Halo 3: ODST (Xbox 360)

Although the main trilogy of Halo titles was complete following Halo 3, Bungie wasn’t done with the science fiction franchise they built into one of gaming’s biggest phenomenons. Since Halo 3 had wrapped up many threads rather definitively though, it was clear something new would have to be done with the enemies you face were the series to continue, but Bungie decided to instead turn its attention backwards and begin to develop prequels. While Halo: Reach was the main focus, a development team was put together to help create a tie-in game for a Halo film that would never come to be, and when that movie’s production fell through, that team was instead put to work coming up with their own prequel spinoff as well. Halo 3: ODST was settled upon as the name, this first-person shooter not focusing on any pre-established characters like Master Chief while also taking some unusual and interesting deviations from the already established gameplay systems featured in Halo 3.

Halo 3: ODST is set between Halo 2 and Halo 3 in the city of New Mombasa. Despite the player’s efforts in Halo 2, the alien alliance known as the Covenant have wiped out a huge swathe of the city and aim to completely decimate it in their attack on Earth. A set of Orbital Drop Shock Troopers are deployed to assist in repelling the alien threat, but a rough landing sends their drop pods all across the city. The player begins as the newest member of the ODST, a silent character referred to as Rookie and the one who wakes up in New Mombasa at night and begins to piece together the fate of the rest of his squad. As you find evidence of their fates you end up playing as the other members of your team by way of flashback, piecing together the course of events so that you can eventually resume your mission and help in the war effort against the alien aggressors. The ODST squad is a pack of rather simple characters that the game doesn’t spend too much time developing, but you can pick up on a few defining character traits like Mickey being extremely excited to get his hands on heavy duty military hardware and Dutch taking the mission seriously. Buck and Veronica Dare are essentially the true main characters of the adventure, their past relationship referenced a few times but not explored very deeply while it still manages to influence their behavior and actions. Veronica’s professional attitude makes her good for guiding the important moments, but Buck feels like the writers were trying to create a guy with roguish charm but had him get into too many arguments without having the endearing moments that would balance out such a combative attitude. The troopers having some personality at least makes the scenes more intriguing even though you only get to briefly know most of them, but the more interesting story is told through your exploration of New Mombasa.

New Mombasa is an open city where you are free to explore as you please. The clues to the past events involving your separated squad members are scattered all across the city and can be found in whatever order you choose to tackle them. As you explore you will find small squadrons of alien troops who will fire on you on sight, but there are periods of quiet exploration as you use your map and on-screen compass to find the relevant locations. The music that plays as you explore New Mombasa can be surprisingly beautiful, the melancholic and atmospheric soundtrack with prominent piano and saxophone setting a contemplative tone as you walk through the eerie and often empty streets of a city after a huge battle and evacuation. A special visor option will allow you to better see in the darkness and can help with identifying important objects, an interesting secondary story to be found in audio logs that are scattered across New Mombasa. A rather sizeable tale unfolds as you find more and more of these audio logs, a girl named Sadie working with the city’s AI operator Virgil to try and escape while ensuring the AI isn’t taken by the Covenant. Sadie’s story does meander a little, mostly to give a better picture of the kind of panic an alien attack would cause on a city and how different people would react to such an earth-shattering change of pace, but Sadie’s story does more to establish and endear its characters than the main plot because it has the room to flesh them out. Virgil is a surprisingly amusing AI in that he recontextualizes the kind of warnings and announcements a city-controlling AI would have access to make jokes and express himself, and Sadie’s plight keeps evolving enough that finding the next part of the tale is always a treat. The visual component with the comic panels can be a bit odd due to repeated use of the same images and facial expressions, but they’re designed to work solely as audio as well so the visual component just adds small bits of context despite its limited amount of available art to do so with.

