This game was originally titled “Halo 3: Recon” for a reason – you’re much better suited to fighting from afar or with guerilla techniques. You have no shields, but you do have “stamina” which allows you to absorb a handful of bullets before you begin to really feel the pain. The style of these battles is very similar to that of Halo 3, though if you try to fight exactly like a SPARTAN might, your ODST will certainly pay the price.Īs an ODST, your armor isn’t nearly as resilient as the MJOLNIR suit you may be familiar with. With each “flashback”, you take control of another member of the Rookie’s squad in an encounter that helped produce the world that you have the ability to explore. It may not be saving the Universe, but it still feels pretty good With each discovery comes a flash of insight, perhaps, that drives you to take command of one of the missing squadmates in a battle fought earlier that day. When you do find an artifact of a battle fought seemingly so long ago, the camera draws out from the first-person perspective and peers directly at your character, which seems to observe whatever object he finds on some sort of soulful, microscopic level. While the Rookie is hardly Philip Marlowe, it’s hard not to feel like a young gumshoe while activating your visor in dark corners looking for any indication of the location of your squadmates. With red highlights attributed to enemies, blue to vehicles, green to allies, and yellow to structures, your visor can truly be a godsend when trying to parse the elements of the environment while trying to develop some workable strategies.īetween the lighting, score, and plot, it’s seemingly inevitable that ODST be observed for its step into the noir creative space. When activated, your visor actually puts a colored highlight on the edges of most objects, structures, and creatures. In order to see as you lurk about, your visor is equipped with light enhancement features that actually do a little more than make it brighter for you. With much of the time spent in the city during the night, you have the opportunity to avoid groups of enemies by taking refuge in the shadows. The lighting is another subtle yet drastic change imposed on this Halo title. Quiet piano tracks and soft tones follow you every step of the way through New Mombasa, pushing an air of loneliness and curiosity to the core of your senses. The score is noticeably different in ODST, with the composter Marty O’Donnell obviously cognizant of the major change in tone from one title to the next. The previous Halo games were well known for taking place on a grand stage where too epic a tale was being told for there to be time for introspection and intrigue. With few enemies to dispatch and limited shortcuts across the landscape, a fair amount of time is left for The Rookie to see the sights and take in the atmosphere. Since you were knocked out in your pod on the way down, you emerge several hours from the initial drop and the aftertaste of action in the air is pungent.Įxploring the city is some lonely business. With your squad split up and the radio eerily silent, you are left to search the dark, bombed-out city for a familiar face. The most immediate change a player might recognize as The Rookie drops out of his pod onto the pavement of a city street is that there’s a city to explore. Robbed of their power, the pods containing your whole squad aimlessly crash to the surface, leaving you knocked out and alone in the darkening streets of New Mombasa. About halfway down, one of the three principal leaders of the Covenant Empire takes his flagship into Slipspace within the atmosphere of Earth, which unleashes a devastating EMP blast that washes over your pod. As a new lance corporal known simply as “The Rookie”, you hop into your heat-shielded pod and hurdle towards Earth’s surface to counter the Covenant invasion force. The game begins with your primary character being introduced to a squad of ODST’s ready to drop into a huge Kenyan metropolis. Doing what you can to save Earth, Rookie-style
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