This is how Orbital Drop Shock Troopers look like in the opinion of my friend, who often complains about some policies that restrain him, but those can't be shown. Maybe my friend needs some professional help.
This is how Orbital Drop Shock Troopers look like in the opinion of my friend, who often complains about some policies that restrain him, but those can't be shown. Maybe my friend needs some professional help.

In 2022, I realized that I never played the Halo games, except for the very first one and “Reach”. So I thought it might be the time to try and play all other installment, in the release order:

✅Halo: Combat Evolved (2001)

✅Halo 2 (2004)

💀Halo 3 (2007)

✅Halo Wars (2009)

✅Halo 3: ODST (2009)

🔹Halo: Reach (2010)

🔹Halo 4 (2012)

🔹Halo: Spartan Assault (2013)

🔹Halo: Spartan Strike (2015)

🔹Halo 5: Guardians (2015)

🔹Halo Wars 2 (2017)

🔹Halo Infinite (2021)

I decently played through the first two games, dropped the third one at some point (sorry, but I found it too tedious to finish) and, after completing ODST, I had some thoughts to share…

I will remember this game forever for its absolutely awful animations, which reminded me of Robot Chicken. The devs didn't use motion capture so that characters in the game ended up moving like bad actors made of plastic and glue, so yeah, Robot Chicken, make no mistake.

As for the gameplay, the game offered me a couple of things that I didn't see in previous Halo games. One thing in particular made me thinking that Master Chief (the main character in that universe) may be offended by the devs a bit. I'm talking about the tactical vision mode in Halo 3: ODST. Once turned on, it highlights enemies and useful items within your reach; it also increases contrast which makes it easier for your eyes to navigate through night scenes. Last but not least, only in this game there's a map and - attention - the compass (!) that highlights your goals (!!) at all times (!!!).

The point is, you don't play as Master Chief in Halo 3: ODST; instead, you take on the role of a special forces trooper. These guys are very trained soldiers, yes, but they are a far cry from Master Chief who is a genetically modified supersoldier with the most advanced gear. Wait, Master Chief doesn't have tactical vision, the compass, and a map, what the...

This is why I think that devs kinda made a joke out of Master Chief, as his advanced gear is incomparably worse than some soldiers' equipment from Halo 3: ODST.

Speaking of the narrative, I liked the approach they resorted to. Your team crashed on Earth hardly and you, awoke long hours after crashing, are starting to retroactively build the chain of events. You're looking for clues and items that your team left on the streets; each time you find something, the game puts you in the shoes of another team member to play through events that took place N hours ago. Such narrative allowed for showing the same locations from different perspectives and introduced some nice challenges. Even horrible (and very funny!) animations didn't ruin this narrative.

In the end, that game felt surprisingly cozy with all that quirkiness and imperfection. I don't know if I ever want to play it again, but it's a nice, short game that introduced unique mechanics which, as I know of, are not present in neither previous nor subsequent Halo installments.