I distinctly remember 9-10 year old me really not loving ODST when it first released. While I think it's still one of the weaker Halo games for a number of reasons, I've come around to enjoy its unique take considerably more.

By far the greatest strength of ODST is in its more human-focused story. Whereas Master Chief's and Noble Team's outings are about saving the world (or attempting to save it) from a major threat, the team of ODSTs are mostly just trying to survive. Thanks to the various missions starring different cast members, many of those characters get to have plenty of development to show their role and friendship dynamic in the full squad. The only exception I'd say to this is Dare, who doesn't show up for a whole lot of the game outside of key story moments.

The selection of music is also among some of Bungie's best, complementing the moodier tones of this entry perfectly with jazz undertones and a melancholy atmosphere. Admittedly I found the music to be a tad overused at times in the first half, but you can't fault how this series continues to deliver unforgettable scores.

Compared to many others however, I didn't find this game's issues to lie in its distinct take on the universe but rather how well that idea was executed. It's clear that Bungie was going for a fight for survival as one of the game's guiding design philosophies through the (partial) lack of a shield and more difficult enemy encounters. However, the sections involving flashbacks to the other squad members stand in direct contrast with that idea, with the majority being the epic vehicle sections the game is known for. These are executed well, as is the standard, but it sells the game as more of that power fantasy style rather than the gritty survival story they were likely intending.

I also wasn't a huge fan of Bungie's half-handed take on more open-world style levels. The elements are there, but given that style is used for little more than some added audio logs, it disincentivizes exploration over heading to the next objective marker.

As a revisit though, I'm happy to report that ODST is much better than I thought at first. It's still fairly low in how I'd rank the series as a whole, but it had some great ideas to set itself apart. It also doesn't overstay its welcome, clocking in at around 5 hours or so.

I was so on board with the game in the first few hours, where roaming the city at night all by yourself finding out what happened to your team was absolute vibes. But it kinda quickly loses its luster as you find out that after a while, the city you explore doesn't have that much to offer. Everything kinda looks the same and the map turns out to be a lot smaller than you initially thought. The one upside to exploring the city is finding the audio logs. I did enjoy trying to find them and learning about its story, but after a while I just couldn't find anymore without having to resort to backtracking a huge part of the city which I didn't have the patience for, leaving the audio log story line to be unfinished and kinda left me blue balled.

None of the flashback missions were bad, but I also didn't find many of them to be that interesting or stand out. There was no mission in the game that was unique to this game that the previous games haven't already done. The setting gets very tiring to look at as 95% of the time you are just looking at city. I also wasn't really attached to any of the characters as you don't really spend much time with them or see them interact with each other that much. Also who's idea was it to make the final mission an escort mission.

Epilogue cutscene goes hard though.

Gostei muito dessa campanha!

É um Halo com uma pegada diferente, trocamos cenários coloridos e ruínas forerunners por ruas escuras vazias e uma trilha sonora com um Jazz bem lento.

Gostei também de um aspecto que sempre senti falta nos clássicos de Halo, e que virou temática com o tempo, a humanidade. Os soldados ODST são mais humanos e frágeis, é possível ouvi-los ofegantes, assustados ou com dor. Falando em humanidade, foi bem gostoso caminhar pelas ruas vazias ouvindo uma história muito bem dublada nos audiologs encontrados pelo jogo.

Mecanicamente é divertido como qualquer Halo, porém sem a mecânica do escudo, afinal em ODST não controlamos o Master Chief e nem algum outro Spartan, e sim um Soldado da UNSC.

Recomendadíssimo!

Joguei inteiramente pelo XCloud e foi perfeito!

[Played on keyboard and mouse on Normal difficulty]
Ok, come on Bungie. You can't just give me half a Firefly reunion in the voice cast to endear me to your game. That's cheating.

Thankfully, the game earns points legit by other means, too. Rookie wandering the nighttime streets of the city to smooth jazz is obvious padding, but it's a fine enough narrative framing device between flashback levels and it hits an immaculate vibe, so it's easily forgiven for that.

It's hard to return to health meters, medkits and no dual wielding like the CE days alongside a weapon selection that's missing a few from Halo 3's perfect attendance arsenal, but combat still has that Halo 3 touch of polish that assures it stays well balanced, outside of just a couple moments that feel overwhelming. And hey, this time I can't easily pin those road blocks on the Flood! Though, that might make me more bothered by them, somehow? Wait. Do I miss the Flood?

TL;DR - Imperfect but interesting experimental spinoff. Looking forward to Reach!

Yeah this is actually pretty dang good.

