Halo 3: ODST

bomby wrote:traded in prototype, oblivion and ninja blade and picked this up today for £5, then my 360 died. typical

God doesn't want you to play this game. He's probably doing you a favour too.

well it could be worse, i could have bought modern warfare 2 and then broke my 360, that would have been.....

Oh for god's sake that would've been terrible.

It's only 'cause you traded Oblivion.

getting £8 for it was the best i got out of oblivion.

:dan:

Well, I had a crack at this earlier. Sat down with a good friend of mine (Who some of you might know as BxR Ferocity) and decided to tackle the campaign in co-op split screen.

Maybe if I was 13 years old again, blindly in love with everything Halo and still replaying the first game every other week this might've been enough for me. But the years have left their mark, and through the eyes of a jaded and cynical gamer ODST seems to lack a lot of what I was hoping for.

First of all, despite the voice acting being pretty great, the writing seems to have sunken to the dreaded macho marine chatter level, the more serious sci-fi approach found in Combat Evolved abandoned. While some might argue that this is only logical considering the shift in focus, it pains me immensely that the game now has seemingly more in common with the likes of Gears of War rather than Half Life.

Also abandoned in the typical linear level structure in favour of an open world hub system which you navigate through to find the start of each level. First of all, Halo never needed a hub. The linear system fitted the series like a glove. Secondly it never needed that level to be dark and set during the night, making travel much more arduous than it should. The night vision goggles help a little bit, but look pretty ugly compared to the more attractive design of the world otherwise. Other than that the hub is pretty bland and despite the lure of collectibles feels painfully tacked on. Bungie said it's supposed to feel noir-ish. I wonder if they even know what that word means.

The gameplay itself is still pure Halo though. Or is it? For better or for worse the Master Chief is out of the picture replaced by the equally soulless ODST soldier "Rookie". He doesn't have a shield so now you're supposed to play Halo like Rainbow Six. Which is a slightly retarded idea, though it doesn't have to be followed seeing as however human The Rookie might be he can still sustain an unhealthy amount of damage even on heroic difficulty. Which leads me to yet another complaint. The red colour the screen turns every time you're wounded. Which is, pretty much, almost all the time. It's distracting and hardly intuitive.

The missions I played (The first three) were all relatively sub-par compared to everything the previous installments had to offer. Maybe it was because of the split screen effect? Maybe I'll enjoy it more with an entire screen to myself? That I'll find out soon enough, but as Ferocity nicely said: "I don't know what to feel. I don't like it. But I don't hate it either. A completely neutral experience."

Am I disappointed? Not very. My days of hyping games is over, I didn't even pick this up until the other day. I had no expectations and I'm still not sure what it is I've experienced so far.

On a slightly brighter note I can add that Firefight, the new multiplayer mode, is actually a blast. We spent a solid hour trying to get as far as possible and the challenge posed by increasingly challenging bots is most welcome.

anyone up for playing this tommorow night, got a new 360 yesterday, would play tonight but im going to watch aston villa v man city...so yeah?

Looks like I'll grab FIFA 10 over this from the reception on here then.

urgh no, thats even worse.

Played through the whole game in one sitting last night and realized that it isn't half bad after all! The story is no masterpiece, but keeps you interested enough until the end. The gameplay is in some ways more fast paced as you're forced to switch weapons instead of reloading just to finish of an enemy before he kills you.

I still don't think the Hub was the best solution, but it is tolerable. The missions themselves are extremely short but packed full with rather interesting set pieces. All of which I missed when playing split screen because we pulverized everything in sight, while alone the game was more challenging. I still only died about 10 or 15 times total, and that was on heroic so it's not very hard to say the least.

Most of my negative points still stand, even if they've been softened a bit around the edges. Take it for what it is. Halo 3's equivalent to the Shining Isles, only overpriced and placed in its own box. If you can accept that I'm sure you'll manage to enjoy ODST.

Finished this twice now and enjoyed it. Still not as good as the original Halo but it was a very enjoyable experience. The music was absolutely amazing and the street of New Mombasa was soaked in atmosphere. Gameplay wise it was as expected and was very solid.

This is an advert directd by Rupert Sanders with Academy Award costume designers etc.

http://adsoftheworld.com/node/42964

Probably the best advert for a videogame ever.