The open-ended exploration of the city is an engaging way of putting the plot progress in your hands, and with the hidden audio logs and unlockable supply caches with guns and vehicles to uncover as well, New Mombasa carries its role as the host for action pretty well. When you do view a flashback though, Halo 3: ODST makes sure to take you to new locations besides the city streets. A nature reserve offers a much more open area conducive to bigger battles, some rooftops and landing pads offer open air arenas where you can snipe foes or repel invading aircraft with homing missile turrets, and having sections in the city grant you something unique like the Scorpion tank to drive help make it feel different from the on-foot city exploration you do between missions. There is a rather unfortunate moment near the end of the game where you’re on a long stretch of highway that does little to diversify the opposition you face and the climax of the game is rather tame, but most of the campaign does a good job in diversifying the shape of the battles you participate in through level layouts or available vehicles and weapons.

The shooting in Halo 3: ODST moves away from some of the ideas that had become series staples by the time of Halo 3. There is no dual-wielding option for weapons anymore and the regenerating shield system has been revamped to more closely resemble that seen in Halo 1. Your shock trooper has stamina instead of shields, the player only able to suffer a bit of damage before their health bar is at risk. Health bar damage is permanent until death or a health kit is found, so while the stamina aspect lets you poke your head into battle and regenerate a small deal of the damage dealt, health governs your ability to be aggressive. Jumping and hiding behind areas in the environment is important to ensuring you don’t lose your health in a hurry, the stamina system mostly there to protect you from small arms or automatics while something heavy duty like a rocket launcher or vehicle can wipe you out if you let it hit you. Your visor mode that can see in the dark can highlight important objects and enemies to add a layer of situational awareness to firefights though, meaning you can still make this system work for you and the action can still achieve a pretty active pace.

Enemy variety willy mostly come from the weapons they wield, Halo 3: ODST having fewer alien species to fight against than any Halo game available at the time. The weak Grunts pad enemy ranks and distract you from dangerous foes like the Jackals who hide behind energy shields and fire strong weapons. The Brutes are the tougher part of the enemy force, appearing pretty often and not only packing stronger armaments but willing to charge you if they’ve been stripped of their armor and shields. Hunters are the toughest of the regular enemies with their large physical shields and heavy duty lasers, but the flying bugs called Buggers here are used to interesting effect in they not only move about the sky quickly but often appear in large swarms that means different weapons can prove very helpful or incredibly weak against them depending on how they help against such mobile and abundant foes. A new enemy type called the Engineer can provide shielding to its allies and blows up when killed, but beyond some significance to the story, they’re rather passive foes who just add a new small factor to firefights. The enemy variety isn’t only relevant to the campaign this time either, as the Firefight cooperative multiplayer mode allows players to work together as a team to survive as long as they can against waves of Covenant foes. Once your team’s pool of seven lives are up the game will end, so unlike the campaign where other players can respawn freely in co-op, survival is key to continuing your push to do the best you can in Firefight. Different maps and the inclusion of vehicles mean Firefight is a mode with enough variety to return to it to see if different approaches might lead to greater successes, so it manages to overcome the limited pool of aliens with other forms of variety.

In a rather odd choice, the competitive multiplayer is relegated to a disc that calls itself Halo 3: Mythic and contains the maps from Halo 3 and its DLC expansions, with only 3 new levels available that are unique to Halo 3: ODST’s multiplayer options. However, since this also includes the Forge map editor and Halo 3 already contained some spectacular map designs that focused on providing interesting interplay between weapon types in levels that can favor different ideas like tight quarters, open plains, or a variety of sight lines, Halo 3: ODST is able to claim a very strong multiplayer because it leeches off its predecessor’s successes in that regard. The weapon and vehicle selection is also carried over from Halo 3 but reduced in its offerings to perhaps make your options more concise and focused.  The only tank you can climb in is the Scorpion whereas the Wraith is an enemy only mortar variant, the Warthog jeep with its back-mounted turret has no alien equivalent, and if you want to take to the air you’ll have to take the Banshee aerial craft. Two bike variations do exist with the Covenant’s Chopper able to fire and keep itself righted better while the Mongoose is zippier and someone can ride along to provide cover fire. While a step back in vehicle availability, the options do bring new forms of play to the table and allow for shifting power dynamics both in how you take on enemy troops or fight against human players in the multiplayer.

