
It's typical Halo, with a wireframe mode that looks like crap and see mode constantly getting in your way. At least firefight doesn't force you to use see mode... much.
Halo's models and particularly facial animations have always been stiff. This game improves upon it a bit but stacked up against other good-looking games, it still falls a little short.
Theatrics: 7.5
Story, Dialogue, Cut-Scenes and Artistic Use of Camera
As far as I could understand, you play as two different people during the campaign. You play as an ODST, and you play as.. a different ODST that was following up the events of your other character, investigating it as if something significant happened to them? It's a little confusing at first and it's hard to pay a lot of attention to Halo storylines because they're typically told in such a stale way.
ODST at least attempts to create interesting characters and interesting story events, and has a really cool bit of 1st-person cinematics in the early part of the game. I'll admit that I think a lot of the story details were tailored to people that love the Halo storyline, and that I'm sure I didn't get a lot of it, plus I didn't finish the game due to very frustrating glitches with their saving data, so I'll give it a big benefit of the doubt there.
Still, their dialogue is pretty boring, their cutscenes are pretty stale and the overall story didn't draw me in. They all seem to suffer from what every Halo game suffers from - the story just isn't told in a way that's going to spark much interest outside of hardcore fans. Most of their story content is either people standing around, talking, or somebody on a comms system telling you where to go.
Controls: 9.0
Ease of Use and Smoothness of Controls
Besides a button being taken up for see mode (I can't stress how annoying of a feature that is), the controls are typical Halo. Great for the pace of gameplay they tag along with.
Replay Value: 3.0
Total Gameplay Time versus Expected
No matchmaking for their centerpiece feature, and a rather routine Halo campaign once again. Novelty is about all this game offers unless you bought it the day it came out and had a bunch of friends that wanted to play a lot of firefight. In terms of long-lasting value, this has as little as I've seen in a long time.
Fun: 6.0
How much fun was the game?
See mode is annoying, in case I haven't already made that clear. Walking into a bright area, blinded, and going into a pitch-black area, blinded once again, is so irritating.
Besides that, it's a Halo campaign and an overrated firefight mode. Firefight is decent, but you're still stuck in Halo's campaign world against dumb, slow AI.
My Overall Rating: 5.8
Suggested Gaming Experience Level: Medium/Low
What kind of experience playing video games do you need to really appreciate this game?
Gameplay: 5.0
Unique gameplay concepts - What drives the game, and what is it similar to?
Halo 3: ODST is obviously based on Halo 3, using a slew of the Halo world's weaponry, game mechanics, etc. In pretty much every way, it's the same game as Halo 3 in terms of gameplay, with the exception of a few meaningless weapon changes.
However, the reason so many people play Halo 3 is because of their multiplayer. ODST has multiplayer in the form of their new game mode: Firefight. There's no versus competition, even no matchmaking system for firefight, so you're limited to only playing with people you know, online, or people on the same TV. Essentially, it's a Halo game with no multiplayer - the reason Halo 3 is popular at all. For a full-priced game, this seemed like a huge ripoff.
Firefight is the game's centerpiece. It's not a huge innovation to Halo gameplay - basically a campaign snippet in which endless enemies come and you have to not die. The enemies are easy to abuse if you can funnel them into one location, which is the only way to last for a long time on a reasonable difficulty level. Halo's AI never was anything better than somebody who just started playing the game, with increases to their damage dealt on higher difficulty levels, so playing firefight isn't anything special once the novelty of the idea wears off.
ODST does come with a campaign, but it is LOADED with dumb gameplay decisions. One of which is their somewhat non-linear storyline where you proceed through a level during the night, and then seem to go through the same area as a different character, during the day (supposedly in the past). During the night scenes, you are instructed to find some object to continue the story as the nighttime character is supposed to be investigating things that happened to other ODST's, for whatever reason. During the night and even sometimes during the day scenes, you must use your night vision (I call it "see mode") in order to see anything on your TV other than 95% blackness. Their night vision isn't really night vision, either, it's more of a wireframe mode making navigation almost impossible at times. This also is coupled with points where you need to toggle see mode so you're not blinded by light, which makes you wonder what the point of it is. If one of your backbones to your campaign is a button that makes seeing easier, and you have to constantly manage your ability to see the game, it kind of seems like you're focusing on the wrong thing to revolve your gameplay around.
