It’s an unnerving feeling once you realize you’re alone. Separated from your wingman during the chaos, you realize it’s a mistake that should have never been made. Stick together, strength in numbers, teamwork…you’ve heard it all before. However, mistakes will be made, and it’s how you deal with them that matters. I glance at the round tracker and notice it’s the last round before a reset. Normally, a reset is just some time to breathe and replenish ammo, but not this time. No, this time the reset means much, much, more. It’s a chance to continue, a chance for redemption, and most importantly, a chance to show off to my dead wingman.

It’s at that moment I hear the shout from behind, “don’t let him escape”. I swing around just in time to see a Brute with a plasma cannon fire off a round with my name on it. I instinctually jump to avoid the splash damage while simultaneously throwing a plasma grenade of my own. My grenade tags the Brute, the Brute goes BOOM, no more Brute. One down, too many to go…gotta keep moving.

There’s no time to celebrate, although there’s always time to gloat. Especially since I know that EngineerJD is watching it all unfold via the “death cam” and just witnessed my leet awesomeness. Fortunately, I had already picked up a gravity hammer off a recently deceased Brute Chieftain, and now I just had to wait…patiently…for the next kill to arrive. And arrive they did, only to meet the business end of my noobstick – The Gravity Hammer. One, two, then three, and the bodies began to pile up, all while EngineerJD watched from over my shoulder like a little Hispanic guardian angel barking out locations and incoming threats. A minute later the announcer chimes in with the phrase we had been waiting for.

“Round Complete, Items Reset”

Holy shit, we did it; we survived. And with the completion of the round comes two additional lives which meant reincarnation for my little guardian angel. EngineerJD was back to fight another day and before we could even celebrate, the sound of two Covenant dropships in the distance reminded us not to get too happy. There’s still a fight to finish.

This is Firefight, and this is Halo:ODST.

Hola kids, welcome to The Morning After. TMA is what I’ll be calling my reviews that I post. Why The Morning After? Well Post Mortem was taken, and I liked it; that’s why. Plus, I thought it accurately reflected the fact that I, unlike the press, have to wait to get my games like everyone else so my reviews won’t be up until well after release. So instead of recommending a buy or no buy, I’m going to use TMA to reflect on what I liked, what I didn’t, and hopefully use it as a catalyst to spark some conversation with you guys.

Halo:ODST is my favorite disappointment of the last few years. Yes, I said disappointment. I’ll get to why in a minute. Let’s first start with what I liked.

1. 1.It’s Halo, but not. The game, despite the complete lack of any Masters or Chiefs, is still Halo. There are still Warthogs sliding on ice that’s not there, you’re still fighting an alien race that speaks perfect English, and the gameplay still just flat out “feels” better than anything not named Call of Duty or Modern Warfare (depending on who’s sending the emails from Activision).
   

2. 2.The Music. Uncle Marty does it again. The Halo series consistently produces some of the best soundtracks in videogames. I had read good things about Marty O’Donnell’s new sound for ODST and everything the critics have said is justified. It’s one of his best. A fresh sound for a familiar franchise.
   

3. 3.Firefight. Take the best things from Horde mode, mix well with Halo 3’s finely tuned gameplay, and then add just a splash of Bungie ingenuity. What you’ll have is a good idea of what Firefight is all about. Like everything else Bungie (or Blizzard) does, they’ve taken an existing idea, tweaked it, and produced a wonderfully fun game mode. Good times will be had by all.
   

So if the gameplay is good, the music is good, and the multiplayer is good, what’s left to disappoint?

The story and the game’s structure, that’s what.

I know, I was just as surprised as you probably are right now, but if anything falls flat in this grand experiment, it’s the story. Actually, that’s not entirely correct. The story itself isn’t the biggest issue (it’s serviceable. Not spectacular, but good enough.). Instead, one of the game’s two missteps for me was the storytelling. In Halo:ODST you’re free to unravel the mystery in any order. You’re dropped into a huge chunk of city knowing what needs to be done, but not exactly how to do it. It’s this freedom, in my opinion, that ultimately detracts from the experience more than enhances it. In order to accommodate the free-flowing nature of the storyline, Bungie had to break it up into little compartmentalized chunks. This allowed them to tell a coherent story, while not requiring you to advance through the clues in a specific order. This also meant that any story or cutscenes would need to be self-contained to each of these flashbacks. As a result, the story felt disjointed and fragmented. Yes, I know the story WAS fragmented on purpose, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.

The choice to go with flashbacks as the main storytelling mechanic also created a clear “flow” to the gameplay.  This flow consisted of wandering around at night to find the next clue, then via flashback, being transported to an action sequence where you play another ODST team member. This also felt like an area where the game faltered. First, the sections that take place at night were not nearly as fun as the flashbacks. Walking around the city and hunting for clues became something to endure, rather then enjoy. The good stuff was in the flashbacks, and anytime I wasn’t playing through one, I was thinking about the quickest way to get to the next one.

Finally, ODST lacked that intangible “just one more game” type of addictiveness that marked each of the prior Halo games. Since the game had clear transitions from one gameplay element to the next, I found it a little too easy to stop after each mission and pick up later. Some people hate linear storytelling in their games, but the “what’s gonna happen next” factor of the Halo games kept me addicted until the credits rolled and I believe part of that was due to the linear story being well tuned and expertly paced.

Halo:ODST isn’t the greatest game ever. It’s not even the greatest game this year. It is a great game with a fresh concept and an intriguing side story that happens to be set in the Halo universe. ODST is a game worth playing, and even if the single-player isn’t quite the homerun we’ve come to expect from Bungie, everyone needs to give Firefight a try.

Just don’t forget to pack your little Hispanic guardian angel. I never brave the Internet without one.

-Steve

P.S. Next up on the list – the PSP gets a little love with my take on GT-PSP and Final Fantasy Dissidia.