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| ODST campaign review *Minor SP* *LONG* | |
| Posted By: Jammerfer [MunKy] <jammerfer@hotmail.com> | Date: 9/18/09 6:08 p.m. |
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I got my preordered copy of ODST last night, and at 12 in the morning, began playing the campaign, from start to finish, on Heroic (The way Halo was meant to be played lol).
Spoilers are kept to a minimum, but there's lots of unavoidable things that I feel must be mentioned, mostly concerning the already-viewable achievements, Sadie's story, weapons, and enemy encounters. No story related spoilers. But there are a few in-game events that I'd like to touch upon, but nothing people can't discern for themselves. Part 1: Pillar of Autumn Halo 3 ODST is being touted as one of the few big releases of the fall, and with that, there's so much hype and expectation being built around it, no doubt making Bungie's collars moist with worry. After all, this was just supposed to be an expansion. But so much is riding on the success of Firefight, and I believe it's partly because people have, in a way, given up on the campaign portion of the Halo games, and not entirely without good reason. A full $60 price tag is a bit much, it would seem, for Firefight and three maps, given that the campaign portion is expected to be mediocre. So is the campaign itself a great reason to buy the game? We know it's not as long as the other games, so how would you justify the pricing? That is what I explore. Have I gotten my $60 worth, having only played the campaign? Part 2: Reveille Right away, inserting the disk, you're given something new. A scrolling narration, catching you up on events up to the point of the game. It feels like an introduction to the universe, and I really liked reading it. It reminded me of when I first read the synopsis in Halo's manual. It doesn't stuff you with details, it presents you with a world, and then drops you in (for the record, any "drop in" puns are unintentional. Bungie beat that horse nice and tender) without much else. Everything feels more refined, from the menus, the navigation, the presentation, and the simple background. It's very well thought out, which I liked, as I personally disliked Halo 2 and 3's blue backdrop of a very pretty but pointless shot of Mombassa. It felt nothing like Halo's beautiful shot of Installation 04, and navigation through the menus didn't feel like there was too much love put into it. This backdrop, of a sleeping ODST, is very nice and, in a way, symbolic. A peaceful and calm moment of a man trained to go into situations where peace and calm are likely just memories. A man waiting for you. So with the mood set, I selected the campaign, chose my difficulty, and began. Right away the mood is bleak, and characters (and personalities) are introduced. It's much like the first Halo, where you come in, and people are worried, but not much is told to you right away. Halo 2 began in such a way attempting to make you care about what politics and consequences of the first Halo were, from the Covenant perspective. I understand the importance, plotwise, but feel it really set you off on the wrong foot of the game. The bred-for-combat warrior you've been waiting to see again isn't seen for the first three minutes of cutscene or so, and when he's introduced, he's not weary of the battle that has claimed most all of of his brothers and sisters, he's not wondering what he must do next to protect humanity, he's giggling with a sergeant about car parts and not having to accept budgetary responsibility. I liked the symbolism of him putting his helmet back on for anyone who didn't read First Strike, as it's not so meaningful, knowing he's had even tougher battles since the game ended. And then you have Halo 3's confusing Deus Ex Machina opening sequence of "Chief needs to be on Earth, so uhhh... here ya go. And BTW Johnson somehow beat him here too :3 w00t!"...... I think it's clear I didn't much like that one... But I really like the (slightly over-animated) introduction to ODST. The hero sleeps while other characters converse about the situation. Right away you know what kind of men these are, but their personalities aren't beat over your head or clearly defined right away. They each have quirks that aren't touched upon until later in the game, and it's nice that this period is brief. Most of the emphasis is on Reyn-err, Buck. The drop is just as awesome as we've seen, with In Amber Clad flying alongside the Carrier and other small touches (The ground getting set ablaze under the slip-space rupture). Here, I must point out the graphics. Faces are smoother, but some (Romeo and Dare especially) look very strange when viewed at certain angles (Does Romeo have a grille?). Bungie's face modeling has improved, and it's leaps and bounds better than Halo 3 (Lord Hood haunts my sleepless nights). Graphically though, The games is amazing. It's a refined Halo 3 engine. Halo 3 was bungie's first attempt at working with a next-gen engine, and despite being a resounding success, it did show at times that it was new territory for them. ODST shows that they are more familiar with what they can do, and that they realized how may corners they cut in Halo 3. There's so much more going on onscreen in any one part of the game than there was in Halo 3 (Except possibly with the exception of Floodgate). The problem? HDMI. I do not complain that the game isn't full HD. But if you've got an HDTV, and the HDMI is plugged in, you get jaggies. Is this a bad thing per se? No. The game is beautiful, and plays smoothly. I will talk more about graphics later in the review, as the topic stands out (more like juts out) in some areas of the game so much, that you have to pause and reflect. And so the carrier jumps, knocks your plans on their head, and your atmospheric descent ends in a crash and you black out with a view from inside your insertion vehicle. Remind you of anything? Part 3: Flawless Cowboy The screen is black, and you wake up. It's game time. You go through a more solitary tutorial than before. You are alone, after all. Bungie did a nice job of being more straightforward with their tutorial system, something the tried to make subtle in previous games. I like this approach, because it makes the entire situation feel, as I said, more