OXCGN Reviews Halo 3: ODST Campaign

OXCGN Reports:

"Rewinding several years many people were excited by the prospect of Halo: Chronicles, the ill-fated Peter Jackson project to be developed in conjunction with the Halo film.

After funding fell through for the movie, it's widely known the production team weren't prepared to just part ways and pretend it never happened; instead the team moved onto making District 9 which was released recently to critical acclaim.

What isn't commonly known is that Halo: Chronicles was put in an identical situation. With Halo: Reach under development since Halo 3, when Chronicles was dropped alongside the film what was there to do for a full team in Bungie that wasn't needed yet in Reach's development but had about a year and a half free time? Why, make a spin-off of course!

To make this review more useful, I'll be splitting it into reasons to buy Halo 3: ODST and reasons not to, so you can make up your own mind as to what's important for your tastes."

[REALgamer]

The colours and music are great for the city bits at night. Nice change of pace from Master Chief's antics!

[XboxOZ360]

I don't like Halo much at all. There, said it, A 360 xbox fan who does not really like Halo.

But finally, Bungie have produced something that is unlike any Halo that has been before it. It's actually a pleasure to play it this time. No bouncing Master Chiefs all over the maps, or having to play 'grasshopper' to get kills in SP.

The whole thing makes sense this time, the story is solid, and it feels like a proper FPS - finally.

The atmosphere is awesome, and the idea of changing character to move around through the story is great. Moving back to when teh Drop Ship crashes and seeing how each person on the ship survived and gets through the different sections.

Or coming across a ODST helmet embedded in a glass window, and the cut scene takes you back to the owner of said helmet and lets you run through as that character.

It feels solid and responsive, and this time, you're not some super hero, you DIE, and you die very quickly if you don't use some stealth where necessary. It's no longer run-n-gun kill everything that is in sight.

Which will probably peeve a great deal of Halo-nuts off no end. You watch the complaints come in from the younger halo fans ..

It is finally a decent game worth spending the time on. Congrats Bungie

[REALgamer]

You weren't a fan of the regular Halos but you like ODST?

It shares a lot of similarities with Halo 3 of course, so I would have thought if you didn't like Halo 3 you wouldn't like ODST...?

But yeah, the transition between sneaking around at night to the flashbacks of each squad person is great.

I think the whole 'open world' city thing would be been used a bit more. Maybe things like side missions, or had the Skulls hidden around like the other Halos (unless I missed them?).

A system like Prototype's where certain sections of the city get overrun by Covenant (including vehicles) and change dynamically over time, so then you can either brave the horde or need to work your way around them instead of just the small bands of Covenant.

[cornfedgamer]

You're not alone.

I also didn't much care for the Halo franchise.

[XboxOZ360]

This time is basically what Halo 3 should have been, especially given the cinematics that led up to the release of Halo 3. It was anticlimatic when I loaded Halo 3 into the 360 and hit play. It was NOT what I was expecting it to be given the media hype it was given.

Not that it was a bad game per-se, but this time, both the art, screens and cinematics all match to that of the actual game, you get what you see, and what you pay for - finally.

[XboxOZ360]

That's the problem with gamers these days, they seem to believe a score of 85 is BAD . . come on ppl.

That's good, actually, it fits into the "excellent" marking if things be known. A bad score would be if it was in its 60-70, which would make it "average" . .

The review is marked for the campaign, nothing else, the others will be marked for what they deliver. As some gamers do not actually like Multiplayer or even Co-op, and prefer the Single Player aspects of games.

So this best represents that side of the game, and again, getting an average of b5 is great, not bad.

We''l have our CO-op and then Multiplayer sections up today and tomorrow, all things going to plan.

Games do NOT need 9.8 or 10's all the time, gamers have been pandered to for far too long these days, OXCGN believes in not artificially increasing a score simply to make any game look better in the ratings. Unlike some sites and companies that get paid significant amounts to run favourable reports and reviews.

85% is great . . not bad The old halo fans will most likely not like ODST, new ones will love it, I'm in the later, I love it, yet disliked the first 3, which were way too comical and un-real to me. That's not to say I didn't play them of have fun, I did, but they were not on my must play extensivily list, ODST will be on that list along with Forza 3 and Modern Warfare 2.

[cornfedgamer]

For sure. Review scores get way too much weight. It actually makes you wonder if people take the time to read the entire review, or even the first sentence. They'll base their entire opinion on the score.

