Halo 3: ODST – Thoughts.
I was out in the evening with my father, celebrating some good university results, when we decided to go to Sainsbury’s and grab a few miscellaneous items on our way back to our neck of the woods. After cruising for ice cream, DVDs and frozen yoghurt (all to no avail, as apparently Sainsbury’s have discontinued all eight brands of the stuff, much to my father’s chagrin), we arrived at the checkout, and I left with a game I’ve been craving for the best part of a year: Halo 3: ODST.
I’m a massive fan of the official Halo fluff and its accompanying literature, and through this I’ve developed personal favourites in character types. My personal favourite, more than Spartans, Marines and Covenant, was definitely the Orbital Drop Shock Troopers, alias “the Helljumpers.” Gritty, suicidally brave and taking absolutely no shit whatsoever, they were John’s constant companion throughout several of the books and proved their worth both there and later on in the Halo 3 campaign itself. Dark armour and dark senses of humour, they were standout troopers that really encouraged folks to pay attention to the moving shields in front of their hallowed protagonist.
When they first announced the game, naturally I wasn’t sceptical. They invented it, how could they mess it up? Health bars were making a comeback (finally, some sense out of people designing FPS combat), and we got silenced weapons and a unique “nightsight” addition int the form of the ODST trooper’s VISR mode. Ignoring the tempting criticism of game designer’s tendencies to take a perfectly normal word such as “visor” and turn it into “VISR” whilst at the same time making up a ridiculous sentence to go with the shiny acronym, the game appealed to me. Soon enough, preview time rolled around recently. I had an invite, but I ended up doing something else that day, which was an odd choice, but I realise why I’m glad I didn’t go.
I wanted to experience it in my own way.
With preview events, no matter how good the game you’re playing may actually be, you’re still engaging in virtual escapism surrounded by hundreds of journalists, noise, booth whores and people talking about how the prequel had better storyline and how that weapon, yes, that one, has been neglected and, god forbid, removed. This is not what I wanted. Thanks to the lack of a Firefight matchmaking system, that event would have been my only way to actually play that mode with other people, but nonetheless, I relented and waited for my own copy.
I sat down last night, and began to play the campaign at around ten at night. I chose to play on Heroic. Let me establish here and now that this was by no means me waving my proverbial gaming manhood around; I simply wanted to get a serious challenge out of the game. When you think about it, what’s more likely to make you think of stealth as a welcoming old friend; a grunt on Normal, or a hunter on Heroic? I booted it up, played, and finished at about five in the morning, which is the longest I’ve sat up playing something since Oblivion. I thought I’d grown out of that habit, but I suppose it was Malcolm Rey-sorry, Nathan Fillion, Adam Baldwin and co that suckered me into the plot.
Game designers, hear this, for god’s sake. If you want characters playing cocky bastard marines, please consider using people from programs like Farscape and Firefly. I was ecstatic, as a huge Firefly fan, to hear the voices of good old captain Mal and the grumpy but (sometimes) loyal Jayne engaging in witty rapport throughout the campaign. It made a nice change to the “three words per level” rule that John 117 had abided by for three games, and an even nicer change from Cortana (aka Navi: Remixed) and her constant droning and flirting with the man who’s spinal cord she’s currently hugging.
The weaponry frustrates me, though, and this is for one simple reason. When Bungie began talking about the silenced rifle, we were ld to believe this was essentially the Halo 3 battle rifle with a long tube on the end. Not so. There’s recoil, of course, as you’re no longer an eight foot behemoth with arms like steel cables. However, the main problem comes from how weak the weapon actually is. A headshot to a grunt, even on Legendary, is an instant kill. However, here you could go through an entire clip and still the little bastard is frolicking around like he’s watching Fantasia on LSD.
It does make for some interesting changes to strategy, however. And that’s what ODST is really all about; forcing you to reconsider the threat of the Covenant. With no shield, tiny health, and even tinier melee strength, this is no longer the “charge in, melee, spray bullets” game that we fondly play every weekend with one eye on the clock (sleep is valuable, sometimes) and another on the kill-tally. This is now a game where, if you choose to get cocky, you’ll simply die, over and over, regardless of whether you’re tackling Legendary gold-armour brutes, or simply easy grunts. Hunters in particular, were tough in Halo 3, but I never actually found them at all frightening. However, in ODST I was panicking to the point of verbal exclamation, and it took over ten attempts to find a tactic of killing them that worked (lots of grenades, health packs, and luck). Even brutes, a tough nut to crack for John, are now on par with playing people in multiplayer. It’s all about getting the drop on people, in the dark or the daylight. And that’s where being a Helljumper comes in bloody handy.
Your VISR, when in the nightime New Mombasa (yay, I was worried I’d never hear that awesome South African accent again post-District 9) as the Rookie, is a fantastic tool for putting the fear of the UNSC into the Covenant. It feels stupid in a franchise that’s never once rewarded excessive stealth, but it works wonders. Lobbing a grenade as a distraction, I sprint across the plaza, darting from shadow to shadow, coming up behind the brute with the fuel rod gun that’s been making my life a misery. A quick switch to grenades of the plasma variety, and he’s running into his subordinates, before detonating. Ten Covenant down, and not a single bullet fired between either party.
The VISR makes this all possible, though it’s advisable never to use it in the daylight as it turns everything into bloom-light-messy confusion and a quick, embarassing death. It’s a shame, as outlining enemies two hundred metres away in red is the most useful tool I’ve seen in a Halo game. It’s just a shame it’s only useful in about 10% of the campaign. Sneaking around the city was an amazing, atmospheric experience, but I can’t help feeling the VISR has gone to waste save for the final few underground sections of the end levels.
The one thing I do look forward to in every game from Bungie, is the predictable “jump in a Warthog and drive like the Dickens” final section that involves at least twenty minutes of non-stop, skin-of-your-teeth driving and a lot of hope for the AI moron behind you firing the mounted weapon at anything vaguely purple. Interestingly it wasn’t the end of the campaign, which was a shock, but I suppose Bungie were already changing things up, so there’s no harm done.
I have but one major criticism, and that’s the lack of multiplayer save for Firefight. Imagine a VIP game where the VIP’s a Spartan, and you’re all Helljumpers. Sound fun? Of course it does. Will it happen? No. For all Bungie do fan-service-wise in terms of new maps, they’re shoddy when it comes to making major additions to gameplay. ODST could have been simply added on, and I’m insulted by the second disc containing only three new maps for those loyal enough to the franchise to have bought the other nine earlier in the game’s lifetime, especially considering the lengths we’ve gone to (Halo Wars: CE, anyone?).
It’s been an amazing journey into the mind of an ODST trooper, and I really do hope Halo: Reach isn’t a massive “let’s go back, ooh, shit, it’s different” farce, and actually is what it should be: John’s childhood, abduction, reprogramming and adolescence, along with all the memorable supporting characters that made The Fall of Reach such an engaging and breathtakingly immersive novel.
And it better not have any more “get four friends, and a vehicle there’s only two of, and do something, for armour no one cares about. Otherwise, you’ll never have your achievements maxed out.” Mainly because sadly, Bungie, if you’re going to take the multiplayer route with the most story-heavy game to date, you’ll find your prices better be prepared to drop, too.
For the Gamer Good 
I found it very jarring that all the squad had names, personalities (even if they were a little one dimensional and cliched at times), we are left with Rookie. A laconic hero who makes Gordon Freeman seem talkative. He’s the Rookie. But he’s experienced, so he’s not even a legitimate Rookie. He has no name and no face.