Halo 3: ODST
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Game Reviewed: Halo
3: ODST
Publisher: Microsoft
Developer: Bungie
Reviewer: Thaius Tydane
Platform: Xbox 360
Category: First-Person Shooter
ERSB Rating: M
Game Description:
“The
year is 2551. Humanity is at war with an alien alliance
known as ‘The Covenant.’ We
are
losing. The
Covenant have burned our
worlds, killing billions in their genocidal campaign.
Earth is our last bastion – a carefully
guarded secret; but not anymore. A
Covenant carrier has breached Earth’s defenses and attacked the African
mega-city, ‘New Mombasa.’ Initial
reports confirm major damage and heavy civilian casualties. Now, military leaders of
the “United Nations
Space Command” (UNSC) have prepared their response.
Teams of highly-trained “Orbital Drop Shock
Troopers” (ODST) are ready to assault the carrier from navy ships in
low
orbit. This is a
near-suicidal
mission. But these
troopers are the best
of the best. And
saving New Mombasa
could be the most important mission of the war…”
Thus
begins a Halo game that… well, is a lot different from
the Halo we know. In
the Halo trilogy,
the gamer played as Master Chief, a genetically enhanced super-soldier
tasked
with saving humanity from the Covenant, as well as discovering
information
about strange orbital ring worlds and a parasitic life-form known as
The
Flood. But Halo 3: ODST is different.
You play as an ODST known only as “The Rookie” (though
despite the
single protagonist, you can still play through the story with up to
three
friends). When
dropping down to assault
the Covenant carrier, it suddenly jumps into subspace, creating a blast
that
largely destroys the city and throws all the pods off course. Now,
separated from
your team, alone in the dark desolate streets of New Mombasa, you
travel around
the city avoiding and fighting Covenant patrols while tracing the steps
of your
squad mates in an attempt to find them.
Halo
ODST makes for a very different game than the “run and
gun” gameplay of the Halo trilogy.
New
Mombasa is a large and desolate place that you can explore freely,
where all
the buildings are empty and the only sound you hear are the Covenant
cruisers
overhead and the frequent car alarm: you rarely come into contact with
enemies,
making these sequences much more moody and contemplative than Halo fans
are
used to from the series. And
when you do
run into a Covenant patrol, you have to play it safe: you are much more
fragile
than Master Chief. This
approach
requires that you use strategy with every encounter, as most of your
enemies
can take more damage than you can, so you usually either want to sneak
around
the Covenant patrols or find a way to take them out quickly and easily.
As
you wander through the streets of this once-busy city,
you will find various objects connected to other members of your squad. When you find one of these
items, the player
gets to play through the experiences of other various members of the
squad. This makes
an interesting (but
not amazing) story much more fascinating, since you are working the
story from
many different angles. Playing
as the
other squad mates delivers much more action-packed experiences,
including some
of the great vehicle sequences for which Halo is known.
Though even in the heat of battle, you die a
lot faster than in the other Halo games, so everything must be planned
carefully. In your
journey, you will
also find audio diaries (a popular trend in games lately) detailing the
journey
of a young woman attempting to go to her dad in the middle of the city
during the
Covenant invasion. These
give more insight
into the story and are quite interesting to find and listen to.
The
new ideas and additions to the Halo formula make for the
most original (and arguably the best) Halo campaign yet, and the
addition of
Firefight (fighting alone or with friends against ever-increasing waves
of
Covenant) is great for playing with friends.
But, like the other games in the series, it may not be
appropriate for
kids.
What Parents Need to
Know (Warning: Possible
Spoilers!)
Violence:
Like the
other Halo games, ODST is played
from a first-person perspective. Using
various types of weapons, you fight
your way through hordes of Covenant.
Most of your weapons are guns: sniper rifles, pistols,
shotguns, rocket
launchers, plasma-based alien weapons, and more.
You also have a few different kinds of grenades:
normal frag grenades, grenades that stick to enemies they hit, and a
napalm
grenade that sets fire to whatever it touches.
Sometimes you can control vehicles such as a tank, a jeep
with a machine
gun on the back, an alien hovercraft, and a Covenant Banshee (a flying
vehicle
that is the aliens’ answer to the fighter plane).
There is also a gravity hammer that sends
foes flying with a powerful blow.
All
of these weapons cause death and destruction on some
level, but there is minimal blood.
Whenever
you shoot an enemy, a small amount of strangely colored alien blood
splatters
onto the ground (or a nearby wall).
Sometimes this makes for a good amount of blood on the
ground, if an
enemy is hard to kill or many enemies are killed in the same place. Explosives can also send
soldiers flying long
distances (especially if you have an option turned on that makes the
physics
unrealistically high). Vehicles
explode
and both Covenant and humans die.
Covenant Brutes sometimes taunt you by claiming they will
eat you or
tear you limb from limb.
Language:
Words
like “damn” and “ass” are used to a decent extent:
some of it is in the in-game dialogue, so the exact amount of swearing
will
vary. It is not
excessive, but it is
definitely present. The
phrase “son of a
bitch” also appears a couple times,
Sexual Content:
A
history is implied between a trooper and a female
commander. They
talk about it a bit, and
at one point mention something about “that night” and “what you asked
me in the
morning.” When
another ODST notices the
aforementioned commander’s different armor, he asks what kind of armor
it was,
to which another trooper replies jokingly “I don’t know, I wasn’t
looking at
her gear.”
In
an audio diary with limited, static-plagued, and laggy
video, it is mildly implied that a man intends to rape the woman whom
the
diaries follow (his plan is foiled).
Nothing is said outright, and the video is basically a
laggy slideshow:
nothing is seen.
Spirituality:
The
Covenant’s religion was never fully detailed, and its
presence in this game is minimal.
Enemies will sometimes call you a heretic or make vague
references to
their religion, but that is it.
Misc:
On
a positive note, dedication and commitment are displayed
by all the members of the ODST squad.
Also, when a new kind of Covenant shows up with no obvious
purpose and
no murderous intent, the player is encouraged not to kill it: there is
good
reason for this later in the game.
Halo 3: ODST comes
with a second disc bearing the competitive multiplayer from Halo 3 (the
disc is
named Halo 3: Mythic). As with Halo 3, the
multiplayer has no
dialogue, reducing the negative content to only the violence (The game
cannot,
however, control the language of other people when playing over the
internet).
Reviewers Thoughts:
On the
positive side, I am a big fan of the Halo world and
story, so when another Halo game comes out, I know I am going to buy it. I have to admit, I was not
sure about this
one, considering it was originally planned as a simple expansion, a
small
addition to the story of Halo 3. But it was definitely worth it. The campaign is one of the
best of all the
Halo games in my opinion. Also, Firefight is a welcome addition to the
mix as
well: it is a blast to team up with friends and see how long you can
survive
against increasingly-difficult hordes of Covenant. And getting the
entirety of
Halo 3’s great multiplayer is the cherry on top.
This is definitely a worthwhile package for Halo
fans: or even just shooter fans, for that matter.
The story could even stand alone: one could
actually understand it well enough without having played the other Halo
games.
On the negative side, Halo 3: ODST is
a game that focuses on
violence. To be fair, the Halo series
has always been on the lower side of the blood and gore spectrum and
this one
is no exception, but the focus of the game is still to kill the
enemy. Please take the M rating into consideration
and know what you want to allow your child to play before getting this
game.
