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I recently
bought ODST because I am a Halo fan and have played previous iterations. I am a moderate fan in that I usually finish
the single player campaign, play some multiplayer games and then archive the
game (or give it to my stepfather J ).
Two
questionable design decisions struck me as strange (perhaps even mean
spirited). I was playing on normal, and
expected a decent challenge. However, I
think in ODST the desire for challenging gameplay (perhaps with a bent toward
satisfying hardcore Halo players) trumped the fun factor and soured me on the
series.
First, in
the campaign you are given a really weak (damage) main weapon - M7S Caseless
Submachine Gun. I found this weapon to
be really poor in combat. Unless you can
manage a headshot it seemed like a liability. Even the headshots only do significant damage
on weaker enemies. The new M6C/SOCOM is
cool and perhaps a better overall weapon. However, onto my second issue, where is my
AMMO!
So I am in
this hot-zone of Covenant hell, and there is a severe paucity of ammo for my UNSC
weapons. Throughout the campaign I was
forced to wield Covenant weapons because my UNSC weapons were always dry. I felt like a vulture…and a Covenant recruit.
Finally, Firefight
stinks when you are alone. Now I consider myself an above average FPS
player, but jeez going solo in Firefight is a masochistic existence. The
lack of UNSC weapons and no ammo is omnipresent, and health is no where near
abundant to give you a fighting chance.
Finally, the fun ends early in that by wave three;
Covenant forces are sending Brutes and Hunters with a healthy dose of Wraiths
and Choppers to vex you. UNSC vehicles
were in short supply, and at least early on, failed to respawn. How can a soldier survive and feel badass in
these conditions? I often found myself running
around like a scared rabbit. Even with three
pals, Firefight turned into a grind as your collective seven lives were quickly
lost.
So I found
myself sort of dreading finishing the game and even shunned invites to play
co-operatively because the design restrictions seemed (imo) to suck the fun out
of the game in favor of crushing challenge.
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For you Firefight complaint, it's kind of designed for multiplayer. However, you can play single player, but it changes what the game itself is and how. As an example, I player Horde on GoW2 by myself. Instead of a hunt and destroy kind of gameplay, it forced me to play using guerrilla style tactics, a totally different style than is required for the regular game.
So, I guess what I'm saying is, the game is fine, you're doing it wrong.
1 - underpowered weapons
2 - lack of ammo for weapons
3 - lack of all Halo weapons
4 - unbalanced opponent spawning in a core mode
Pop into a Firefight level and play solo for ten minutes. Let me know your thoughts...
The premise of the game is you're an ODST that got separated from his/her squad and in that sort of situation one wouldn't have access to copious amounts of ammunition and weapons like in the previous Halo games. The strategy and the gameplay purposely changes because you are playing a different role in the game. If one wants to argue that the strategy of Halo 3: ODST has changed from the previous games in the franchise, it is definitely valid.
As for Firefight, I do play it a lot solo as a matter of fact. Its best to stick to the fundamentals we've already learned while playing every other Halo game. Take down their shields with Covenant guns, and finish them off with human weapons. On top of that, you now start out with a pistol that is extremely overpowered. And it makes for a real great grunt birthday party.
Eric your frustration is totally understandable, and I think playing it multiplayer would give you more enjoyment from the game.
Maybe they took this more modern approach with ODST. Maybe you aren't supposed to kill all the bad guys like in the older games and instead you are supposed to sneak around and be more methodical about getting out of whatever situation you're in.
Apart from that, I would say that the game is not made to be beaten with the default pair of weapons. As Bungie said about HALO: CE, one of the fundamental pillars of the entertainment is that you have to constantly choose which couple of weapons will you use to face the challenge. The lack of ammo is used to force you to change your armament, and there is a lot of it in different weapons. So the game gives you choices from one time to another, changing the weapons the enemies carry to force you pick different ones.
I have to add that removing the dual wielding system has been an improvement. what in the beginning was a cool feature In my opinion got the game a little bit unbalanced, rendering the one handed weapons inferior by themselves and forcing the player to constantly search for a compatible weapon on the battlefield not only when he runs out of ammo but also every time he switch between his weapons and drops the right hand one. Making the player spend too much time walking around without having fun.
