Yes, I’m that guy. The one replaying Halo 3 and Halo:ODST before Reach. As I write this, it’s now two days since Reach was released and my copy has just turned up. But I have the last two bits of ODST to replay and I liked them so much I just want to give it another go.
HALO 3
The thing that struck me playing through Halo 3 again was not how ugly the human faces are. Nor the the occasionally stiff animation. What leapt out was the fact that the levels nearly always followed the same formula. Start at point A- go to point B. Then go back to point A. From a production point of view its fantastic since you get to reuse the assets without the sections being cut and paste (another Bungie favourite). But the Halo deja vu persists.
Of course, Halo 3 has one of my favourite additions to the series- The scarab battles. I loved these first time around because Halo is one of the few games where replaying a large-scale battle can be fun until you beat them. The second playthrough (on Normal again since my first attempt to replay on Heroic met with failure) was easier and I tended not to get stuck going through the same section again and again. I still feel Bungie has made these huge levels, filled them with enemies, yet made it too easier to skip over some great battles.
HALO: ODST
2009′s full price expansion is still controversial in its brevity. But there are some who absolutely love the campaign that’s shorter than the average height of the finalists of the Herve Villechaise Cosplay contest. And I am one of them. ODST breaks up the action into sections of traversing the overworld and then intense battles told in flashback. The overworld is rather meh but the flashback battles are fantastic and are some of my favourite in the series. Oh dear, the facial models are uglier than the Elephant Man’s stuntman. Even ones modelled after Tricia Helfer and Nathan Fillion (he’s so dreamy). While hiring expensive voice actors (and their likenesses) for an expansion pack (we have three of the stars of TV’s Firefly here) might seem excessive, they do a very nice job.
I still like ODST but I’m powering through since I’ve heard only good things about Reach. Another 45 minutes and I can start!
The year of highs and lows. But the lows are more fun to read about. 2009 was the year the phenomenal growth the games industry slowed markedly, Activision sharpened their horns and thousands of games developers spent the year searching for new jobs or making iPhone games.
Wolfenstein: Sequel to the beloved 2000 game proved to disappoint many who where nostalgic for the bygone era of 2000. A good, though flawed, singleplayer campaign wasn’t enough to overcome the terrible multiplayer. Every time someone tried to speak about the game, the answer would be “I heard it sucks.” It didn’t suck completely, only half sucked. Activision also charging the same for PC as the console versions was proof positive that douching five times a day is profitable.
Tom Clancy’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2- Take the most anticipated game of the year. It’s the sequel to a series that did very well as a WWII-based game, but did phenomonally well as a modern-era game with a grounding in current events. Ramp up the hyperbole 1 000 000%, dial down the realism, amp up the absurdity and you have a fun single player marred by a story that’s only told in skippable loading screens. The multiplayer is fantastic, if you can overlook the perk combos, killstreaks than ramp down the enjoyment for many players, plus IW’s inability to take your connection speed into account when searching for hosts. Playing online outside of the US is almost pointless 90% of the time since that’s roughly the amount of time you will be shunted into a game where the host is located under the Stars and Stripes even if you’re across the Pacific. PC is even more of a clusterfuck since it’s inability to handle any lag coupled with the stubborn determination that dedicated servers aren’t needed for the game to be good makes the Game of the year, in a word or two, utter bullshit.
ODST- I liked the single player of Halo 3 ODST. It took a short while for it to get going but the action was great. It was just waaayyy too short. The Multiplayer, mostly being recycled from Halo 3 and its DLC was great, but, if like me you already had the DLC, ODST’s multiplayer wasn’t much of a selling point. There was at least Firefight mode as well to lengthen proceedings. Really, it should have been a downloadable expansion, just as it was originally planned to be, not full priced.
Killzone 2- It didn’t save the PS3 nor did it really give it much of a shot in the arm (that would be the one-two punch of the PS3 Slim and Uncharted 2). It was pretty and played well enough, but its story was generic, characters forced and gameplay so by the numbers that you’re half expecting this logo to appear at boot-up.
Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood. A sleeper hit of a few years ago is a by the numbers, soulless exercise into pointless prequel. Charmless and boring.
Saboteur: looking a little rough around the gills (see also: LOTR: Conquest). Pandemic’s swansong tells a tale of Irishman with bad accents in a Paris with bad French accents occupied by Nazi’s by bad German accents.
Resident Evil 5: The Black Panthers aren’t around today. But if they were, they would be pissed off. Also, the control scheme that would be called rustic if it were in a real estate listing means only long time fans should apply.
Tony Hawk Ride: What can you say that hasn’t already be said. Activision may have made a lot of money with Tony Hawk over the years. 2009 is not one of those years.
