Halo 3 - ODST (Formerly known as Recon)

[jagger916]

Can Halo please die? I mean, maybe the first Halo was great, 2 was good, 3 was meh. There is nothing special about Halo. FPSs have been done much, much better. I'm sick of fans treating each new Halo game like the second coming of Christ.

[The Dude]

Didn't finish Halo 2, forced my way through Halo 3 on my brothers XBL name when it came out, had ODST preordered when it hit me, why the hell did I preorder a game when I disliked the other games i've played in the series, well, not so much disliked, but it wasn't crap, and it wasn't fun for me either, so i've since cancelled it.

[Stu]

The only thing more sickening is those who get in such a state bashing it haha

Seriously, i don't think there's ever been a single franchise that has devided opinion more.

[Archelon]

I'm sick of fans treating each new Halo game like the second coming of Christ.

I'm pretty sure no one, not even the most die hard Halo fan, is treating ODST as such. Even though it's getting quite a bit of attention (which is to be expected, since it's Halo), it's receiving nowhere near the media blitz Halo 3 did. Halo 3 was treated as if it was a major multimedia event. By contrast, ODST, for the most part, is being treated as just another video game release.

I'm not a big fan of the Halo series. I didn't care for the first two games, but I actually enjoyed the third quite a bit. I only played the demo of Halo Wars for the sheer novelty of it. Still, I rather like what they're doing with ODST. A lot of the gameplay tweaks seem to be more in line with my general tastes than the previous games.

It also doesn't hurt that they got several actors from Firefly/Serenity to lend their voices (and likeness, at least in the case of Nathan Fillion) to the game, which is actually part of the reason I wanted to play Halo 3 in the first place, despite not caring for the first two games.

[Carnivol]

Me and randomwab sometimes do scarab runs in Halo 3 (or set ourselves some other inane goals on our "pick-a-stage-to-kick-butt" co-op runs). Good stuff.

We knew we'd been doing it a bit too much when the question suddenly got raised during one of our runs "Are you sure this is on legendary?"

Anyway, I still can't stand the whole aliens vs Humans thing, where the aliens come in 50 different flavors (and they for some reason always bring their comic relief as cannon fodder).


Halo Wars is also the best RTS I've played in along time, as it actually was a high profiled RTS title that dared to brutally experiment a little with the gameplay formula and try out mixing of elements from other genres and stuff.

[Stu]

On a purely geektastic tip...i can't wait to get stuck into the game's photo and video mode again, easily the best photo made any game has had to offer yet!

Also...the fact that the game's second disc will include the ENTIRE Halo 3 multiplayer suite is incredible!

[riderkid]

i agree, its nice to see the MP get its own disc, i just wish the mp was tweeked a bit in the XP system

[Carnivol]

Then the two questions of curiosity that remains are:

1) Does this still use the same data handling as Halo 3 did, or is it now possible to install the game to HDD (w/out getting 15-30min load times and stuff) ?

2) How does the multiplayer disc handle the fact that it is "just" the multiplayer component of Halo 3? Does it run with its own achievements list (full size, arcade, or blank), or does it just use Halo 3's list, but with the single player ones just being unavailable.

[Stu]

The ODST package ships with 1750 achievement points, not sure how they're spread.

As for optimising...disc one yes, disco two no again.

[Zombie Fred]

Big Stu's got the answers right; Halo 3:ODST campaign disk has been tweaked so you can install it onto the HDD, thus cutting a few seconds on the loading areas within the Halo sandbox.

The achievements are spread both campaign multiplayer (the latter being the most centric for the extra points), it will have the typical styles you would expect.

[Zombie Fred]

Full live action video here

[Beanovsky Durst]

If this wasn't a full price game (at least in Mexico), It would be a sure buy. I really loved Halo 3's campaign and multiplayer, but I still think this should have been released as DLC too. Something like GoW's All Fronts Collection. But I'll get it when the price tag on it is lower, definetly.

[Zombie Fred]

If this wasn't a full price game (at least in Mexico), It would be a sure buy. I really loved Halo 3's campaign and multiplayer, but I still think this should have been released as DLC too. Something like GoW's All Fronts Collection. But I'll get it when the price tag on it is lower, definetly.

The campaign is around 7 hours long (normal mode) and it extends up to more areas (several place open up; doors unlock) on game+, so if you're playing it on a higher difficulty then you should expect it to be more longer. Note that Halo 3's campaign could be done in 5 hours alone on normal quickly. Fire fight is 10 (both day/night cycle optional) levels for you and three other friends to fight countless waves of the covenant (sharing 7 lives starting) and have to work together. This has much more depth with the skulls to torture you, not forgetting the bonus rounds. You have your typical Halo 3 features; save films, photos, skulls, meta-game, and then you have the second disk having all Halo 3 (and the final 3 maps from Bungie) multiplayer, with 20 dollars worth on DLC alone, it should justify the 60 dollars in America, where other countries seem to have it slightly cheaper (30-35 pounds here in the uk).

[Carnivol]

All Fronts' single player addition was pretty... lacking.
Kinda annoying that they didn't let you buy just the single player level, really.
1200 and 1600 is way too much if you only play single player (Though, at 1600, the full map set was a steal if you didn't already have the previous DLC)

A single level that could be played in two ways, took roughly 30 minutes to finish on Insane, and with no option of somehow integrating it into the main game (which would've been a nice touch), wasn't exactly much to write home about at that price.

[Member_of_STARS]

Halo Wars is also the best RTS I've played in along time, as it actually was a high profiled RTS title that dared to brutally experiment a little with the gameplay formula and try out mixing of elements from other genres and stuff.

Halo Wars is really the most "point-and-click´y" RTS Ive seen in a very long time and even the latest C&C games cant surpass its "generic"-ness. The only way it can be seen as "best in a long time", is when you take console RTS games as a measurement stick, but then it doesnt really have that much competition to work with, and even then, Endwar tries to do a lot more than HW does.

All HW accomplishes, is an attempt to bring rudimentary macromanagement into console play (and by "rudimentary" I mean "almost nonexistant") into a 3rd person "point and click many units to do shit" action.

While many see HALO as one of the very first successfully fun FPS games on a console, calling HW one would be a punch in the face to the RTS genre.

Even micromanagement is pretty much overly simplified C&C style stuff that has no weight or required skill nor depth in it.

In either case, if you put Halo Wars to compete against majority of popular RTS games on PC, Halo Wars will literally offer nothing to anyone but Halo franchise fans, so this tells a lot about its value as a strategy game.

But then, so far, only a handful of titles have truly excelled in challenging the player in both micro- and macromanagement. *Cough* Blizzard *cough*