“You’ll regret meeting me in battle!” Except you won’t, because this is a game with a lot of shine
It’s 2552. Humanity has discovered space travel and has colonised countless planets; artificial intelligence has progressed by leaps and bounds, to such an extent that entire cities are governed by single computer systems; that creepy 360kg kebab vendor named Jonas is still trying to peddle his wares on the street corner; and the Covenant, an alliance of alien bullies, has just decided that Earth would look better without people on it.
Or, at least, the part of Earth called New Mombasa. Because, naturally, any eradication of the species would begin in sunny Africa – it’s a logical and prudent move for alien invaders to start blowing up bits of the planet that nobody cares about anyway. As it turns out, however, the Covenant was both correct and gravely mistaken in this assumption (assuming they made it).
The United Nations Space Command couldn’t much care about New Mombasa. But they do care about the Superintendant-class supercomputer AI residing in the city, because it was holding some classified secret or the President’s Minesweeper high-scores or something. Whatever it is, it’s important enough to warrant the dispatch of the UNSC’s most elite soldiers: Orbital Drop Shock Troopers, or ‘Helljumpers’, as they are more affectionately known.
The latter moniker also neatly presages how well everything goes when the Covenant carrier your squad was supposed to land on expressed a vehement dislike for hitchhikers and decided it was a good time to be a few light years away.
Six hours later, and the player-controlled ODST rookie has a few problems: everything is fuzzy, he’s stuck in a very confined drop pod 10 metres in the air with a major headache, and he’s six hours late to his rendezvous.
And so, with the conflagrations raging all across the city and the Covenant patrols sweeping up the final human resistance, the Rookie perambulates aimlessly throughout the city. Alone. Outnumbered. Perpetually low on ammo. At this point, it becomes quite evident that ODST is rather different from Halo 3.
Sure, it feels like Halo – you’ve still got Spartan Lasers and Beam Rifles, and you’ve still got the charismatic little Grunts and other Covenant alternately taunting and fleeing from you, but looking out at the night landscape of New Mombasa through the light-enhancing, threat-identifying visor that all ODSTs have immediately distinguishes the game visually from its cousin, and as you explore the city ruins to the mellow, piano soundtrack in an effort to discover what became of your squad mates, the feeling evoked is nothing like the simple ‘shoot stuff’ undertones present in Halo 3.
As Ammo-Deficiency Rookie treks through the barren city landscape, dodging enemies he can’t afford to kill and following the hints provided by the Superintendant cynosure, he tracks the footsteps of his fellow jump buddies. While tripping over the smouldering debris, he’ll also discover some of the 30 audio logs that tell a separate, but parallel, story which serves to fill in the blanks in the plot. But all this is only a small part of the campaign; most of it plays out at the points where Supply-Challenged Rookie discovers an item that triggers a flashback to a point earlier in the day. Each of these kicks off a more traditional mission set in the shoes of one of the other five ODSTs and are often, quite bizarrely, strongly reminiscent of missions in Call of Duty 4 – fast-paced, action-movie type scenarios that have you shooting things, walking a little, then shooting more things, occasionally punctuated by you piloting big stuff with wheels or wings while blowing up even more things.
Each of these quests treats the player to an additional perspective on the carnage as surveyed by the lone Rookie, explaining each demolished structure and towering inferno in the best way possible: by allowing the player to experience it (and often cause it) themselves. And when each mission is done, the return to the Rookie is a stark contrast in almost all regards, serving as an excellent way to vary the pace of the game that might otherwise feel overwhelming.
All in all, it’s a pretty standard affair. But it’s a standard affair that’s had at least half a tin of Brasso and a significant period of enthusiastic rubbing applied to it.
Particularly notable is the effect the enemy AI has on the experience, evidenced most obviously in the cannon fodder enemies, the Grunts.
Unlike most generic enemies who’ll just run mindlessly for you to inevitably shoot them in the head, the Grunts in ODST appear to have a strong sense of self-preservation, exhibit convincing group behaviours and sport the one of the strongest personalities seen in an FPS enemy. They’ll leap theatrically away from grenades, taunt and scream, flee when their morale is low, announce their intentions or interpretations of the state of the battlefield to their comrades, and just generally behave far more believably when they and their buddies inevitably get shot in the head. And while you fight hundreds upon hundreds of these little guys, encounters with them (which inevitably end with them getting shot in the head) are always entertaining simply by merit of the fact that they’re believable foes.
Of course, no game is without its faults. Curiously, one of the major strengths of Halo 3 appears to have been compromised somewhat in ODST, where the multiplayer modes often display strange and erratic performance problems where none existed in Halo 3. This slightly dampens the experience offered by the new multiplayer mode, Firefight, which is Bungee’s own interpretation of Gears of War’s Horde mode. Additionally, the campaign itself is only about on par in terms of length, taking about 7 to 8 hours to complete.
But as a package, Halo 3: ODST really is the version of Halo to get. It sports a far better campaign to that in Halo 3 (yes, I know, I’m an uncultured heathen who never really liked Halo 3 anyway), yet still includes Halo 3’s entire multiplayer component (the better part of Halo 3) as part of the deal. It’s good for those thinking about giving the Halo series a try, and great for those who already have and loved it.
Information supplied by MyGaming