Brutal Legend: So brilliant presentation and an umlaut cannot make up for lousy gameplay. Who knew? It is a pity it turned out that way since I’d love to play this, but I’d love to have had fun doing so.
Eat Led: The Return of Matt Hazard: Well, a joke is enough. The Snake on a Plane of the gaming world were people were willing this to be good. See also: Scribblenauts.
DJ Hero: In the scheme of things. Activision sold a lot of MW2. They didn’t sell a lotof DJ Hero, Tony Hawk Ride, GH5 or Band Hero. Payback’s a bitch
Bionic Commando: Well, even though there were two of these, neither was great. Because BC was never any good.
Ghostbusters: So the presentation was top notch, except the story wasn’t that good, it was a retread of the Ghostbusters movies, the cinematics looked like they were directed by someone who directed live TV drama in the 50′s and the gameplay just wasn’t all that good. I like rinse and repeat only when i’m in the shower. On the couch, it just gets messy.
Overall, it was a really good year, coming after a few years of really good years. Can 2010 top it? Time will tell.
What are your gaming disappointments for 2009?
Reviewed on Xbox 360. Developed by Bungie. Published by Microsoft Games Studio
So Halo 3 ODST is here. Here are the facts.
1. It’s an expansion pack to Halo 3, using its tech but telling a side story that occurs between the events of Halo 2 and Halo 3
2. The Multiplayer is basically all of Halo 3′s multiplayer maps, plus all of the Halo 3 DLC maps plus three new maps. It even comes on a separate disc.
3. There is a new Firefight mode which is much the same as Horde mode in Gears 2 or the Zombies in CoD WaW
4. Though the multiplayer is mostly recycled, the main campaign is rather short and it was conceived as a cheap expansion, it is full price
5. The game is excellent
6. No Flood. No Cortana (the level). No Library.
So you play as ‘Rookie,’ seemingly the only survivor of an ODST squad who’ve landed in New Mombasa shortly after the Covenant attacked the city. Your squad is no where to be seen and your job is to traverse the enemy-infested streets of New Mombasa searching for clues as to your team’s whereabouts. Once you’ve found an item belonging to one of them, you’ll experience a flashback to what happened to that trooper. Then you’ll be playing as that trooper for a mission.
So there are two parts to the game. The first part: Rookie search for clues across town at night and having encounters with Covenant troops along the way starts off to be slow, confusing and not all that much fun. You need to use your scanner (pressing X) which lightens dark areas and draws colourful outlines around everything (and looks like a GRAW game). You also quickly learn that the health system has gone back to a similar style to that of Halo 1. You don’t have a shield now, just stamina that will renew itself if you can stop taking damage for a bit. Once your stamina is depleted, your health will start to suffer and will only regenerate if you can find a health pack. Thing is, they don’t obviously look like a health back so by the time you have memorised what they look like, you will be finished the game. Did I mention the game is short? The distances you will cover on foot start to irritate until you start finding Covenant ghost’s lying about the place (you can’t use any of the other vehicles strewn throughout New Mombasa). Once you do start using them, they time you spend travelling in New Mombasa decreases dramatically as does the amount of time you’ll spend fighting the small groups of Covenant on the city streets. A collectible in the game are the segments of audio diaries hidden in the city documenting one woman’s story as she auditions for The Archers (I guarantee no one who reads this blog will get that one so move on). They are similar to the info drops in Infamous. They give the game some character but are ultimately just something you look for if you absolutely have to do everything in a game. Keep looking and you’ll find a clue to the whereabouts of a crew member and then that’s when the game resumes being awesome.
Once you’ve found the clue, you’ll then play a mission as one of the ODST team members and these are uniformly excellent and proof that Bungie still know how to put together a really tight game. You will also get a chance to drive warthogs, Scorpion tanks and Banshees in some of these missions as well as use some of the bigger guns the Haloverse has to offer. Apart from the differences in ODST troops’ abilities from a Spartan such as Masterchief, these play like the more epic battles in any Halo game.
Also on disc one of this 2-disc set is Firefight mode. Here, you and/or some friends (and they need to be friends due to the lack of matchmaking offered for this mode), you take on successive waves of Covenant in a very similar way to Horde mode in Gears of War 2, Zombie mode in Call of Duty World at War and of course, Left 4 Dead. This was also the subject of our most recent podcast if you’re at all interested.
Disc 2 is known as the Mythic Disc although it shows up as Halo 3 on your Xbox dashboard. Unlike the actual Halo 3 disc, this disc will load faster if you install it on your hard drive. It includes all of the original Halo 3 multiplayer maps plus all of the DLC maps (of which there were quite a few) and 3 new maps. These still hold up well and as not every fan of Halo 3 picked up the DLC, at least here you can be sure of a sizeable population of players with all the maps.
