Halo 3 ODST: Trick Or Treat?

Forget Derren Brown and his monumentally abysmal attempts at hoodwinking the general public. If you really want a master class in misdirection you need look no further than Halo 3: ODST.

The visor is pointless, a total ruse. Accidentally equipping it in a well lit arena will plunge you into an eyeball searing world of blinding white light. Used as intended, to illuminate the terminally miserable hub world, it soon becomes clear that the visor is nothing more than a superfluous pair of night vision goggles. They are perhaps the most gratuitous addition to the halo universe. So why include them? Without the gimmick of a shiny new visor, Halo ODST has absolutely nothing new to offer the dedicated campaign player.

The absence of Master Chief neither enhances nor detracts from the overall experience. His exclusion is a non event. To the untrained eye you may as well be playing as a Spartan. The superficial tweaks that are meant to promote a sense of human frailty are nothing but an acute irritation. Hunting for medipacks is a nuisance.

But it’s the incessant, nagging bleeping and the lingering red mist that descends when your life force is low that really tires the soul. The diminished jump and the weakened melee attack, although frustrating, are forgivable. They help focus the player’s attention on the weapons. And, yes, the modified pistol is a joy.

The hub world is a gloomy distillation of everything we’ve grown to dislike about Halo, namely the uninspired labyrinths of identical corridors. Without the vivid alien vistas that made Halo 3 so pleasing to the eye, ODST’s hub is just a forgettable sandbox of concrete blocks. The visor, a necessity unless you want to explore the streets of Mombassa in darkness, transforms the industrial murk into an abstract world of glowing neon contours. Yes, it’s pretty, but it feels lazy, an excuse to churn out the same indistinguishable streets and buildings.

And so it falls to Firefight to save the day. If ODST’s hub world is the embodiment of everything that made Halo a chore, Firefight is the exact opposite. Enclosed in arenas of varying size, Firefight spawns an endless supply of Covenant and an endless supply of weapons with which to kill them. Until you finally succumb. It’s the most pleasant war of attrition you’ll ever experience. Firefight achieves, with great success, what the campaign promised but failed to deliver: a feeling of comradeship with your fellow ODST’s.

Without the option to Firefight into infinity and beyond, Halo ODST is nothing more than a stunning sleight of hand.