I typed this up about a week ago or so, with the intent of editing it and publishing it soon after. However, I had a presentation on gaming and libraries at the North Carolina Library Association Conference last Wednesday, and them immediately fell ill afterwards. So, this review is no longer timely, but I hope you still value my opinion on the game.
I was going to wait until I gave Firefight mode a good try before I wrote about Halo 3: ODST, but you know what: the one thing that Bungie has always been spot-on with in the Halo series is multiplayer. There is no real need to review Firefight mode, as far as I’m concerned. You know it’s great, I know it’s great, we all know it’s great. Multiplayer is always fun in Haloland.
So this review will only address the campaign.
Much has been said about the drastic new directions in which this new Halo campaign goes. Instead of the all-powerful, nearly bulletproof SPARTAN-II Master Chief Petty Officer John-117, you are the Rookie: an Orbital Drop Shock Trooper. The ODST are the elite of the UNSC armed forces. They are specially trained for the most hostile combat situations, dropping in from orbit at breakneck speeds, right into the thick of the Hell that is combat or, sometimes, deep behind enemy lines for covert operations.
So why did Bungie decide to have you play junior detective in this game? Sure, we all knew that this game was going to be a mystery story at heart, but in practice it just doesn’t work as well as the developers would have us believe. Yes, New Mombasa at night is very cool. Yes, there is real tension as you duck and dodge Covenant troops. Yes, there is that really dreadful sense of being alone. This doesn’t let up throughout the entire game; there are some moments that I felt really, really helpless. Unlike playing as Master Chief, this time around I actually panicked when I ran out of ammo during a fight with Brute Chieftain, and I actually felt myself scrambling for a new weapon instead of just kind of casually walking over to pick up a new one.
And the way the storyline is delivered, through flashbacks uncovered by objects in the environment, which can be discovered in any order, as opposed to linear delivery, does offer up a few surprises. You will likely not discover the items in order, so you piece details together as you go along, giving the whole narrative a feel not unlike a really good mystery novel; the whole thing unfolds in a very organic way, not rushing any major reveals. The flashback missions, which allow you to play as other characters (all of them ODST), are exciting and appropriately epic; it’s like a greatest hits compilation of what made the great moments from the original Halo trilogy great.
So what makes the game not work? Granted, this is something different from the traditional Halo experience, and there are plenty of incredible, dramatic moments to play through. Everything should make this a great game, but there is just something missing. There’s too much exploring between the breakneck action sequences; the final long stretch feels more like a test of patience than a test of skill; the whole thing just feels too short; I WANT TO PLAY THE LIVE ACTION ODST COMMERCIAL!
Bungie did a bit of wasting some potential here. There are brief glimpses of what this game could have been: a view of the Covenant War from the grunt’s eye-view. In the original Halo trilogy, you were the guy who came in when the good guys needed a Big Damn Hero. You took down big vehicles and went toe-to-toe with the most gruesome foes. You punched enemy leaders in the face and made last-minute escapes. You were an action hero. But as an ODST, you’re just a normal guy. You’re not a super soldier. You’re maybe a little braver, a little more hardass than the other grunts, but you don’t have a reinforced skeleton or an energy shield or the ability to jump a quarter-mile in the air. This could have showed the kind of high-tension, quick-burst kind of combat that we Halo fans are led to believe comprised most of the war with the Covenant–as opposed to the epic space opera of the original games. Halo 3: ODST is indeed that, but it’s also too far in the other direction: it’s too different. It’s too, dare I say, laid back. Sure, the flashback levels are truly intense and chock-full of those in-the-thick moments I was hoping for, but most of the game is spent as one giant fetch quest.
So is this a good game? Certainly. It’s a great deal of fun and demands a bit more brain activity than the original Halo trilogy. But is this truly an ODST game? Does it convey that sense of intensity, loss, and drama that the awesome short film does? Only at times.
Posted by Brandon 