Weapons-wise there were some cuts as well like the energy sword being an enemy only melee option, and the new version of the pistol and submachine gun don’t feel too different in concept from their counterparts in older titles. Still, Halo 3: ODST has plenty of fun options available, the Spartan Laser with its charging red laser of death giving the kind of strong option that won’t work in every situation but is satisfying when you can land such a powerful blast. The flamethrower sprays out surprisingly far and the shotgun can still take a good chunk out of a foe’s health even if they’re not too close, and while you’ll likely rely on simple automatic weaponry for many skirmishes due to the high bullet output and speed of fire, you do have more situational offerings to explore. A Gravity Hammer can smash a group of foes in front of you away with its force blast, the plasma and spike grenade lets you stick explosives to a foe who can’t escape them after being tagged, and the sniper rifle and carbine are both good for assaulting foes at range while the carbine can still hold its own in up close firefights as well. With the charged shot of a plasma pistol or the explosive needles of a Needler rounding out options that can be weak or strong depending on how you use them, Halo 3: ODST still has the weapon range required to make its gunplay exciting despite not matching some other Halo titles in terms of the breadth of content.

THE VERDICT: Pilfering Halo 3’s multiplayer maps and reducing the amount of overall combat options does make Halo 3: ODST sound like a step back, but while it can’t measure up to the game it takes a lot of its content from, it does recontextualize the first-person gameplay in many intriguing ways while still offering a vehicle and weapon spread hearty enough that the action can still be greatly entertaining. Firefight’s wave survival mode and the open ended campaign with its investigation of New Mombasa both explore some interesting ways to play with the Halo series’s excellent gunplay and map design. Some moments the thinness of the available content shows and the story’s writing is rather plain besides the optional audio logs you can find, but Halo 3: ODST still nails its gameplay and interesting design choices like the moody soundtrack make it stand out in the series even if it can’t measure up to Halo at its best.

And so, I give Halo 3: ODST for Xbox 360…

A GREAT rating. While Halo: Mythic and the Forge editor almost helps Halo 3: ODST practically cheat its way to equivalent quality with its predecessor, the reshuffling of content does mean that Halo 3: ODST is a little worse than Halo 3 despite being an otherwise excellent first person shooter. While New Mombasa’s exploration and the campaign in general have some lulls and the enemies could use more diversity, the excellent shooting mechanics and a still sizeable pool of available weapons and vehicles means Halo 3: ODST has plenty of potential for exhilarating firefights. Some ideas like having the Buggers focus so much on overwhelming numbers despite still using the same weapons as you makes the section devoted to facing them primarily stand out for example, and more moments where the game planned out the shape of enemy groups more creatively would likely help the campaign stand out more despite simplistic character writing. Firefight does a great job of testing your ability to handle the game’s mechanics with waves that are designed to test you more than the story mode, and the fact battles can take many shapes thanks to Bungie’s wealth of experience in tailoring maps to interesting gun fight layouts means Halo 3: ODST rarely gets dull, and that “rarely” is only really there for the highway segment that stands out amidst a game that otherwise keeps the action thrilling when it is present. The story could definitely do more to make us care about the shock troopers, but even with the plot’s rather basic writing, it still strings together the interesting settings well.

Halo 3: ODST may not get top marks like some of the mainline Halo titles, but it does serve a useful purpose as a spinoff. It takes the gameplay mechanics that make Halo such a top-notch first person shooter series and finds new ways to twist it, the openness of New Mombasa and little ideas like the visor’s impact on how you approach a fight allowing Halo 3: ODST to be distinct. Considering it came together in a bit of a hurry after a previous project fell through, Halo 3: ODST feels like it has a fairly clear vision for how it wants to stand out from the other games in the franchise, and while trimming some content featured in Halo 3 doesn’t seem to do it many favors, it still stands above plenty of other shooters simply because it has the fundamentals of first person shooting down so well.