Review: Halo: ODST

I enjoyed the SP component of Halo 3 and felt Bungie was going in a good direction and so I didn’t feel any trepidation in picking up ODST. This new installment in the Halo franchise is also a new direction for Bungie and from a production and design standpoint that transition is a frightening, unpredictable, but with potential to be very rewarding experience.

Liked

Stealth Gameplay: I’m a fan of stealth gameplay in general, when it works of course. The stealth gameplay in ODST worked fairly well, while not overly complicated the functionality worked in most cases. It was hard to tell sometimes when I was safely hidden in the shadows and when enemies could see me. I noticed the bottom section of my UI would change, a grayish strip would vanish and then reappear, wasn’t clear at all though if that had anything to do with stealth.

Story/Narrative: The story wasn’t mind blowing, but it worked, I also liked the concept of tracking down, discovering/playing through what happened to your downed squad mates.

Optional Comm Data (Narrative Pickups): I like when games include the optional narrative pickups that provide back story to your surrounds. There was only one story line you could discover, and while the VO was top notch and the dialog well written, something about the audio playback made it blend in to much with the normal surrounds, the first time I heard it I thought a cut scene was about to play or the people were stand behind me. I also wasn’t able to find all the comm data given they can be hard to find in certain sections. The only way to find them was using your VISR and the color coding used doesn’t allow them to stand out enough.

Two Disks: I applaud Bungie’s decision to have two disks for Halo: ODST, the SP campaign disk and the Multiplayer disk. I feel it’s a good decision from a design standpoint if it means a stronger component on each disk. Sacrificing content just so the game fits on one disk is painful. So while it might not always be a justifiable solution, it should at least be seriously entertained.

Firefight: So far I’ve only been able to play Firefight by my lonesome but I enjoyed the experience. It is boring solo, but with three other mates it would be a blast. I liked the inclusion of the random “Skull Mods”, like enemies throwing more grenades. In basic functionality it feels like Horde mode in Gears of War, which isn’t a bad thing. Bungie’s own spin, aside from the “Skull Mods” is that players must make it through five rounds and each round consists of five waves of random enemies.

What I didn’t like about Firefight is the lack of online matchmaking, I think this really hurt the potential of Firefight. Hopefully this gets rectified for Halo: Reach

Vehicle Combat: Vehicle combat in Halo games is always enjoyable. I’ve even started to like the vehicle physics used for the Warthog…barely. So it was fun to romp around with your little A.I. buddy shooting, blowing stuff up, and making Covenant road pancakes along the way.

Didn’t Like

Getting Sniped: On several occasions I would get sniped from a great distance by a grouping of pixels. I know this is to promote using cover but the sniping archetype could do with a group awareness, so if there are multiple snipers that have you in their line of site they don’t all shoot you at the same time over and over again.

Animations: The animations were rough, almost seemed like animatic animations were just left in to save time.

No Duel Wielding: Not 100% sure why the decision was made to exclude a positive feature from Halo 3 from ODST.

Sound FX/Music: I’ve always been disappointed with the majority of the sound effects in ALL Halo games, and ODST is no different. At times dialog would get lost due to sound effects or music getting in the way, not being lowered dynamically to allow critical sounds to be heard. The musical score doesn’t always feet with the situation you’re in and can harm the immersion factor, this is compounded by the frustrating fact there’s never been a way to turn off the music.

On the Fence

VISR: I liked the VISR concept but felt it was underutilized, especially since it was mostly useless during the day time missions given the exploding sun effect if you looked at day light. I also felt better color differentiation could have been used to allow the various interactive elements to stand out better. An example, it was easy for me to miss communication data on occasion because the bold yellow lines would get lost behind non-bold yellow lines.

Open World: While I liked the open world gameplay, at the same time there was no incentive to explore other than to avoid combat, which of course then removes elements of gameplay, and find communication data, which was difficult to find at times and I wasn’t compelled to look. There are ‘secret stashes’ if you can track down the bonus communication data in various sections, which helps a little, but not enough.

Multiplayer Disk: I get the feeling that I paid extra for Halo: ODST because of the inclusion of a fully packed multiplayer disk, which in some ways is appreciated, since I’m not a huge fan of Halo multiplayer and I haven’t bothered buying all the DLC and now I have it. This doesn’t change the fact I’m still not a huge fan of Halo multiplayer and probably won’t get the % of money worth from the disk I paid for.

End of the Day

At the end of the day I liked what I had experienced after completing the Halo: ODST single player campaign. I commend Bungie for taking Halo in a new direction and I think now that a new foundation has been laid they can build upon it for the next game. Unfortunately I did feel that Halo: ODST wasn’t worth a $60 price tag and this put some unneeded pressure and expectations on it. This isn’t going to hurt sales of course, at least not that I’m guessing, but given the content of SP, a price of $40 or $50 felt like a better deal.

If you’re not a die hard Halo fan you might want to wait for a price drop before picking up Halo: ODST.