[XboxOZ360]

ACtually, you're closer to the mark than you think.

Many gamers, especially the fanboys do not bopther reading much at all, they look for a score, and praise or condemn it (the game) based on their over inflated score ratings system.

Many a time OXCGN has written a solid review, and had readers complain about an aspect or part of the game - only to be shown that the review did in fact cover that, and all they needed to do was 'read it' . .

Plus we have this attitude that anything above 5 lines of text is ranting or going on about something, and many expect a person to say something sensible in 10 words or less covering an item brought up etc.

That falls to the failure of schooling and the unwillingness of students to read properly. OXCGN mst be doing something right, as we do have a higher than average reader time per page than many other sites. Showing that at least the majority of our readers do at least spend the time to read the reviews and articles.

But it does show that wil just 2 min averages on such sites as GameSpot, IGN etc in the reviews section, that readers simply look for a score then move on.

[XboxOZ360]

Well this time, it matches what the hype is about. It is more 'realistic' in a certain way, far less cartoonised that the previous 3. This time you're no longer some super hero, but vunerable and have to use your head in many places, rather than blundering headlong into the fray, as many halo fans simply love to do.

It will be very interesting to see if the Halo online Multiplayer fans change their tactics to suit the game, or simply continue in their stupid way of doing things . like rabbits on a mouse hunt.

[REALgamer]

I like charging in. =P

Nothing like seeing a band of Covenant up ahead, throwing a few grenades and running in guns blazing amidst the explosions to get the adrenaline pumping!

I'm kind of interested to see what direction Reach will take - tactical or run 'n' gun.

I can't really decide which I prefer out of ODST and Halo 3's campaign.

But as to the review, the campaign and firefight modes should be marked separately as OXCGN is doing because half the other ODST reviews are messed up in their scoring. Saying things like "the campaign's too short but Firefight is worth the price of admission on its own, 6/10" Does that mean The game would have scored higher if it was ONLY firefight, but having the campaign too dragged the score down yet it's entirely possible to ignore the campaign's existence...

A friend asked me today if it was worth getting ODST because he'd heard it was getting bad reviews. It's average on Metacritic is 85. I guess that's the stupid thing with blockbuster games now - anything less than 9/10 somehow makes a game 'crap' if it's either an exclusive or from a successful series (or both). Depressing.

[cornfedgamer]

Too true, REALgamer. It's because there's no agreed upon way to relate or interpret game scores. For the movies, the five stars are ubiquitous.

But games are more difficult to judge because everyone's experience will be different by their interactive nature.

And then you have metacritic which can take the context out of game ratings by averaging them together. I know they have a system or algorithm or something that they use to weight certain reviewers against others, but that act takes the personality out of critiquing. And what is a critique other than a personal relation of the experiences within a game, how they interact and if there's any deeper message or meaning behind the project.

[XboxOZ360]

Plus Metacritic can and is abused it kn some factions that are members, to artificially score games to either raise or lower the rating on the site. Nothing that I know has been done about that, and it seems only those who 'obey' the owners rules, which are somewhat lopsided, are allowed to be members of that system, which smacks of favouritisim, and somewhat unethical if you ask me.

SO I pay very little attention to their scores, but sadly, many do, and many developers do as well.

[darkmurder]

Not too high, not too low, just right!

[Godem]

Why the hell werent Elites in the game?

[REALgamer]

However, I did notice 2 things in ODST.

1) A dead Elite on the ground in the city. Didn't see any others, just a lone blue one.

2) When fighting brutes, at one point Buck said "See? They are more fun to kill than Elites!"

[Godem]

yeah there are a few dead Elites hidden around in parts of the city that you wouldn't pass unless you were exploring.

[Immortal Kaim]

I'm really enjoying it so far. I thought Halo 3's story was pretty terrible, it was such a clumsy mess of threads that didn't quite intertwine. ODST on the other hand is great, I love the juxtaposition between the hub and the flashbacks.

P.S if you're an Aussie, BigW have ODST for $68.

[GrathiusXR]

Yes Halo 2 was awesome but filled with too many glitches, bugs and graphical problems and yes Halo 3 is still ultimately THE BEST Co-op game of the franchise but ODST has to be one of the better Single Player experiences and story wise games so far.

The way the story is played out and the flashbacks and such is amazing and a great piece of story telling.

I feel that anything from 8 to 9 is a perfect score for this game and for what it offers.

It has great story telling, returns back to Halo: CE as there's no dual wield, power ups and such.