refined. The mood of the game is great, with a burning sky above you and rain falling around you (but never on your visor). Then you fall, taking damage. (Crouching is still viable, and a nostalgic thing to try.) Being in control of the ODST, you are immediately grounded, literally, and figuratively. Things you skipped over in Halo 2 and 3 (Cars, for example) are now almost your height, and you can't jump over them. The height difference isn't huge (Only about a foot and a half), but it really makes everything feel more realistic. Streets and cars in Halo 2 weren't feasibly human, everything felt like if people really were there, if would be too crowded for anything to work. Bungie put Earth first this time, and I'll be pointing out the different ways later on. When you first see Covies walking the streets, the fight or flight feeling kicks in. You want to try out the automag, but there's so much you can hide behind, assuming the grunts don't recon around possible hiding places (and they do at times). I chose hiding, but temptation quickly won out, and I opened fire. Three grunts were dead before any fire was shot at me, and I can say this about the new Pistol. It's no Hand Cannon, but boy is it close. Can't say I'm in love with the SMG, but it gets the job done. You're also a bit slower, so running away from enemies and plasma fire becomes much more difficult. And for the first time since Halo's Legendary, seeing gunfire headed towards you gave you a genuine feeling of fear. In halo 2 and 3, plasma fire is small in size, does little damage per round, and is generally easy to dodge. Not the case here. And once again cars and debris come into play. They're almost your height remember? Gone is the simple strafing while your BR takes groups out from a distance. Now you must take cover, and make your shots count, because theirs will. You are underpowered now, and worse, under-equipped. The automag is amazing, but ammo for it is scarce. all ammo is scarce actually, once more bringing the first Halo to mind. you can't just go into a situation, take out the big guy and mop up the rest. It simply won't work that way, because while your plasma pistol and Pistol are stunning and killing a brute, jackal rangers are making you helpless, and grunts are chipping away your health. Fights have to be analyzed and planned out before you open fire randomly, though at times you don't get more than 30 seconds to plan, and other times you're literally cornered and have to figure out how to make things work with what you've got, as there's nothing else around. for you to use. You're more vulnerable than a Spartan, but you're not helpless. And when you run into Marines, it's different than when you ran into them as chief. Here, any help is immensely useful, given that the rookie is always alone. But the difference is the interaction. No longer are you seen as an otherworldly force. No more "The cavalry has arrived!". Now it's "Trooper, over here! Help us flip this warthog!".... You feel more like a human than a super soldier, and a big part of this is not just your limitations, but your dialogue. You hear painful pants when you're shot and recovering, comments will be made when a weapon is drawn, when ammo is scarce, etc. It really immerses you into the boots of whoever you're playing. One thing I noticed that differentiates an ODST from a Spartan, is a very curious thing. ODST's can carry detachable turrets. Not only that, they're FAST when carrying them. They aren't slowed down at all by carrying them, unlike the Chief. Another thing was that I got to observe something interesting. A small touch Bungie put was leaning against walls. I don't know if it happens whie in first person, but when carrying a turret, you can get close to a wall and watch the ODST lean against it as he moves. It makes him seem professional, and of course, you'd expect the best to know what they're doing. It's a small touch I loved. And that's something you begin to notice often about ODST. It's full of so many little touches, that you can't imagine it was made in just over a year. Part 4: Reunion Tour The city is sprawling. And well-designed. Water fountains, payphones, even malfunctioning ticket machines are among the city's infrastructure, not seen in Halo 2 or 3. The city just feels like a real futuristic place, despite all the sloping roads. Traversing the city in search for clues isn't boring, because there's so much to look at. Like I said, there hasn't been so much going on in a Halo level since Floodgate. Papers billow in the wind, small insects float around. The space elevator billows smoke. The empty city feels alive. It's also not boring because Covenant are occasionally dropped in via phantom, or whatever monster closet they were in (actually, early on, there IS a "monster closet" of sorts that caused me to hesitate, and wonder about the situation Two jackals were in a room of an abandoned building, and they were just curiously looking at stuff. Of course, my hesitation got me noticed, and shot. Before I could get out of my stupor, my stamina was gone, and my health was about to follow.) The AI has been tweaked. Everyone reacts faster, and smarter. A brute managed to hit me with a brute shot round from a moderate distance when I took him by surprise with a grenade. Grenade physics and mechanics have been changed. Sticking enemies isn't easy, and when you manage to do so, it's not always a winning situation, as brutes WILL leap at you, as Elites did in Halo. And the first time you run into a Hunter, you realize you're not equipped for that situation. Hunters become scary again. Their mortar rounds from Halo are back. With a vengeance. Ammunition for human weapons is scarce. Finding automag ammo is so difficult that I was pretty much limited to the caches you can unlock. And even those are scattered about and are pretty rare. And as I mentioned before, you no longer have the Battle Rifle. I say good riddance, as the omission of it and dual-wielding brings something Halo 2 lost: Balance. No longer can you run around saving your best weapon's ammo while you hold plasma weapons in one hand and human in the other. Because now they're all you have, and you can only use one at a time. As in the days of Halo 3, your weapon choices are important, because the differences between them matter now more than ever.
