The Canadian Halo ODST pre-launch party invite beckoned MSXBOX-WORLD to visit a non-descript building on a busy downtown Toronto street. After a confined elevator ride, we entered a modern industrial space in grey and white. We were greeted by the hostess and welcomed to the event. I took a look around. Things had gotten underway at 4 and by the time I had arrived there was already quite a crowd.
Tables encircling a spiral staircase had plates of kebabs, dumplings and hors doerves with Halo-themed names. A large aluminum bucket offered up imported beer and vodka. A lone XBox kiosk was running a copy of ODST for those whom wanted to stick close to the nosh. The walls surrounding the space had a long series of mounted concept art from the game. Three large soldier posters adorned the glass separator to the main playing area.
But then, entering main playing area was as much of a sensory experience as stepping into an E3 kiosk. Tables were arranged down the center of the room to make a boardroom table. Two rows of huge Samsung TVs sat on the table, each hooked up to a green "Halo" Xbox, emitted eye-searing flashes of explosions into the hapless players sitting in leather office chairs a mere 2 feet from these monsterous screens. The four stations closest to the entrance were running ODST in its showcase cooperative multiplayer mode: Firefight (similar to GOW2's Horde mode). Round the back, two more stations with even bigger TVs ran splitscreen coop. Any murmur of the crowd was drowned out by the continuous explosions and sub-machine gun fire blaring from the screens as the carnage ensued.
At the front of the room a ten foot diagonal projector screen cycled through promotional videos for the game, and at the back wall in a nook, two players were quietly playing the first few minutes of the campaign on a single box in splitscreen mode.
After a few moments of reconnoitering I found a seat and got into the Firefight match.
Firefight pits 4 players cooperatively against rounds of escalating enemies. Though I felt immediately at ease with the controls, there were some significant changes to adapt to as well:
ODST removes the indicator for the regenerating shield, instead tinting the world red when your shield is down. A long health bar runs the top of the screen, getting whittled down, without regenerating on its own. HUD indicators remind players to collect health packs when getting low on life.
After a few warmup rounds, enemies started to lob grenades almost continuously while Covenant tanks fired plasma mortars, making life quite tough. Once a player died, he had to sit in spectator mode, hoping his allies would be able to finish the wave. This would allow the whole team to respawn and try to withstand the next, ever more lethal wave of Covenant attackers.
Another game changing feature was a vision enhancement mode, putting colored silhouettes around every object and enemy in the environment. With this mode engaged, enemies popped out of the background with bright red silhouettes, while allies were green and the rest of the environment taking on tan silhouettes. Collectable weapons hanging on walls in dark alcoves were clearly outlined and easy to spot and equip. "Silhouette vision" replaces the radar feature from Halo 3 and makes enemy recognition amongst the moody environments almost too easy.
Firefight mode also showed a number of blue icons along the side of the screen, with the default being a 3 leaf clover. As the match progressed, more icons lit up. These icons indicated additional rules in play, such as the frequency of enemies throwing grenades, dodging or rushing the players.
We moved on to a Splitscreen campaign station, jumping in where someone had left off. We were in a wide open desert environment, loaded with vehicles and packs of rocket-firing covenant. It felt like classic Halo 3 vehicle-level. Many/(all?) of the Halo 3 vehicles make a return, the jeep, the covenant one wheel cycle, tank, and glider all made an appearance in our play session. Despite gripping the ODST machine pistol with fingerless gloves, these ODST soldiers remain super-powered Halo badasses: Clambering on a Wraith Tank and punching it with your bare hands to destroy it remains every bit as satisfying as in Halo 3.
As we completed missions, we would return to the landing zone in the center of a deserted city, to look for clues left by allies to trigger the start of another mission.
As our time at the event wound down, Jeff Rivait, Canadian product manager for first party (MS) games and accessories was kind enough to answer a few more questions. The PVP component of ODST is exactly Halo 3 PVP multiplayer, including all expansions thus far released. The PVP multiplayer component comes on a second disk included with ODST. The disc is fully interoperable with original Halo 3 multiplayer, so the community will not be split in two by this release (albeit many players will be pulled away from PVP by the Firefight mode.) Features such as the silhouette radar mode and non-regenerating hitpoints are exclusive to the campaign and Firefight mode. There are no downloadable content plans for ODST at this time, though its too early completely rule out DLC if the demand is there. ODST also includes access to the Halo Reach beta when that comes out down the road.
ODST certainly seems to have all the bases covered and we look forward to playing ODST en complet and giving you the rest of the details in our full review, once the game hits the streets.
Some images from the event.
Preview By: John Harley
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