Review | Halo 3: ODST
Format: Xbox360 | Genre: FPS | Publisher: Microsoft | Developer: Bungie | Release date: 22/09/09 | RRP: £39.99
By Greg Giddens
It’s a brave thing for a developer to take a winning formula and mix it up.
There’s always going to be a huge risk of alienating your existing fan base, while failing to hit the mark for a potential new audience. But Halo 3: ODST needn’t worry. This standalone expansion takes us on a journey we’ve never travelled in the Halo universe, yet still doesn’t compromise the experience we are all familiar with.
It’s an incredible feat to replace the series’ iconic protagonist while completely maintaining the feel of the previous titles. It’s also a shift that could immortalise the franchise. If the characters and pace of play are this interchangeable, then there is no reason why Halo ever has to die.
//Nothing and everything
While the experience generally feels familiar, it’s surprising how much is different. Most obviously, you now play as a highly trained but still regular human, rather than the super-powerful Master Chief, and the majority of the differences are due to this change in protagonist. You can’t jump as high or dual wield, you’re missing an energy shield, and can’t automatically regenerate health. Essentially, you’re much weaker than before, and so you need to approach the game in a more cautious manner, using entirely different tactics.
With Halo 3: ODST, it’s less about taking the fight to the enemy and a lot more about surviving and defending. When on your own, stealth is advised: sneaking past an enemy patrol is often preferable to taking them on, because even if you do survive the battle you’d have lost precious ammo and health that may prove more valuable in the next encounter. When you’re working with a team, things become a bit more akin to the traditional Halo experience. You’re not as strong as Master Chief, but together you can pull off feats that are on par with the legendary Spartan. What’s impressive is how Halo 3: ODST’s story brilliantly combines these two very different approaches to playing; the pace can shift in tempo with very little transition, and still feels wholly natural.
As an ODST, or Orbital Drop Shock Trooper, you are deployed to New Mombasa, ground zero for the Covenant’s invasion of earth. After taking a rough landing and being separated from the rest of your team, you set off to find your missing squad mates, with flashbacks along the way explaining what happened to them in your absence. ODST’s use of 
narrative tools is excellent, with the use of flashbacks giving you the opportunity to view very different scenarios all over the city, expanding the experience to match the campaign of the previous Halo titles. It essentially provides two unique perspectives: the camaraderie of soldiers fighting the Covenant army, and the loneliness of a single lost trooper (or two lost troopers in co-op play) in an enemy-occupied, and war-torn city. Combining these two entirely separate experiences with the different tactics required keeps everything fresh and interesting, and proves to be a fantastic way of conveying the branching stories.
//Engrossing
Indeed, it’s very easy to become immersed in Halo 3: ODST. The creative narrative pulls you in and the beautifully conducted musical score and solid voice acting keep you there. Nathan Fillion, Tricia Helfer and others lend their pipes to the voice cast, and Halo veteran Martin O’Donnell brings us the soundtrack. It’s not just the audio that makes ODST such an aestheticlaly appealing game, either; it’s visually stunning too. Halo 3: ODST continues to use the two-year-old Halo 3 engine, and it holds up brilliantly, albeit with a slight lack of detail in facial animations. A few additions have been made that set ODST apart from its older brother – such as the sky animations, which look gorgeous – but the main difference between the two is the style with which ODST is presented. Your visor has a function to aid night vision and helps identify targets, similar to Ghost Recon’s Cross-Com system, and for the first time in a Halo game, you now have a map screen, presented as a 3D bird’s-eye view of the city. These additions are great, complimenting the game in both form and function, and proving crucial to your progression through the story. It also contributes a lot to providing Halo 3: ODST with a comfortably familiar yet unique style of its own.
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Interchangeable characters? since when is that a good thing?
You’re right, a lot of the time interchangeable characters can make for an inconsistent gaming experience between a series, but with ODST it works. No one wants to see Master Chief disappear entirely but if (touch wood) he ever does, the Halo franchise can still survive, which is great news.
I assume what Greg means is that Halo isn’t relying on Master Chief as an identity for the franchise any more. ODST shows the gameplay itself has its own personality, and that means there’s plenty of room for further work in the series.
Not that I’ve played it yet. Halo’s one of those series that I’ve always begrudgigly accepted is very good, while always being left slightly cold by it. I loved the original way back when, but I returned to it a couple of years ago and couldn’t stomach the blandness of both the story and level design. I know plenty disagree though, and with good reason.
I too recently went back to the original Halo and has a similar experience. It seems to have aged badly.
I want to respond to both issues here.
First, with respect to the main character (MC) I don’t see it as a strong character. He is deliberately made superficial and bland so as not to obscure your immersion in the storyline. For me the real character of the game is the world he inhabits.
Secondly, I recognise that Halo can be quite bland, but only find this irritates me when I play it on too easy a setting. What I want is to be challenged, to rely on thought and not just reactions. What I don’t like is to be constantly dragged out of my immersion by bad controls, stupid AI etc. Halo is just reasonably good at giving you the former without too much of the latter, but only really works when it is hard (I found a similar quality to the original Ninja Gaiden).
I think the point about difficulty is spot on. It’s an issue that crops up more frequently these days, too.
For instance, Dead Space on hard is probably one of the most exhilerating games I’ve ever played, but most people I talk to finished it on normal and came away with an entirely different experience. It’s exactly the same with Halo, I think. It really takes on a new life when played on Heroic difficulty.
I feel slightly guilty talking about this, partly because Halo already gets talked about too much (this from a fan), but also because I don’t want to sound like an fanboy (I don’t like using the word fanboy either).
I have spent some time wondering about what elusive quality some games have that makes them more addictive or enjoyable. You can never trust a human being to explain their reactions, as they are more likely to rationalise their prejudice than derive their opinions from objective reasoning (We judge games we like as better more than we like better games).
Anyway, now to my point. Finally. When you are weak in a game, you lose the initiative. You spend your time hiding. When the enemy are weak, they spend their time hiding. When both sides are weak (as in most military shooters) both sides spend most of their time hiding, leading to a very static, predicatable game. The game becomes dominated by terrain, reducing variability. The ideal, I believe, is for the player to be weak and the enemy strong. This balances the fact that the player is far smarter than the game, without allowing the AI to cheat. The AI can’t use cover properly anyway so let it roam freely. In this scenario the enemy can display far more varied behaviour, leading to greater replayability (unless you actually like repetition). Halo gives you this, as do many other games, including sports games like Fifa, but only when played on a setting you find hard.
Difficulty setting can be a nuisance at times; I feel many games would benefit from their omission. A lot games do play better on harder settings, feeling more challenging and rewarding as well as shifting the pace, in the Halo series for example the heroic difficulty setting does state “How Halo is meant to be played”.
I wonder if having a dynamic difficulty built into the AI or even the creation of artificial luck, might please both those who like a challenge and those who don’t.
Just a small niggle: the opening line for the article on the main page states the ODST fight is “ongoing.” Not strictly true, as the game is set just after the events of Halo 2. In fact, the area looking so shabby is mainly due to John’s hasty exit in the big purple ship.
Cannot wait to sink myself into the campaign, though.