Atomic does an orbital drop with the latest Halo, and lives to tell the tale...
Last Friday was a good day to be a Halo fan, and a member of the gaming press. Microsoft put on a low-key yet very cool Halo 3:ODST preview event at Cockatoo Island, on Sydney Harbour, and it was full of much awesome.
Not only was it chance to visit Cockatoo Island itself - which is a pretty neat spot if you're into World War II history, but Bungie's own Curtis Creamer was on hand to walk us through the opening of ODST's single-player campaign. And to kick butt in the new Firefight multiplayer mode.
Possibly even cooler than all that, though, was a lifesize, working Warthog, handbuilt by the effects geniuses at New Zealand's Weta Workshop. More on the four-wheel drive mayhem later...
Halo: ODST is set in between Halo 2 and 3, and is structured around the efforts of the ODST - Orbital Drop Shock Troopers - to infiltrate a Covenant battleship. Of course, things don't go quite to plan, and you and your squad end up on the ground, separated, and up against the full might of a Covenant ground invasion.
Like all of the Halo games, ODST opens from immediately from your PoV. The main difference is that you are not some super soldier in God-like power armour - you're just a soldier, and rookie member of your squad at that. And speaking of your squad, the voices will be familiar to Firefly and Halo 3 fans - Nathan Fillon voices the squad leader, Adam Baldwin is the heavy support dude, and the tech guy of your unit is Alan Tudyk. Battlestar Galactica fans aren't left out, either - your squad is working with an ANI agent played by Tricia Helfer, the sexy blonde toaster Number 6.
The game moves quickly from there to an orbital drop, the specialty of the ODST. You get on board a one-soldier pod, and you're violently launched toward the Covenant vessel. You have camera control at this stage, but the buffeting ride makes getting a solid idea of what's happening tough; still, what you can see is pretty damn epic. There are hundreds of other pods, all screaming planet-side, accompanied by the chatter from your squadmates and mission control. The whole feel of the game is immediately very different from any previous Halo experience.
For one thing, when you wake up after the drop has all gone wrong - and six hours after it's gone wrong at that, you've got to free yourself from your pod. It's hanging above a deserted street, and it's bit of a drop. But this is Halo, falling doesn't... OUCH.
In fact, falling even a short distance does hurt, and the next thing you spot is a now shrunken health bar. Energy shield? The ODST don't get to play with anything that fancy. Another feature taken away in this game is dual-wielding, which we found out the hard way in our multiplayer session.
What they do get, however, is a very sexy bullpup SMG (which in action is kind of a cross between the SMGs from Halo and the good old Assault Rifle, complete with a medium zoom) and very functional night-vision. The ODST often take part in stealth ops, so NVG is a must. In game it ramps up the light levels and gives everything a faint outline, especially important gear and weapons.
Issue: 133 | February, 2012