Halo 3: ODST or Halo 3: Mombasa Noire

 There are a lot of things I really liked about Halo 3: ODST, and there are a lot of things that bugged me about Halo 3: ODST.   That sentence should nicely sum up my review score.

This game is a Halo game.  What does that mean, you might ask?   Well then, allow me to digress.
 There will be a mission where you have to destroy a tank while on foot.   
There will be a tank driving mission.   
There will be points where you have to hold out against waves of enemies in a desperate last stand.  
 There will be lots and lots of grunts saying lots and lots of silly things.   
The final mission will include a long sequence where you drive a warthog.   
If you are a Halo gamer, this game will be very familiar to you.   Is this bad? No.  The game is just simply what you would expect, Halo combat done well.   One thing I have always liked about the Halo series as an FPS is how original and different the combat feels from other shooters.   The enemy AI is good, the variety in weapons is awesome, and the awesomely large action set-pieces are fantastic as usual.  The big battlefields are full of plenty of places to hide, and plenty of places to die.  I know there has been a lot of talk about how the Halo series is getting stagnant, or that the combat is stale, but I think that that argument is a bad one to make.   A drastic change in game play would have been a bad decision, because I think that the Halo fanbase enjoys the gameplay that has been tried and tested over the first 3 games in the series.  For me, it is my gaming Soul Food, I can pop into a sweet creamy session of Halo and just enjoy the game.   I like that I can get that tingling feeling behind my belly button saying “I want to play a Halo game” and be able to pick up a new game that sates my belly tingling.

Even though the game is definitely a Bungie made space shooter, Halo 3: ODST does do some cool things to liven up the formula.  Before the game was released, the developers spent plenty of time trying to sell the ODST's as a completely different kind of soldier than master chief.  They had those very cool looking "We are ODST" trailers and everything.   I don’t buy it.   Your typical ODST has a floaty jump,  wears full body armor, use all sorts of alien weaponry, and are masters of all vehicles (be they terrestrial or extra).   They are basically the Brute to the Master Chief’s Elite.  Nothing different there. 

 What ODST does do to liven up the formula is atmosphere.  I am going to make a recommendation here:   This game should be played through first by yourself.   The sultry sax music, darkened city, and interesting lighting make for a very unique atmosphere that would be ruined in co-op.  Bungie did a great job with the lighting and sound design in this city.   You really do feel stranded most of the time while searching for clues about your squad.   ODST’s greatest strength is how the story narrative plays out.  Your basic objective is to travel from location to location and find a pieces of armor or a weapon from a battle on the previous day that might have something to do with your lost squad-mates.   When you find a piece, you are linked in to the city’s surveillance system to see what happened.   These end up being the different “missions” that you play in the game.   Where another game would have cutscenes linking these missions together, ODST has a neat open world exploration aspect in between missions.  There are also plenty of video logs hidden throughout the city for you to find, these logs tell a very interesting story about the invasion of Mombasa, and add a little extra flavor for those exploration minded individuals such as myself.

I wish that I could have been able to play the much touted “Firefight” multiplayer mode, but I was unable to try it out.   It is said to be quite fun, and reminiscent of the “Horde Mode” multiplayer in Gears of War 2.

Overall, I would probably rank this game as my favorite in the Halo series, as the game just felt refreshing to me.  You are no longer a super soldier set to save the world, you are just one man trying to find his squad and get the hell home.  The new exploration aspects and mission structure livened up the experience for me as well.   As a shooter fan, I loved it, and I recommend it to any other FPS fan out there.
 
4 Nathan Fillian quips out of 5