The flashback missions add some great variety to the gameplay. They also allow for a welcome change in pacing compared to the on foot sequences in the night. From an all out assault with a Scorpion Tank to a desperate last ditch defence of a crashed Pelican ship on a building’s rooftop, there is enough to keep you entertained for the first play through and have you coming back for more. And as you progress through these, you ultimately find out what your team mates were up to while you lay unconscious in the pod at the begging of the game. There are even a couple of throwbacks to the old Halo games; a drive along a bridge while a battle rages around you that’s very reminiscent of Halo 2 and a search among an abandoned data archive facility that’s heavily inspired from the dreaded Library level in Halo 1 (minus the samey level design and the annoying Flood of course).
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Along with the single player campaign, there is also Firefight to keep you busy. It’s Halo’s take on Gears of War 2’s Horde gameplay. 4 players play co operatively and try to hold out against wave after wave of covenant enemies. During the course of enemy waves the skull effects (difficulty modifiers) kick in. Different skulls have different effects, so the players are constantly changing tactics to adapt to the enemies. If you can get 4 players communicating and working together, it’s insanely addictive. But it does have its drawbacks. For one, the 10 maps that you can play Firefight on are all variants of single player campaign levels. Secondly (and more cripplingly), there is no matchmaking for Firefight, which means you can only invite players to play with you i.e. the game will not find random people for you to play with. Bungie’s reason for that omission is that Firefight is based on the existing campaign technology and it would have required a large rewrite to get it working, which wasn’t possible with the time constraints they were working with. But to be honest, I would have been a lot more amenable to that excuse if the game wasn’t charged full price.
Also thrown in to sweeten the deal are all the maps released so far for Halo 3, including 3 maps exclusive to ODST that aren’t for sale on the Marketplace. It’s a fantastic deal for people like me, who didn’t buy the old maps from the Marketplace, but if you already paid for the old maps, you might feel a bit short changed. The new maps are good fun though. Heretic is a tight corridor, multi level map and perfect for slayer battles. Longshore is a fantastic big map that really shines in capture the flag matches. Citadel is the weakest of the lot but still decent fun in free for all matches.
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The entire campaign took me about 7 hours on Heroic difficulty. As with any Halo game, the replay factor is pretty good and the campaign, along with every other game mode, has a split-screen option (something I wish other developers would take note of). Graphically speaking, its using the same engine as Halo 3, so don’t expect a giant leap in quality of visuals. However, the lighting effects and texture effects have seen some improvement from Halo 3. The loading times are faster as well, mostly since the game is now optimised for HDD installation.
One last thing that deserves a mention is the sound. The music is absolutely sublime. The Halo trilogy has had some fantastic music throughout but quite honestly this is the best of the series by far. It’s easily the best soundtrack you will hear all year and probably one of the best soundtracks in videogames, ever. And as usual, it compliments the gameplay perfectly. Also of note is the excellent voice work, it (as much as the writing) helps sell the characters as real and likeable.
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Conclusion
While parting, lets acknowledge the 800 pound gorilla in the room. “Is there enough content here to justify a full price?” The answer is a resounding “YES!” Even if I change the question to “Is there enough NEW content here to justify a full price?” the answer still stays the same, but it’s no longer written in capitals nor has an exclamation mark besides it. Which answer fits you best will depend upon too many variables for me to comment upon, so I will just end by saying this – ODST is a game of fantastic moments and what is there is very, very good. In fact, it’s almost flawless at times. And if you are a fan of the series or even an FPS fan in general you, would be doing yourself a huge disservice by passing on this.
(+) Great single player campaign
(+) Firefight is addictive
(+) Includes all the Halo 3 maps
(+) Superb music and voiceovers
(-) Campaign is short
(-) No matchmaking in firefight
Title: Halo 3: ODST
Developer/Publisher: Bungie Software/Microsoft
Genre: First-person shooter
Rating: 16+
Platforms: Xbox 360 (Rs 2,299)
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