Presentation is pure Halo 3. The same tech, prettied up in places with its maligned sub HD resolution and rock-steady frame rate. There are some ugly textures visible here and there but overall the look is colorfully appealing- though the poor face of Buck seems out of place on such a polished package. Maybe it’s better if Bungie stick to guys wearing masks. The user interface is a little slicker than previous Halo games since it’s now 3D in places and the cinematics in general are nicer. There’s even a nice little tag scene after the credits which is well worth watching. Sound is phenomenal as usual, and we have a voice cast including three guys from Firefly, Caprica 6 and Uncharted guy.
Have you heard the game is short? The package on it’s own is actually great value. A great single player campaign, plus a ton of multiplayer maps and a great coop mode in Firefight.I already had all of the multiplayer maps and I could complain about that but then I also felt that way when I bought Orange Box and ended up with another copy of both TF2 and HL2. There’s no Crackdown 2 multiplayer beta (that would be ironic) included but there is a Halo Reach beta invite included so there’s that as well.
So yes it is worth it but not essential. If you like shooters and own a 360- you should get this if you haven’t already. Would I buy a 360 just to play ODST? No- Halo 3 is still a grander experience. This just gives you more of what you want, which does me fine.
Controller1.com rating 2/3
We have a quick look at Halo 3 ODST. Warning- audio quality is a bit off for the first few minutes, but it improves. Unfortunately, the quality of conversation throughout is consistent.
Controller1.com is not a news site, its a blog so rather than being your one stop shop for E3 news, we’ll just have some opinion. The show hasn’t opened yet but half the big publishers have already had conferences and briefings so I’m going to change my pants, recap my reactions to the news from MS, Activision, EA Ubisoft and others.
EA
Lego Rock Band and The Beatles Rock Band shows that EA and Harmonix can do the exact thing as Activision/ Neversoft- that is make a game once and then reskin 15 times. Brutal Legend was demoed and I still don’t know what the hell the game is about- apart from Jack Black being involved somehow. Is it a driving game? An action game? Saboteur from Pandemic has been on my radar for a while and hopefully its not just Mercenaries 2.5. Mass Effect 2 looks to have more awesome than an awesome star going supernova. Crysis 2 is coming and its on consoles as well. APB (from the makers of Crackdown) coming early in 2010 should be fun. I might need to get a gaming PC this year.
Dante’s Inferno seems to be another hellish God of War game but Bioware made a splash with the Old Republic trailer that made people who want Ewok porn care for Star Wars again.
Left 4 Dead 2!!! A Valve game where there’s been a yearly update. And it looks like it does everything Dead Rising didn’t do. I am looking forward to this in a way most Valve MP-focused games don’t ‘click’ for me.
Ubisoft
Red Steel 2 looks like Motion plus might actually be a worthwhile pickup for the Wii. But while Assassin’s Creed 2, if it fixes the flaws of the first game might be a great game, its Splinter Cell Conviction that looks to be THE Ubisoft game you buy at full price. The rest, you just wait for a few months to get it for a third of the launch price.
Activision
Wow, another Guitar Hero game. I could pass this year and just stick with Beatles Rock Band. Tony Hawk Ride, with its fancy controller, doesn’t appeal at all. But Modern Warfare 2 looks just as good as anything Infinity Ward have done to date. It will be a HUUUUGE game in 2009. Wolfenstein looks great, despite the fact the trailer tries to hide the fact its a WWII game.
Microsoft
Halo 3: ODST came and went which should be fun, but then Bungie and MS are doing Halo: Reach.
Buy ODST and you get a MP beta invite for Halo: Reach so things look interesting. Forza 3 for you hardcore racing fans will make the 360-owning revheads reaching for the tissues. Considering its likelihood to go up against GT5, it has better be impressive.
MS also showed off their new camera based controller. The thing is, it doesn’t use an actual controller. Natal looks to be goofy, Eyetoy-esque and fun for all the family. There needs to be more info. Peter Molyneux was there to talk about his new project with a boy called Milo. Its a virtual prisoner in a pit so the sadists should be satisfied. I’m still wondering why you would want to with Twitter and Facebook with your 360 but if it lets you do screenshots for sites like this, I’ll be interested. Alan Wake is coming early next year, and I continue to be intrigued but there’s Crackdown 2 from Ruffian games. Not only am I interested, but Cameron won’t be shutting the fuck up about this for the next year.
Oh and there’s a Metal Gear game on 360 featuring Raiden. To me, it sounds like a Ninja Gaiden style game but that’s just pure speculation.
And the show hasn’t even started yet.