Speaking of needler, there is an issue on achievements. they are simple, but not simple to get. The game often requires you to perform a certain number of actions on a level, such as getting 10(?) needler kills. Simple enough in Halo 3, but not so here. If you die, you lose whatever progress towards your achievement you made since the last checkpoint. And then ammo for weapons (such as the needler) is scarce. There is a nice addition of a progress bar that you didn't have in Halo 3 (you never really knew when you'd unlock Fear the Pink Mist), which lets you know what achievements you need to start progress over for. The fact that you lose progress isn't a gripe. It makes your Achievement just that. An achievement. It's not wise to run around using only your needler, but if you can manage to do so, you deserve your achievement. The guns themselves are strangely the same size as they are in Halo 3. The needler still looks small in your hands, when in Halo it was huge. Bigger than the plasma rifle. Now it's a small handgun. You'd think everything looked bigger for ODSTs than for Spartans. But alas, for the weapons, this isn't the case. Not a problem, just a curiosity. And I don't know why I keep bringing up the needler. Part 5: Truth and Reconciliation There are two big parts of the plot. The first is clues, the second is audio diaries (for lack of a better term). The clues are scattered about the city in such a way that you're inclined to seek them out in a chronological manner, and some are more directly related to the flashback they trigger than others. I say this because people have been wondering about the whole "choose your own sequence" to progress the story. The truth is that while you can do that after the second clue, it never feels so open. It's more of a "You should go here. It's closer, and is better defined on the map, but you don't have to" feeling. And only once did I not find a clue that triggered the next chronological sequence from the last. In fact, when the game was done, it felt like I missed two clues. Whether I did or not, I'm not sure, but something about the story didn't feel right.
The second part of the plot is Sadie's story. When I first found an audio log, I felt let down. It was a very cartoony African accent, almost unintelligible at first. As I found more, I became engrossed. There was something at work here. This small story was headed somewhere, and I was very interested to find out where. Alas, I only found 13 audio files, out of 30 if I recall correctly. I love the focus that Bungie put into tying the plot together. Sadie is a girl who meets people of Mombasa before the slip-space jump, and though I don't know yet how it ties into ODST's plot, I'm honestly eager to find out Part 6: Into the Belly of the Beast The gameplay is fun, the characters are enjoyable, the story is consistently well done. But what about the graphics, physics, and mechanics?
Physics-wise, it's nice to feel a sense of gravity again. From fall damage to arcing grenades, the game gets you comfortable with realism to the point that seeing a chieftain fling a burning wreck towards you with a gravity hammer strike becomes a moment of terror, much like seeing a Tank hit a car towards you in Left 4 Dead. You know it's dangerous. When it comes to the HUD, Bungie did it really well. Weapons appear under your reticle rather than on the top right, and the shapes are large, which gives the illusion that even a plasma pistol is valuable when found (and it is). The compass at the top of your visor proves to be less valuable than expected, because I ended up plotting my paths using the overhead map rather than the compass. I only used it when I'd stop to scavenge for audio logs or medkits, to regain my bearing. But it's not too terribly useful. Could have been done better.