Although the narrative is a lot tighter and more inconsequential than the three mainline titles released previously, ODST hits everything in stride in its sub four hour runtime. A tight package running on a familiar engine sees you take the role of a group of Orbital Drop Shock Troopers as opposed to the series mainstay Master Chief, tasked with delivering a promise on a seemingly suicidal mission. In your way stands the Covenant and a plethora of secrets and hints as to what happened to your peers.

Marty O' Donnell delivers another masterclass in the soundtracking department. In lieu of grandiose symphonic arrangements that detail the epic overcoming of a greater force, ODST is accompanied by a more ambient jazz and lower-fi rainfall of fittingly cozy songs. Everything just feels right for the delapidated city and downpour. In a game where you're playing as a normal soldier in the world of Spartans, Hunters, and the Flood, you need the entire environment to make you feel literally and emotionally grounded, and that's exactly what Marty was able to do.

The city of New Mombasa, formerly visited in Halo 2, is dark and dank with mystery abound. Even though the experience is short, being able to shoot and weave through the metropolis with a different set of weapons was the approach this title needed. Of course you get your warthog-led Halo moments like your engagement in the zoo and on the highway towards the end of the game, but the majority of ODST is seen through the eyes of the troops on the ground, as ants in a greater colony's conflict.

I was legitimately surprised with how well ODST held up and actually felt good in the current gamesphere to play. Not long after playing the beloved Halo 1's and 2's of the world, I find myself grateful for ODST and the solidly solemn experience it provides.

And now for something completely different.

I adore this game.

In the intro of this post, I mentioned that I saw similarities between Metroid Prime and Halo in the past. Playing through the trilogy now, though, made it clear that only a small number of those similarities manage to barely exist in the most surface level way, and aren’t even worth thinking about. Whatever my younger self saw to make that connection wasn’t wrong, but it certainly wasn’t truth. However… the first couple hours of this game made me feel a similar way. Exploring an empty, nearly silent city at night, all alone, outnumbered but not outgunned, exploring and investigating the environment to determine the path forward while utilizing a scan visor to identify objects of interest, and all with delectable atmospheric music playing? It’s a magical feeling.

Playing as an ODST was a very welcome change of pace. Not because Master Chief isn’t cool, but because it’s very apparent that there are plenty of other cool people in this world, and ODSTs are high on the list. They aren’t spartans, and yet they fight like spartans, and honestly, I think they look cooler than spartans. They get cooler gear too, I like the suppressed SMG and I love the suppressed pistol, or should I say, pocket sniper rifle.

The level and encounter design is very well laid out to create a much more weak and vulnerable feeling in the player, even at times encouraging you to sneak around enemies and avoid combat entirely, which is helped even further by your character actually breathing heavily and crying out in pain when they get shot, eventually taking a deep breath after taking cover before the huge red overlay on the screen fades away, which reminds you that these guys are probably the absolute peak of humanity to be able to recover their composure like that even while feeling vulnerable. That feeling of vulnerability remained persistent from start to finish, which is impressive considering that you wipe out effectively an entire small army in that time, and even if the canon isn’t what the gameplay reflects, the rookie survived all alone in a covenant occupied city for an entire night. Romeo survived the whole ordeal and continued to pull his weight as an instrumental part of the team even after getting slammed in the chest with an axe and tearing a slice out of his lung, all he needed was a bit of foam blasted in there.

And speaking of canon, the story of this game is a diamond. I don’t like Buck, and I especially don’t like his interactions with Dare, but that’s all I feel like complaining about. Characters talk a lot, there is a clear sequence of events other than simply killing your way through the game, the perspective of playing detective all night is just sublime, the sub-story told through the terminals is both compelling and actually has a connection to the gameplay… it’s not telling the kind of story that only a video game can tell, but it’s definitely telling a darn good one. I wasn’t just having fun playing a video game like before, I was genuinely enthralled by the things that were unfolding, and especially the way they were framed through flashbacks triggered by the rookie’s investigating.

The moment I got to the data center and saw an alien in there right after the system shut down, realizing that all the security camera footage I saw throughout the game along with the terminals was probably actually shown to the rookie by this guy, only to have my realization confirmed by what Dare said about him? Probably the most satisfying moment I’ve ever gotten from a linear cinematic narrative in a game of this scale. That moment instantly filled my head with tons of “what if” thoughts surrounding the prior events of the story – something none of the previous games even came close to doing – and got me invested enough to catch myself thinking it might be nice to get into the expanded universe sometime. That never happens.

The worst part of this game is that I will never be able to experience it for the first time again.

