Wednesday 28 Oct 2009

Say what you will about the space opera-esque story of the Halo series, but Bungie has consistently delivered the most solid, well designed console first-person shooter experience since the original Halo on the original Xbox, only recently matched by offerings such as Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and, to a lesser extent, Killzone 2, but there’s something inexplicably delicious about the combination of gunplay, level design and freestyle sandbox gameplay on hand in every Halo game.

Halo 3: ODST is no exception to this rule, providing extremely satisfying combat situations and challenges throughout the game, with pockets of firefights and stand-offs taking place mostly in the city streets and buildings of the technologically advanced but war-torn New Mombasa, against enemy AI that ably takes advantage of the surrounding geometry and objects available to them to hide, attack and retreat in a convincing manner, resulting in taxing, ebb and flow style battles across an ever-changing battlefront, where split-second combat decisions can determine whether you live or die.

There’s something a little more refined about Halo 3: ODST’s weaponry, level of challenge and combat flow, over the original vanilla Halo 3; that may just be a dusty Halo 3 box talking, but guns (both human and alien weaponry) seem more differentiated in power, ability and tactical use, enemies seem more resilient to certain strategies and more willing to hang back and let you make mistakes, which are all good things, but it is a strange feeling. Maybe that Halo 3 box just needs to be dusted off…

The focus of this particular outing is the story, however, which is a shame because this aspect has traditionally been the Halo series’ weakest point, not for a want of interesting stories, dramatic intrigue or exciting locations (because Halo’s universe is quite rich in its history), but because the exposition has always been so heavy-handed, filled with faux military bravado, soap opera plotlines and extended cutscenes that try to cram in as many snippets of story, background and insider references as possible.

You don’t have to watch these cutscenes, but it’s nice to get a little context in-between slaying dozens of aliens, and earn a bit of a respite after the high tension fire fights that bookend extended sequences of otherwise highly enjoyable, challenging gameplay.

ODST focuses on the story of the Orbital Drop Shock Troopers, a bunch of fearless, best-of-the-best, hell-raising soldiers who are inserted into military ‘situations’ from low planetary orbit in order to control and suppress said ‘situations.’ From the outset, you’re placed in the combat boots of The Rookie, the token ‘strong silent type’ character, tasked with exploring the mostly desolate city streets, scrapping with patrols of alien Covenant (the main group of antagonists) and picking up audio diaries along the way to further explore the back-story, gradually making your way from one waypoint to the next in order to find, and eventually meet up with, your scattered squad of ODST buddies.

Along the way, you’ll find clues as to the whereabouts of your squad and their antics, initiating extended gameplay sequences as you take up the mantle of a handful of other, more talkative and personality-imbued soldiers to fill you in on different aspects of the same story, playing through their scenarios in different parts of the city to give you a bit more insight and understanding about their movements, and how they’re all related.

This leads to a kind of open-world style of environment traversal, allowing you to theoretically make your way around the city in any way you please and initiate these story sequences in any order you choose, but it generally behooves you to take the missions in the order they appear, so as to cut down on travel time, which isn’t helped by what feels like an extremely slow run speed, but is helped by the handy, functional waypoint and map system available to you.

The story told in Halo 3: ODST, and the way in which it’s told, is certainly better than that of prior Halo games, and shines brightest when events are shown and hinted at during The Rookie’s gameplay segments, but still suffers from the problems mentioned above, especially the way strings of story are crammed in inappropriately, such as the on-going love drama between two key characters that seems shoehorned into the most unlikely of places. While arguments could be made for where and when they appear, they wouldn’t be very good ones.

As a quick aside, it would be wrong not to mention the excellent, mood-setting and texture-rich music that accompanies the campaign – you can almost feel the attention that good ‘ole Marty O’Donnell and his team of audio craftsmen have put into the score for ODST, and, as always (and as good music in games generally achieves), it elevates the experience to form something that is more than the sum of its parts.

Over and above the singleplayer (and cooperative) story-based campaign contained in Halo 3: ODST, there’s the addition of Halo 3 multiplayer, which includes all of the released map packs for the game, plus one, as well as Forge mode (to create your own game types and play spaces), the film creation tools, and a new multiplayer mode called Firefight (where you’re tasked with destroying waves of enemies with buddies), all of which is given its own play disc, so if you’re a Halo 3 multiplayer fan, or intend becoming one, there’s reason alone to get Halo 3: ODST.

Halo 3: ODST is a complete package, containing the proven, satisfying gun- and gameplay you found in previous Halo games, with a new bubblegum story to fill you in on ‘essential’ Halo lore and give you a good excuse to revisit what you enjoyed most about those games, while the addition of Halo 3 ‘multiplayer-on-a-disc’ is worth the price of admission alone, if you take into account the number of hours you’ll extract from it (if you don’t already have Halo 3, that is).

If there’s anything you enjoyed about the franchise, Halo 3: ODST represents all of the best bits wrapped up in a compact, concise package for you to experience all over again. If you’re new to the Halo universe, this would be a great place to start.

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Contributor:	Oliver

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