I went into ODST giggling in excitement to be able to completely destroy the game in the worst possible way. Turns out that I didn't get that chance due to ODST not being all as bad as I originally intended. That doesn't make the game great but it did pass my standards for it and that gives it a unwilling thumbs up.

I'll get right to the point, that I'm sure a lot of others have stated by now as well. If you liked the past halo games you'll like this. Nothing has changed. Shields are replaced with "stamina" which is the equivalent of rechargeable shields. You use the same weapons (excluding the two new ones obviously). You even are still a mostly unstoppable bad ass going through countless numbers of enemies to achieve your goal.

I was actually rather let down by the fact there really wasn't any ability to sneak past enemies. What I mean is, yes technically you could sneak past enemies that are far away and facing the other direction - you could also do the same thing in the past halo games. Nothing has changed. While speaking about that, the walking around the city at night is a rather pointless addition only added to make the game longer. I'm not going to deny that it may, for some, add a new feeling into the game play but it's not different. You commonly just go back and fourth from one end to another just to start the next mission. To be perfectly honest, I thought finding the telephone when you first get out was the best part. You actually needed to find your way around the city for a short time.. Making it have a purpose. Just putting way-points on a map and saying "go here" isn't any less linear than GTA tends to be. The city directs you around, giving you clues where to go or where you should be. That's great let it stay like that. Giving us a map direct/straight forward map is giving us the ability to shun any hints given to us.


I suppose I should talk about the individual missions just to hold back the waves of complaining masses if I didn't. The actual missions involve stepping in the shoes of one of your squad mates at different times after the drop. It commonly involves day time combat across the city with different goals. Mostly just trying to survive and find the rest of your squad. Going from a zoo, to across roof tops. I will give these missions something though. I actually enjoyed the bloody things (usually). Some of the cutscenes were great and showed how vulnerable (and apparently bad ass) the ODST are and can be. The issue being that doesn't actually show while playing the game. Yes even on the three missions I played on legendary so far (the final two missions as well as another random one) you still seem a little too bad ass for your title.

There's a lot I could go over but I just can't bring myself to do so. Is the game good? Yes. Is it great? Not really. It's nothing more than Halo 3 dressed up in a new outfit. Yes it's supposed to be an expansion but it was supposed to be a major difference in gameplay, it isn't.


To the point, if you thought the halo series campaign died a little after 2 and 3 were released like myself, at least give this a try (rent or borrow it off someone would probably work). If you found it completely eye clawing painful (also like myself, but I attempt to have an open mind to things that claim to be different) then don't bother. It's just the same game with nothing worth keeping it other than having the halo 3 multiplayer, including all maps, on one disk. That saves hard drive space and saves a halo 3 purchase if you never played it.

So what's my take on this? There are still a lot of things wrong with this game (many I didn't even bother going over) but for some reason I can't bring myself to call it bad. Maybe I'm just happy I'm not stuck playing as Master Chief. I suppose I may be a closet Halo lover who only claims to hate it to make myself feel better. Yeah that's it...I also have no hands, can melt faces off with my mind, like throwing kittens at old ladies, grow potatoes out of the vents in my walls, and get a willy from sticking pointy objects into my eyes.

For those of you dense folks, only two of those were true.

It isn't that this box art isn't good, in fact the art is rather decent and It's not hard on the eyes. The issue is we've seen this box art before. Re-using the same concept is not cool. Not cool at all. Try mixing things up a little more next time around and we'll talk.

It's rather obvious where I'm going with this. An picture of an anime girl whom I assume to be the main character. She has a large number of weapons and an abnormally large amount of clothing. Yet for some reason I can still hear the sounds of pants being undone. Generic anime chick aside it's on nothing more than a single color background. All they did to make this was take some art sent to them, copy/paste it, and call it a day. They still get points though - It's still a decent drawing that I will never be able to do.