Halo 3: ODST (on Xbox 360) - Part 1: Campaign...

Halo 3: ODST...

Long-awaited and critically-acclaimed prequel to Halo 3.
I'm going to start this review off by mentioning again how I've been a massive fan of the Halo series since the outset. I have really loved every moment of each of the games storylines...

...Until now, that is.

Halo 3: ODST was a game that i was looking forward to in a huge way. Halo: Combat Evolved was the game that originally sparked my interest in First-Person Shooters, having essentially missed the point of them before this (despite owning Duke Nukem 3D for the PC, but i suspect my desire to own that might have been for a different reason given my age at the time of release! Haha :D ) Each Halo game so far had brought something new to the table and offered impressive gameplay aspects. Whilst ODST doesn't entirely let us down in that respect, I don't really see it as anything particularly spectacular on the whole.

Cameron (criple_h ) and I played through the Campaign of the game over about five nights. All the while, we kept expecting either an interest gameplay innovation or interesting storyline twists. We were disappointed, in both areas.

The focus of the storyline of this game is a group of ODSTs (Orbital Drop Shock Troopers) - elite UNSC soldiers - who launch themselves into New Mombasa (a massive futuristic African city) and are accidentally separated as the result of a Covenant ship warping out of the area. We are lead, through small cut-scenes which frequently interrupt the game play, through a couple of hours where the group look for each other and eventually regroup. The plot is peppered with liitle moments where our character (the 'Rookie) picks up objects, looks at them with as much ponderance as a man wearing an ODST helmet can, and we are transported to other characters locations and play through sections where we work towards meeting up with the other members of the team. In this respect, it's pretty far removed from the other Halo games, which I don't remember removing flow from their games by doing little "last night..." or "2 hours ago" segments.

The central characters, Buck, Dutch, Romeo, Mickey, and Dare are pretty uninteresting (perhaps with the exception of Butch who I noticed bore more than a passing resemblance to Firefly's Nathan Fillion, before realising that he was a cast member and actually played Butch). Butch and Dare seem to have an irritating smouldering profession hatred/personal passion thing going on. Which is highly irritating. I never thought that a game from the Halo series would stop seeming like a Sci-Fi Shooter and start seeming like a Sci-Fi Soap Opera.

When the action was happening, the game was able to keep me interested because, with the addition of the cool 'VISR' which kinda gave things a thermal-imaging look, the aspects of Halo that I love were still there. Unfortunately, they were surrounded by stupid, irritating NPCs and cliched mission concepts (such as the final 'Escort'-style mission) that really detracted from my enjoyment of the game.

All this taken into consideration, the Xbox 360 BrakeForFrogger contingent have decided that, had Bungie/Microsoft released Halo 3: ODST as DLC then we'd have no problem with it. As it is, with it costing in excess of £30, we feel that it is overpriced, given it's stringy content. Which is a shame, considering how much I was looking forward to it...

...For the last year... *sad face*

Of course, this opinion is purely based on the Campaign side of the Halo 3: ODST experience.

Sit tight, as Cameron and I will be trying out the FireFight (Halo 3: ODST's new multiplayer experience, which many good things have been said about) in the coming days and I will be back to follow up with Part 2 in the next couple of weeks.