(from my web zone: https://kerosyn.link/oh-yeah-halo-exists/#halo-odst)

Halo 3: ODST manages to impress me in many ways. There's a lot of great qualities about this one and at one point I even thought about putting it above Halo 2 (though I think in the end 2 still wins due to things like certain missions alone). I really like how the story is set up, with the Rookie being knocked out for six hours and having to piece together everything that happened during that time. It leaves a lot of mystery which is an element I really like in stories. The actual missions themselves were also really fun, with great level design that doesn't have the faults of the earlier games (not really 3, mainly CE and 2). The OST is also incredible, seriously there are so many earworms in this game that I'll definitely be looping when I keep adding to my VGM playlist. There's also quite a few details I really appreciate since we're playing as an ODST, like how the recoil on guns is more harsh or that you don't have shields like Master Chief. The game feels harder than normal, but still fair and it's all due to lore reasons which is really neat to see. All the characters are great too, it's fun to see them all interact and you really feel like rooting for them as it goes on. Also, the references/inspiration from the Divine Comedy (specifically The Inferno) is REALLY cool and I loved seeing the nods to it. Overall, this game has a ton of creativity and unique qualities that make it really stand out for me a lot more and make it another enjoyable Halo campaign.

Foi necessário um spinoff, mas finalmente temos de novo um Halo com world design expansivo e uma módica não-linearidade. Só isso já faria de ODST o melhor Halo desde o original, mas ele não para por aí, trazendo uma série de novidades: a ambientação fantástica, a trilha sonora de jazz que se encaixa surpreendentemente bem com o tom do jogo, a narrativa focada em soldados comuns, a divisão da história em flashbacks que podem ser vistos em diferentes ordens... Se Halo 3 me deixou com um gosto amargo na boca, pensando que a série estagnou no 2, ODST é seu antídoto perfeito.

Ah, e esse é o primeiro Halo que jogo sem Flood, graças a Deus.

Campaign review

Easily the most difficult Halo game I've played. I really enjoyed how focused the game felt. I think the sense of camaraderie is done better in this than Reach. Mickey, Buck and Dutch are a real fun crew and the short episodic format does the game wonders.

The "hub" area between missions is haunting and atmospheric in a way that I really enjoyed. The submachine gun is also a highlight. It's such a fun weapon and I always found myself gravitating towards it.

I do find myself getting real annoyed with every Halo game ending on a terrible vehicle section but otherwise really dug this one. More than I thought I would.

Boy does it feel good to be back at it with Halo after a good few months. I am aware that this simultaneously takes place in between and concurrently with Halo 2 and 3, but my friends said that it was best experienced after I’d played those 2, so that’s what I went with. Regardless though this might honestly be in good competition with Halo 3 for my favourite instalment of this series so far.

I’m a big sucker for derelict, ruined industrial areas so having that basically be the core aesthetic for the entire game was right up my ally. Some might argue that it’s a bit repetitive compared to the more varied locales of the other games, but I honestly didn’t have much of an issue with it, although it did make navigation a little confusing without looking at the map a few times.

I wouldn’t say the story is anything amazing to ride home about, but it is still quite enthralling all the way through. I will say though having the narrative split up between your different squad members through flashbacks whilst frequently cutting back to the Rookie traversing through the decrepit streets of New Mombassa in the present was a really cool change in presentation. This also might be the funniest Halo game to date, that ending scene in particular comes to mind (if you know, you know)

Honestly my only major issue, and it’s honestly not that big, at least for me, is the length. I kinda wish the game was a bit longer in some respects, though on the other hand I do think the campaign is paced near flawlessly so maybe it’s a good thing that it’s as short as it is.

Well then, got only one more Halo title to go (ain’t touching 5 lol) and then I’ll be all set for when Infinite comes out later this year. Based on everything I’ve heard this next one’s certainly gonna be a doozie so………..yeah……….see you guys real soon.

9/10

Easily the best game in the series, I really enjoyed Reach and 2A but this blows them both out of the water honestly. The combination of the more linear classic type of levels and the open world while playing as the rookie is perfect. Many of the missions give you more freedom to do things differently. For example you can choose to take the covenant head on or you could go into a nearby building and find a sniper on a balcony. Many of the missions have details like that to make it that much more enjoyable to play. While the story did not really have much connection to the Master Chief story the setup of having the team separated and then each mission is them trying to get back together was unique and interesting. I genuinley had fun playing each mission (not something I can say for the other Halo games) and I look forward to replaying this one and finding all the hidden details and ways to complete missions.

Eu comecei a jogar Halo justamente pelo Combat Evolved que é o primeiro, então eu fui jogando em ordem até chegar no ODST. Pra mim ele é o melhor de todos, justamente por não sermos um Spartan e sim um soldado ODST (Orbital Drop Shock Troopers) que não é tão resistente quanto um Spartan, mas eles dão conta por justamente serem soldados de elite mesmo assim. A trilha sonora desse jogo é uma maravilha, eles usam jazz na maioria da jornada e isso me encanta. Tenho que rejogar esse jogo de novo, já que Halo é obrigatório para qualquer um que goste de FPS. Master Piece suprema 👍👍