Halo 3 ODST Preview [360]

24 Jul 2009 at 18:02:39 by

Halo is a franchise that needs no introduction.  You know all about the Master Chief, you know about the UNSC, you know about the struggle to keep the universe from collapsing around us, but very few know about the ODST; the hardcore group which helped clear the way for the Spartans' offensive on the Covenant.

You play as an ODST rookie, where ODST stands for Orbital Drop Shock Trooper.  This elite force's story has never been told and, according to the Bungie team, is a great area to explore.

At the beginning of the game you're introduced to your team, and before long you find yourself in a capsule hurtling towards a Covenant ship in a drop capsule.  Unfortunately, things go horribly wrong.  The ship hits it's warp-speed button and disappears into another dimension, while the buzzing hive of ODSTs in the air crash and bash into each other.  It's not long before you're disoriented and you red out, waking up six hours later inan eerily quiet metropolis, New Mombassa, the setting for the ODST story.

So you're alone, you've lost your company and you're on a mission to find out where they've been and what their fate is.  Still as anonymous as ever, you find yourself in more of a mystery adventure game than anything else, with missions to complete in an environment that which may remind some players of the GTA world.  Traveling from location to location is easy enough.  You run.  Or you can commandeer a vehicle if you're desperate.  Interestingly enough, the Halo 3 ODST map is the biggest Bungie has ever done, and Bakken was keen to point that out.

It's not long before you encounter your first enemies, and it's now you realise you're in the Halo universe.  Everything looks the same, just cleaner, better, sharper.  Of course the surrounding is different, but it retains the Halo feel; in much the same way as the gameplay does.  Immediately, and apart from a few little quirks, your HUD display shows all your familiar icons, from weapons to grenades.  And there's been no change of button mapping here.  For those of you that have been playing other first person shooters, it's advisable you refresh your memories because you'll be pressing all the wrong buttons at first.

Once you've overcome your button problems you'll find yourself in a more relaxed and familiar environment.  ODST soldiers aren't the Master Chief, and Bungie's Lars Bakken was keen to reiterate that fact.  Instead of giving you a completely new character with a completely different skill set, or mission types, what Bungie has done is taken the Master Chief and dumbed him down to create the ODST troops.  We all know that the Master Chief was the don, and we accept that the characters we play now can't be as strong or as tough as the Master Chief, but surely a little more thought could have been put into the type of character we are playing.  Maybe I should elaborate.

You see you don't have regenerative health, you don't have a motion map and you can't jump as high as the big MC, but in reality this really doesn't make much difference.  The health thing, yeah, I suppose does make you play more tactically, but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.

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