There comes a time, with anything, when you have to say, “Enough is enough.” At dinner, you must push away from the table when you are full. Eventually, you do need to stop drinking. At some point, every beard needs a trim. I have reached the point where I can take no more with the Halo franchise, to my surprise.
Today I bought Halo: ODST, a “stand-alone expansion pack.” Yes, they are saying they are selling a complete game that really isn’t a complete game. I actually disagree with them there, the campaign, on normal, was around as long as Halo 3. Of course, maybe that’s just because Halo 3 wasn’t a complete game… but you know.
The game play in ODST is smooth and familiar. Really, really familiar. A lot was made about the fact that you don’t have shields. Instead you have “stamina”, which is a way to say shields without having to change existing game canon. Your health restores really slowly, on its own. Or, like many games, you can walk over a heal-all med kit and get all better. And like in most games, the damn things are laying around everywhere. (In Bungie Studio’s version of the future, Obama’s health care plan gets passed for real). Also, despite being a dude in normal clothes, none of the iconic master chief’s armor or genetic and cyborg enhancements, you can still flip a vehicle bare handed. Yep.
ODST does deliver in bringing you all the things you wanted out of Halo that they hadn’t already done. This list, while not very long, is filled out well. The real game here is a series of missions framed within an awkward, and sometimes frustrating, campaign of wandering around between groups of ambushing covenant and then searching wildly for whatever item will bring up a flash-back mission, where you play as one of the other three members of your ODST squad.
These flashback missions are, almost always, very fun. You do some extremely cool and crazy stuff in these missions. There are a number of “hold the point” missions, and vehicles are all over the place. You fly, you drive a tank, you do all kinds of great stuff. But then you go back to being this lone guy wandering through a city. A city full of jackals with sniper rifles waiting for you to turn a corner and smoke half your health bar away.
The nice thing is, that after one play through, you don’t ever have to do the framing campaign again. You can choose to play individual missions. The individual missions are incredibly fun. I’ve only played the new FIREFIGHT game type by myself, but it looks to have a lot of potential. (I’ve always wanted the achievement voice dude to growl out “triple kill” during campaign, this is as close as it gets to that!) I’m sure I’ll edit this write up after playing it with other human beings.
Over all, Halo: ODST is a fun and familiar game. The story telling element they are wrapping the fun missions in doesn’t mesh well with the feel of the other missions, but it’s not THAT bad. The flash-back missions are total blast, and I’ve had some of my favorite Halo moments with them. However, I don’t know if the game is worth the $55 (after employee discount) I paid for it. Then again, we were all saying the same thing about Halo 3. And we still bought the next one.
In case you’re wondering? That’s why they’ll never stop making Halo games.
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