It’s clear that the Halo franchise has so much support that Bungie is able to experiment with future game choices by looking into other areas knowing that a loyal fan base will relish any more opportunities to bask in the Halo universe, in the past this as resulted in such opportunities as Halo wars as well as books and anime. Using these incentives ODST was born. Taking the spotlight away from our faceless hero, and placing it on a group of Orbital Drop Shock Troopers, we get to see the fight from a different perspective; a more vulnerable but equally skilled perspective.
The story involves a group of ODSTs who are tasked with assaulting a Covenant ship which sits above New Mobasa, each Shock Trooper descends in separate pods, but during the journey a higher ranking office changes the trajectory of the pods and causes them to miss the ship. It’s during this moment that the Covenant ship jumps into slip space, resulting in an EMP blast that devastates New Mobasa and causes each member of the ODST to spiral out of control down the planets surface. Each member of the group is dispersed across the city and it’s up to the newest member of the group, appropriately named ‘Rookie’, to find them and discover their experiences.
The way the story is presented is quite different for a Halo game, with less concentration on an individual and more on the group dynamic. Through a series of flashbacks we get to see what happened to each member and how all their stories came together, taking control of each member at specific moments. You could say that the key player is the rookie, who travels from area to area in an effort to track his team mates, but he is mostly used as a tool to link the disjoined stories of the other members in a way that pulls them all together. The characters themselves change between clichéd and fitting but there is not a lot of development for each character, so by the end of the game you feel like you are familiar with each of them but not enough to have made any connection, but this is no way the fault of the voice work, which is actually surprisingly good and a firefly fans dream.
The presentation of ODST is actually similar to other halo games but with little difference that can be felt, most notable would be the HUD features; including a filter which highlights key items such as enemies, health, weapons and objects of interest, in addition it also works as a light enhancer, lighting up dark areas without the need of a flashlight, it's also impressive in the segments at night where you control the rookie and can see the city light up from all the different sources of light, it's just a shame that you will spend most of your time with the HUD filter on. Long gone is the rechargeable health system, replaced by health packs which are peppered generously around the map; however the shield is still active, only it’s referred to as ‘stamina’ instead.
The single player game is a lot like other Halo games; the enemies take similar amount of damage, with a few
additional weapons thrown in. Removing the fact that your character can take less damage than Master Chief and can’t jump as high, then it’s incredibly similar. The similarities are both the games saving grace and crushing blow; the familiar gameplay will let hardcore Halo fans jump right in without missing a step, but this lack of innovation makes the game feel more like an altered Halo 3 than a fully realised independent game, instead it lives in the shadow of Halo 3 and serves best as a nice distraction. It’s a shame that the developers didn’t do more to differentiate the game from Halo 3 and mark its own area, especially considering the large time gap between halo 3 and ODST. The potential for a more involved game was there.
The multiplayer is an area that has split a lot of people. On one side there are people like me who dabble in the competitive multiplayer every once in a while but have avoided pouring in hour after hour, so we welcome the included maps with open arms as an incentive to get back into the multiplayer, but on the other side are the hardcore fans who felt that they have been neglected with such poor offerings. There is the fire fight mode though, which is best described as Halos version of Horde, it’s an interesting idea and has potential to add a lot onto the game, but I couldn’t help feel neglected by the lack of options to play the game online with strangers. It’s Forge all over again.
ODST is a lot of fun to play, but lacks the originality that should have made this game standout. Bungie did an amazing job with the first 3 Halo games, and that same level of polish transfers well to ODST, but whether or not the absence of a change of direction will turn you off all comes down to personal opinion and expectation. Maybe I am just in the minority of people who wanted a more tactical experience. If you are want a game that offers an extension of the Halo universe from a different perspective, with extra content for multiplayer then this is for you, but if you were hoping for something different then sadly this is unlikely to win you over if the previous 3 have failed to do so.