There is a very small middle ground when it comes to last fall’s Halo 3: ODST. Although the game was well received by some, many long time Halo fans were disappointed by the apparent lack of content and innovation in ODST. These are people who, like myself, stuck with Halo throughout the years despite ever increasing criticism of series’ seeming inability to evolve in a gaming world filled with sprinting, cover systems and insanely fast paced gameplay.
laser eye surgery in the future is actually a lot more dangerous
I think many of the now disillusioned and bitter fans should go back and try again. ODST, like every Halo game since Combat Evolved, was built up to the point of mania months before its release. Bungie encourages this degree of hype, seeming to bask in it as the tiniest imaginable bits of information to trickle down to starving fans. In this case, they may have standby’d themselves.
With expectations running high, ODST was doomed to disappoint. Fans who weren’t expecting what they got- a detailed, excellently produced, balanced, and interesting expansion to Halo 3- didn’t do enough research and saw too many TV ads. The pacing of the campaign, called plodding by some, I call deliberate; the atmosphere, likewise, is brooding and intriguing. The combination makes for a game very unlike its contemporaries in that players are asked to fill the role of the lost, stranded soldier, outnumbered in a war torn metropolis, and experience the parts that make them wonder what that soldier must be thinking and feeling in addition to what he will be shooting at next.
It requires a certain attitude to fully appreciate what Bungie has done. I would challenge fans who were unpleasantly surprised by ODST‘s campaign to try playing through it again with a different mindset. Notice things like the way the story, especially the subplot heard through the various audio logs scattered around the crumbling city, parallels Dante’s Divine Comedy (hint: the logs are identified in your VISR menu according to which of Dante’s 9 circles of Hell they correspond to- read more here, it is very much worth it). The bottom line is, the best parts of the campaign can’t really be experienced like a normal Halo game.
safari zone is the only place to catch the elusive Tauros
Now that I’ve got that out of the way, I’d like to talk about my favorite part of ODST: Firefight! Team up with other players and struggle to survive wave after wave of enemies with limited ammo and health packs, while being subjected all the while to ever shifting sets of variables that force players to think up new strategies after every single round.
Four waves of randomly generated enemies, followed by one wave of heavily armored Brutes and Brute chieftains, make up a round. At the end of each round, ammo and health packs are dropped into the map, and a new variable- in the form of skulls that cause enemies to drop less ammo, throw more grenades, and be more cunning- is added to the mix. After three rounds, a set is completed, and more new skulls are turned on. This may sound confusing, and it is. And on Heroic difficulty, which I recommend for four experienced Halo players to really stretch their legs in, one set can take more than half an hour to complete.
I know this game came out four months ago, but it took me almost that long to actually get on a message board and find three other people to play with. Prior to this I had played with my girlfriend in split screen and with real life friends over Xbox live. However, I have found through experience that yelling at my friends for wasting all the rockets shooting at drones does not go over well. I have no such qualms about yelling at strangers.
Firefight: the best thing since THIS?! you betcha.
The biggest downfall of Firefight is the lack of a matchmaking, lobby browsing, or another in game system of finding strangers to play with. Posting on a message board and waiting for three people to respond is, admittedly, way more effort than should be required to team up with fellow players. And to top it off, it’s borderline maddening trying to connect with players who won’t quit or get disconnected in the middle of the match, sending everyone hurtling back to the main menu, crying all the way. Lagging out after an hour and a half of careful strategizing and cautious progress is enough to burn you out for a week or two.
Find three other compatible connections, however, and the resulting game will be well worth it. Tactics and communication are key to surviving past the first few rounds. Lives run out fast. Heavy weapons must be kept track of, and each player needs to stick to a specific role, from recon to ammo scout, especially on larger maps. Every match with different players will force you to examine your strengths and those of your teammates so you can tweak your strategies accordingly. Everyone on your team will die a lot.. at first. However, once all four players find their roles in the squad and get into the rhythm of the game, frustration turns to satisfaction and the points rack up.
will "Reach" include Firefight? if Bungie knows what's good for them.
Firefight is at its best when you’re playing with a full squad of experienced, intelligent players over Xbox Live. Unfortunately, unless all your friends are Halo geeks, connecting with other players will require too much time and effort to be practical most of the time. Because of this, Firefight will, for most people, remain something that could have been great. If you experience it the right way even once, though, you’ll discover what amounts to the freshest Halo experience since Combat Evolved‘s multiplayer in 2001 forever changed the way I play games with my friends. It is so good that I just wrote about 700 more words than I originally intended to. If Bungie remembers to include Firefight in Halo: Reach with a matchmaking mode, I’m pretty sure I would never have to play another Call of Duty game again, and that would be a relief.