It is natural that a human has to be far weaker than a Spartan. ODSTs should be even weaker than how we see them in this game, in the other hand, the stealth and tactical part should have been designed to have a greater role in the game. It looks like in the end, the game was not designed for tactical combat but to be another HALO game, something that may have contented most halo fans but I feel that it hasn't been what it should have. You can beat the game like you beat any other halo FPS, without feeling the need of hiding and without having more possibilities of using tactics or strategies, the only difference is that you have to look for health kits from time to time.
The firefight mode is not only hard but boring if you play it solo, it is the multiplayer after all. It is not fair indeed, it is a classical survival what means that the player have to die sooner or later, but it increases its difficulty by activating skulls. I suppose that they could have used the increasing difficulty without letting the player gain more lives. If you want to play solo you can do it in easy and yet still obtain the score achievements (if you want to play for 2h).
The last feature I would like to talk is about the recon and investigation game mechanics. Looks like instead of taking advantage of this two good ideas to change the gameplay a little, the game simply uses them to move the player around the map without letting him be a part of the procedure.
I played through on legendary on my first run through, simply because I felt that the game wouldn't challenge me enough to play stealthy on Normal or Hardcore, then to encourage the feeling of being in a city alone, with no reinforcements or weapon drops I turned on Famine (So difficulty complaints aside, you should be able to customise your own experience to the perfect difficulty level using skulls and other options).
I enjoyed the game like that, it wasn't too hard, it wasn't too easy. Ammo is still easy enough to come by, sure in the midst of combat at some point your going to need a new gun (This game really teaches you plasma pistol use =D), but there are ammo caches that you can find and end up marked on your map. The game teaches you this, so ammunition shouldn't be your biggest worry even though it's slightly limiting. Besides your doing your damnedest to survive in a hostile environment, resource management is a staple feature of any survival game, if ammo were too easy to come across, I'd be disappointed.
Enemy counts are at just the right amount, they take a bit to spawn, but enemies to respawn in different areas, and wait too long in one location and a dropship will often appear, but this just serves to make areas interesting when you traverse them again. Any group of grunts die to the Pistol with ease, while brutes can be snuck up on and tagged with a sticky nade, or taken down with the old 1-2 combo (plasma overcharge/pistol shot). The only thing about ODST that disappointed me were the mini missions that basically had you playing like master chief once again. After all you're really not that much weaker then the chief, you have a shield (stamina), you can rip of turrets and use them (I'm sure an ODST shouldn't be able to do this) and the only big difference is your melee strength and a lack of dual wielding.
Also I've not played firefight solo, nor would I want to do so, it's a mode designed for co-op play, for discovering the perfect points to hold, and relying on your team-mates to back you up when you falter (because you will falter). I and my friends that play have found the mode great fun, sure it's hard, but there's something cool about running away and playing with a chieftain with a hammer until your mate can run downstairs grab a rocket launcher, follow you as you lure it in a tunnel and the nuke it an instant before you'd die. It's a rush, it's overwhelming, it's difficult, but hey it's supposed to be, that's why it's fun.
As a gamer in his mid-30s, I am far from the best Halo 3 player, but I have enough experience with the franchise to know that I expected a tough fight on Legendary.
I didn't get it at all. Granted there are a few tough spots (ONI Alpha at the end was brutal for a bit), but the difficulty level is scaled much further back.
I mention that because on Legendary I had no trouble with ammunition - but like another poster mentioned, ODST does force you to use other weaponry. You need to be effective with the plasma pistol and the needler; these are the two most common Covenant weapons you'll find. Good grenade use also counts for a lot.
The other thing is Firefight is intended to be boring/impossible for one player. Its all about multiplayer there. A lot like Gears Horde mode - you can only survive for so long alone. Besides, where's the fun in that?
Don't be so dismissive so quickly. The game isn't worth its retail price, but there is a lot to love about the overall package if you stick with it.