Halo 3: ODST – Review

Halo 3: ODST
By Bungie Studios
XBOX 360






About:
Halo 3: ODST (Orbital Drop Shock Trooper) is a game that takes place at the end of Halo 2, at the same time as Halo 3 essentially.
In the game you play as an Orbital Drop Shock Trooper or Helljumper a specially trained human forces soldier, the characters all land in the wrong spot in the city and is split up from each other, they must regroup. The main character still cannot find the rest of the team till the end of the game.


Review:
The visuals in Halo 3 ODST are amazing, the game play suits that of Halo 3, and the new weapons are somewhat enough to keep you happy. However, few things annoy me.
– Forge mode (Which comes on a separate disk) doesn’t have any of the maps form ODST, only ones from Halo 3, while you save money on buying extra maps inside Halo 3, it just is disappointing.
– Game is too short! Come one guys, finished in less than a week by an underage player, just isn’t good enough. I shouldn’t have to ramp up the difficulty level just to get my moneys worth!
– Night Vision is annoying!!


The game though was alright, one thing I found was that, as you are not a Spartan in this game you have to hold the temptation to run into the pack of enemies guns blazing, the technique doesn’t work as well in this game because you are human, not a mega-strength genetically modified super soldier.
In your game case you get a second disk, which contains all the maps from Halo 3, including extra maps, and forge mode, not only does this make me feel ripped off for buying all the Halo 3 maps before, but makes me feel that the developers weren’t too happy with their game, they thought it was too little, so they included extras to make up for it. . .


Firefight is a new game mode, where you play for as long as you can versing waves of enemies, I find it just a waste of time, once you’ve played firefight once for as long as you can you don’t want to do it again, unless your some score-board seeking victory boaster.


Many people complained about the cut scenes in the game, the cut scenes would show the main character going to a place that other team mates went to and then a sort of flashback happened to see what happened to the other team mates. The TV show Good Game said something like, “the main character instantly knows everything that happened to these people without actually being there,” I don’t know why, its not saying the main character SAW these events, it was showing the gamer what happened, not saying that the main character was a super-psychic.
He simply looked at the stuff like the bent gun and thought about how it got there, not necessarily what the flashback showed . . .


Summary:
Overall the game is great and intriguing to play, but lack of new weapons, new vehicles, makes me think that Bungie probably should have released it as a Halo 3 add-on, as they had originally planned, it just doesn’t offer enough to earn the right as a game itself, the second disk is from Halo 3, not ODST, the ODST part of the game is just tiny.
The visuals in this game are just stunning, and the background ambiance you could hear added to the scene, the clouds in the sky moved, the sunsets shone, the game is beautiful.
Pity the game wasn’t longer, and included more features and game modes.


Rating:


4.3 / 5.0 – Game Play
3.9 / 5.0 – Cut Scenes
2.0 / 5.0 – Fun
5.0 / 5.0 – Visuals
OVERALL:


 15.2/ 20