Halo: ODST Review

From Halo: Combat Evolved to the recent Halo: ODST.  I played them all.  I gotta say that ODST may be the best of the bunch.

Story:
Your a rookie Orbital Shock Drop Trooper.  You were launched into battle but on the way down, your pod got knocked off course and landed somewhere in New Mombasa, Africa.  Now you must find clues on what happen to your teammates after the drop.  Once you come across those clues,  you flashback to see what happen in that area and your crew.  Taking the role of your teammates as they battle the covenant.  Bungie added something extra.  A story within the story you could say.  During your search for clues you come across audio files of a women story when the covenant attacked Mombasa.  This part I have not finished yet.  So I cannot say what the story is about exactly.

I must say that Bungie did a excellent job on telling the story through the eyes of your team and what they went through to stay alive.  You do play the rookie but he mostly travels the streets of Mombasa searching for clues.  Fighting various enemies scattered along the way.  Those parts of the game did seem a bit boring at times.

Gameplay:
Nothing much as changed since Halo 3 game play wise.  There are a couple of changes that Bungie decided on.  This time around, you cannot dual wield weapons.  You do not have a shield. So your health does not regenerate like Master Chief.  Your rookie does have stamina that recovers over time.  I should mention that there isn't a stamina bar per say.  When your vision turns red is when your stamina is weak.  Keep taking hits and your health bar will start to go down.    This leads to more intensive fights with the covenant.  No more run and gun like previous Halo games.  During the campaign, I did notice there was a lot of health packs stations on the streets.  Since I played the game on normal difficulty.  I didn't need those health packs too much.  One thing that Master Chief should of had is the visors that ODST have.  When activated by the X button,  your visor acts as night vision goggles.  Highlighting the surround areas.  Enemies will highlight in red while your teammates are highlighted in green.  These work best at night obviously.  Use them during the day and you won't see at all.  A nice touch in my opinion.

Newest addition to Halo franchise is firefight.  You and 3 other of your friends take on wave after wave of covenant enemies just like Gears of War 2 but a little better depending how you look at it.  In ODST, there are vehicles you can use in certain maps.  No shields to help protect you.  Your shares lives.  You start out with 5.  So if those 5 lives are gone then your out until the next round.  You do accumulate lives over time. One thing I though would be a nice touch for firefight would be to have the flood.  Even though you don't see them in the campaign, Bungie should have put them in firefight to make it more interesting.  What makes firefight interesting is the skulls that are activated during each round.  The higher the level, the more skulls that are activated.  It certainly adds to the difficulty.  Legendary + skulls = a world of hurt. 

Multiplayer in ODST is the same multiplayer from Halo 3, just on a separate disc.  Only difference is the new maps but you can still play people who are using their Halo 3 disc.  If you haven't played Halo 3 multiplayer before then it something to experience once in your life.  You can create almost any type of game.  Halo style dodge ball, motocross with rockets, last man standing, infection.  So many possibilities.  Forge helps you place objects, weapons or vehicles anywhere on any map.  My personal favorite is theater.  Where you can watch recent videos of your campaign, firefight or multiplayer.  Only drawback to theater is when you watch video of the campaign or firefight, you can not rewind nor cut out highlights of the video.  That only available in MP videos.  Wish Bungie would fix that.  If you love stats then Bungie got you cover.  Check out their website and see your stats for each game.  They tell you how many metals you got, number of kills for each weapon.  Who you killed the most or who killed you the most times in a game.  I can on and on about the stats but you get the idea.  It pretty impressive.

Graphics:
Have you played Halo 3?  Yes?  Ok then that what ODST looks like graphic wise.  No?  Rent Halo 3 to see the graphics yourself.  There not as good as Batman: AA or GOW2 but it gets the job done fairly well.  There some good looking level designs here and there.  Once that sinks in, you'll notice that the level design repeats a lot in certain levels.  One for instant is the data hive.  Previous games suffer from this to.


Audio:
Probably Bungie greatest strengths in the Halo series is finding the right voices for their characters.  Bungie certainly did a superb job on the casting Nathan Fillon as Buck.  One of the main characters you get to play during the campaign.  Nathan Fillion has worked with Bungie before.  He did voices for Halo 3 as one of the Sergeants.  Rounding out the cast, Tricia Helfer from Battlestar Galactica, does the voice of Dare.  Alan Tudyk also a Firefly alum plays Mickey.  Sadly your rookie doesn't have any dialog.  Any character that talks to the rookie is better off talking to a wall. Hell the grunts have better dialog then the rookie character.  And of course the music is a big part of Halo.  Bungie once again hits the nail on the head when it comes to music.

Replayability:
Anyone that a fan of multiplayer will certain enjoy it for many years to come.  After one week of the game release, firefight is still popular among my friends list.  It a refreshing take on horde mode from GOW2.  I can see myself playing this months down the road.  As for the campaign itself, you can go back and play the story again with 3 of your friends.  Ramp up the difficulty to legendary and go at it.


Overall:
I enjoyed the story very much but it could have been longer.  The entire campaign probably took me 7 - 9 hours on normal difficulty.  I felt the rookie could of been used better used instead of some silent guy that walks around finding clues.  He does grunt and moan when he hurt but it doesn't count.  Least Master Chief had some speaking parts.  So why can't this guy!  I like the use of the security cameras during cut scenes that where watching our main characters.  Love firefight.  I may jump in a few MP games sometime soon.  I certainly like to play the story again with some buddies.



Score - 8.5/10