ODST's campaign is, once again, nothing memorable. You're an ODST and you're supposed to move from point A to point B either killing stuff or endlessly searching for some random object. If you've played one Halo campaign, you've basically played them all.
Considering their best mode is firefight and it's a fancy campaign mod, this game barely felt worth playing. The lack of online matchmaking for their firefight mode was a huge fail. It's obvious the only reason people bought this game was because it said "Halo" on it.
They also really dropped the ball on their game saves and the way you unlock new campaign levels (as in you unlock the next level when you beat any given level). I played the first few levels of the campaign with a friend, then wanted to resume the campaign on my own from where I left off. Trouble is, they separated the saves so I played almost entirely through what I thought was the next level, thinking it was further in the game, then realized I just played the first level over again without even noticing. I even played the most recent level assuming it would move me forward to the next one when I was done, but nope.. back to the start. What the hell were they smoking there?
And yes, I played through the first level twice not once thinking "hey, isn't this a level I've already finished?", until it was almost over. That ought to speak to their lack of original campaign design if an experienced gamer can't tell what's new and what isn't. The fact that you already play through the same levels twice by design (once during the night and once during the day) trains you to think that seeing the same thing over and over isn't unusual.
Not to mention, their navigation during the night-time and having to walk around searching for an item in the dark is the complete opposite of a fun idea. That sounds about on par with "Marco Polo" the video game.
Presentation: 7.0
Graphical and audio presentation (animation, texturing, overall look & artistic style)
It's typical Halo, with a wireframe mode that looks like crap and see mode constantly getting in your way. At least firefight doesn't force you to use see mode... much.
Halo's models and particularly facial animations have always been stiff. This game improves upon it a bit but stacked up against other good-looking games, it still falls a little short.
Theatrics: 7.5
Story, Dialogue, Cut-Scenes and Artistic Use of Camera
As far as I could understand, you play as two different people during the campaign. You play as an ODST, and you play as.. a different ODST that was following up the events of your other character, investigating it as if something significant happened to them? It's a little confusing at first and it's hard to pay a lot of attention to Halo storylines because they're typically told in such a stale way.
ODST at least attempts to create interesting characters and interesting story events, and has a really cool bit of 1st-person cinematics in the early part of the game. I'll admit that I think a lot of the story details were tailored to people that love the Halo storyline, and that I'm sure I didn't get a lot of it, plus I didn't finish the game due to very frustrating glitches with their saving data, so I'll give it a big benefit of the doubt there.
Still, their dialogue is pretty boring, their cutscenes are pretty stale and the overall story didn't draw me in. They all seem to suffer from what every Halo game suffers from - the story just isn't told in a way that's going to spark much interest outside of hardcore fans. Most of their story content is either people standing around, talking, or somebody on a comms system telling you where to go.
Controls: 9.0
Ease of Use and Smoothness of Controls
Besides a button being taken up for see mode (I can't stress how annoying of a feature that is), the controls are typical Halo. Great for the pace of gameplay they tag along with.
Replay Value: 3.0
Total Gameplay Time versus Expected
No matchmaking for their centerpiece feature, and a rather routine Halo campaign once again. Novelty is about all this game offers unless you bought it the day it came out and had a bunch of friends that wanted to play a lot of firefight. In terms of long-lasting value, this has as little as I've seen in a long time.
Fun: 6.0
How much fun was the game?
See mode is annoying, in case I haven't already made that clear. Walking into a bright area, blinded, and going into a pitch-black area, blinded once again, is so irritating.
Besides that, it's a Halo campaign and an overrated firefight mode. Firefight is decent, but you're still stuck in Halo's campaign world against dumb, slow AI.
My Overall Rating: 5.8
Suggested Gaming Experience Level: Medium/Low
What kind of experience playing video games do you need to really appreciate this game?
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