Halo 3: ODST

Rating: M

Score: 7.0/10

Halo is Microsoft’s biggest series. Ever since Halo: Combat Evolved on the original Xbox way back in 2001 was released, Halo has been a hit, the “Star Trek” of video games, if you will. The multiplayer was genius for its time, while still having a cool story. It was two races – people and aliens -killing each other deathmatch-style in an interesting Sci-Fi environment. Halo 2 was promoted as the biggest game release...probably ever. It didn’t disappoint, although its gameplay was more or less the same as its predecessor, with improvements. Halo 3 was the next huge release, but its lack of new material was a letdown to hardcore fans. Nonetheless, it was a worthy instalment. Now we’re at the next big release, ODST. Does this game exceed expectations, or has the series started to die? This is, of course, still an Xbox 360 exclusive series.

Let’s get something out of the way first: this reviewer is no huge fan of the series. It’s a good series, but it’s just that: a good series. I know of some rather pathetically blinded fans who believe every game in the series is a perfect gift of the gods at Bungie (the developers). This game has its flaws. Sorry, Halo fans!

With that quick message out of the way, let’s just jump right into the story. It takes place before Halo 3, after Halo 2. Humans are in a 26th century war against the alien “Covenants”. Long story short: A wrecked city is overrun with alien Covenants and the ODSTs (Orbital Drop Shock Troopers) are sent to stop them. Things don’t go as planned and you, the rookie, run around a dark, wrecked city overrun by aliens while trying to piece together just what happened in the six hours you were knocked out from the hard crash down to earth in your pod. The dark story combined with the creepy, lifeless, wrecked city really sets a good, gripping tone. That, along with the clues you find, make it play like a classic dark mystery novel.

The gameplay, disappointingly, is the same as Halo 3, which was uncomfortably similar to Halo 2, which was much like Halo 1. The main difference is the darker tone of the whole story. Another major difference was the lack of dual wielding of weapons. Halo 2 introduced it; Halo 3 had it; why take it out? Dual wielding made weak weapons fairly powerful when you had two of them. It made online mode more reliant on skill, rather than weaponry. It really makes you question why they’d take it out.

Speaking of online mode, you still have the good, old deathmatch (as you should!). You can still customize your character, as you could in Halo 3. You have the new Firefight mode. This mode lets you take on hordes of evil aliens as a team, which can be great fun (depending on your teammates). It’s a lot like the hordes in Left 4 Dead, and the hordes in Gears of War, and the zombies in Call of Duty: World at War. Maybe it’s a new trend for shooting games.

The A.I. got a huge burst in I.Q. from Halo 3; frankly, it needed a boost! They certainly couldn’t have gotten worse, that’s for sure. The main bonus in that is that you can now trust the A.I. to drive, while you ride shotgun. In Halo 3, you couldn’t do this, no matter how hard you tried. The A.I. tried so hard to drive, but they’d hit so many obstacles, drive the wrong way, and just overall drive much too slow to avoid being run into or blown up. The A.I. in Halo: ODST isn’t quite as good as a human player, but it’s a great improvement over the last instalments.

For $70, you’re getting about $35 bucks worth. It’s more of an expansion to Halo 3 than anything else. It improves on some of the aspects Halo 3 was weak on, but certainly not enough to define itself as its own game. Either way, the developers should’ve put more content in this game instead of rushing this one to market so they could work on next year’s release: Halo Reach.