One minor gripe is weapon reticles. They seem a bit too big at times, certainly too thick (like the needler's), and some, like the plasma pistol's, made me question my widescreen setting for a moment. Part 7: Shut Up And Get Behind Me... Sir. ODST has been labeled as Bungie's $60 labor of love to fans of the first Halo, and the campaign is an acknowledgment that they lost sight of why Halo has so much going for it that even its sequels can't top. It certainly has staying power. After playing the campaign portion, I can say this. Thanks Bungie, I love you too. So much just reminds me of the original Halo, and the gameplay is an evolution of the first game, in fact, I'll say that THIS is what Halo 2 should have been like, I wouldn't have minded a new protagonist, as the chief gets more dehumanized as the sequels go along. I don't see John-117 in any of the sequels, so I feel he should have not been used so much to drive the plot of the second and third game. At least not alone. Where was Kelly, Linda, Fred, and Will? They were unique, and very interesting, but never used, in favor of throwing in the Covenant perspective and a bigger story. ODST gives you characters to like, and a story you can follow without prior knowledge of Halo 2 or 3. It doesn't do too much to really expand their characters, other than pointing out that Dutch is religious (in a good, funny way) with his dialogue. Many people credit Nathan Fillion's Buck as a favorite, but Adam Baldwin's Dutch is my personal favorite. You want to get to know them better. Playing as them is fun, even if it's brief. I started playing the game around exactly midnight, and beat it around 5:40. I didn't blaze through it, finding almost half of the audio logs and stopping to appreciate things. The game is short. But you get so much win, that you want to play it again. There's many different situations and environments the game shows you, and often they seem like Bungie doing what the fans always wanted, but never got. Yanme'e (Drones) were underused in Halo, and nearly nonexistent in Halo 3. They finally get a just treatment in ODST. Vehicles quit being appreciated in Halo 3, other than the fact that without them, traversing areas would be long and tedious (except for the latter half of Tsavo Highway, but Halo 2 and 3 didn't have a Two Betrayals, or an Assault on The Control Room (admittedly the same map, but different points to the vehicles). This game gives vehicular combat a serious comeback. Do you remember that time you piloted a banshee in Halo 3's campaign? Me neither. It just seems like this game really is Bungie seriously listening to its fans. The sequences where you're with Marines in Firefight situations (ONI building, for example) don't play out like you think they would, but rather how they logically would. Instead of making a stand, you all end up losing ground quickly, so you feel like you're REALLY in the Human vs. Covenant war, something being a super-soldiers has always made fuzzy. If I can plow through these guys without breaking a sweat, why aren't we winning? Now it's apparent. I will say this. ODST's campaign is superior to Halo 3's, because I didn't feel like I was going through the motions. I had to unlearn strategies, rethink weapons, appreciate Marines, and fear groups of Covenant. All while enjoying a story you can actually immerse yourself in. Is it worth $60? Honestly, no. The game is great, it's amazing, and I appreciate all the work and effort put into it, but it's not a $60 game.I'd pay $30 for that campaign, easy. But you're not just getting a campaign that you can play cooperatively, and that's where the rest of the game comes in, besides a $10 map pack. Tonight I'll play Firefight. Which I know will kick my butt. Not because I lack skill, but because the game was HARD when it sent a few waves after me, now how am I going to make it through waves of that? In my experience, Firefight just has to give me a $20 experience (coupling it with Theater mode, which really helps because during the campaign I lasered two hunters with marines between them unscathed with one shot. From the bottom of a slope. THAT'S what saved films are all about). Epilogue: The Silent Cartographer. What would I rate my ODST experience so far? I give it a serious 9 out of 10. There is so much going for the campaign. A good story among countless little things (Firefly Reunion?), and the only real gripe, incidentally, is that it was short. Six to eight hours is about right, depending on whether you look for all the audio logs, but it's a quality eight hours, you end up wanting it to be longer, you want more dialogue, you want more time with the ODSTs. Little issues with the game (640p resolution, faces, small wapon details) are so minor, it's really stupid to claim they hold the game back in any remotely significant way. The game is great, and THIS is the campaign I've craved since Guilty Spark soundlessly flew across the screen.
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| Replies: |
| ODST campaign review *Minor SP* *LONG* | Jammerfer [MunKy] | 9/18/09 6:08 p.m. |
| Re: ODST campaign review *Minor SP* *LONG* | Minime637 | 9/18/09 6:16 p.m. |
| I forgot the MUSIC!!!!! | Jammerfer [MunKy] | 9/18/09 6:24 p.m. |
| Re: I forgot the MUSIC!!!!! | Minime637 | 9/18/09 6:29 p.m. |
| Re:^ ODST campaign review Play by play spoilers! *NM* | Hedgemony | 9/18/09 6:52 p.m. |
| Re:^ ODST campaign review Play by play spoilers! | PriorMarcus | 9/19/09 9:12 a.m. |
| You call that a long review? :p | Gravemind | 9/18/09 9:47 p.m. |
| Answer. And Firefight. | Jammerfer [MunKy] | 9/19/09 10:39 a.m. |
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