Halo ODST... Meh....

So I rented this game for three days and completed it. Man am I glad that I didn't buy it....

Basically, it's just another Halo game. The design team had the opportunity to make tactical shooter, along the lines of Ghost Recon or Rainbow Six, set in the Halo universe and they choose to just make a knock off of the last three Halo games. So everything you hated about the other games (lame story, punching being more effective than gunfire, copy and paste level design) is still available for you to hate about this game.

Not that there aren't new things to hate. Moving from one beacon to the next in New Mombasa is an obvious time sink that serves no real purpose other than lengthing the game from five hours to eight. The level designs are particularly uninspired, with set peices repeating and the standard Halo level themes are phoned in, in the exact same order as all the other games. That order would be: straight fps level, warthog level, scorpion tank level, sniper level, banshee level, run like hell level and overly long finale that starts with an annoying escort segment and moves on to a vehicle segement then winds down with a standoff segment. There's also the inconsistent art direction that has some characters rendered realistically while others are heavily stylized, giving them a free trip to the uncanny valley.

In short, this game was adequate for the first three hours before becoming a grinding chore to play for the rest of it's eight hour length. I can honestly say that the only reason I played all the way through it was because I had rented it for three nights and I felt an obligation to play it on all the days that I had paid for it. I would advise people to stay away from this game if it weren't for one thing. Every Halo multiplayer map is packed on another disk with the game. If you only buy one Halo game, this is the one to get because it has all the multiplayer content. Otherwise, don't bother.

Oh yeah, ODST and the Halo multiplayer maps were being rented seperately in the store I went to. Do yourself a favor, skip ODST and just rent the multiplayer maps. You'll get way more out of them.