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Odious Tea

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So anyone else been playing this?

I think it's fantastic, the campaign is pretty good but where the game really shines (for me) is in fire fight, the cooperative Survival mode. It's fantastic, going for the Endure achievement has been excellent. Again Bungie have surpassed themselves in online stat tracking. Here is a reccent game I played.

http://www.bungie.net/Stats/ODSTg.aspx?gameid=26875460&player=patters666

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I just burned through the campaign in the past two days, and I posted my opinions on that aspect of it on my Bitmob blog:

http://bitmob.com/index.php/mobfeed/a-crime-drama-in-space-halo-3-odst-review.html

I have to admit that I shamelessly ripped off "odious tea" for the header to my conclusion and uncreatively cranked out "Oh! Da BeSt Tea" as an alternatively positive label for the game. Okay, I did have a little shame.

When it comes down to it, I just loved the atmosphere of the game and the less hokey, non-"OH MY GOD SAVE THE UNIVERSE" vibe to the story.

As far as Firefight goes... I have no opinion yet. I just beat the game yesterday so I've unlocked many of the Firefight features, but I don't really have many friends who've picked up the game yet so I haven't been able to try it. The lack of matchmaking is disappointing, but from what I heard, random people might not add much to the experience unless you're really lucky in who you get matched with.

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Excellent game. Having completed the campaign on Legendary yesterday, I think it's my favorite Halo campaign, or possibly my favorite after Halo 1. I completely agree about how refreshing it is to not be saving the world yet again (although the game sort of veers into that territory towards the end, which I guess is inevitable).

This feels to me to Halo 3 what the Half-Life 2 episodes are to Half-Life 2. It's more concentrated, more refined, less unnecessarily "epic," and more subtle. Awesome.

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Excellent game. Having completed the campaign on Legendary yesterday, I think it's my favorite Halo campaign, or possibly my favorite after Halo 1. I completely agree about how refreshing it is to not be saving the world yet again (although the game sort of veers into that territory towards the end, which I guess is inevitable).

This feels to me to Halo 3 what the Half-Life 2 episodes are to Half-Life 2. It's more concentrated, more refined, less unnecessarily "epic," and more subtle. Awesome.

Your point about Half-Life 2 vs Half-Life 2: Episodes seems to be ripped right out of my mind. I was listening to Rebel FM's Game Club podcasts where they're playing through Half-Life 2 and they were saying that the word around Valve internally during the development of HL2 was that it was supposed to be the best shooter on the PC.

Likewise, I think, was Bungie's intent with Halo 1/2/3 - pack as many repetitions of that 30 seconds of fun as you possibly can into one game, witness as many vistas as possible, and fight as many different enemy types as is bearable. ODST does a little more tactful subtraction, trimming the fat around the different weapon types and even making sure that each flashback was distinctly a different type of gameplay to avoid too much repetition.

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I've been having a lot of fun with this game but I have noticed that the smooth jazz soundtrack can create some surreal combat experiences. My deperate rushes to get behind a Hunter never felt so ethereal. In those moments, the game becomes something much different than what it was, but these moments are brief. Everything else is the Halo I know and love.

Playing through Halo 2 and 3 with my room mate were some of the best gaming experiences of my life, so Firefight and the cooperative experience was a major draw for me, but that room mate has moved far away and doesn't own a 360. My other friends don't have the game yet, so when I discovered there was no matchmaking it made Firefight an almost useless feature for me. I tried playing it by myself a few times, but it only made me wish for others to play with.

But the campaign is tons of fun and I plan on spending the rest of the afternoon finding the few audio logs that have eluded me. I find the narrative in those logs far more gripping than the campaigns/

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The campaign was fun and an interesting change from the usual Halo style. My one complaint is that Firefight has no matchmaking. Not too many people I know have ODST, so arranging a game is a bit of trouble.

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From what you guys and others have said, I'm really looking forward to playing it. My copy should arrive from Amazon tomorrow. I really enjoyed Halo 3 so sounds like this should be even better, and I think I'll have a lot more fun with firefight than other multiplayer modes.

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The campaign was fun and an interesting change from the usual Halo style. My one complaint is that Firefight has no matchmaking. Not too many people I know have ODST, so arranging a game is a bit of trouble.

Has Bungie said anything about patching in matchmaking at some point?

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I haven't heard anything about them patching in ODST multiplayer and that doesn't really sound like Bungie but they do have that 1.2 in the corner of the screen so maybe that is the build model and they might update it and change it to model 1.3 or even 2. so there might be a chance but I haven't heard about it.

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I would recomend that anyone who considers themselves good at halo go for the Vidmaster Endure acheivement, it's one of the best cooperative experiences I have had in any game, tough as hell though, as well as taking ages (2 and a half hours). It is really damn awesome, frantic, demanding, adrenaine pumping and did I forget awesome; I doubt I will do it again anytime soon.

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I would recomend that anyone who considers themselves good at halo go for the Vidmaster Endure acheivement, it's one of the best cooperative experiences I have had in any game, tough as hell though, as well as taking ages (2 and a half hours). It is really damn awesome, frantic, demanding, adrenaine pumping and did I forget awesome; I doubt I will do it again anytime soon.

Is that the one where you have to

fight on the highway without using the Warthogs or Scorpions on Legendary difficulty?

If so, I can see why you'd take so long finishing it. :eek:

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Is that the one where you have to

fight on the highway without using the Warthogs or Scorpions on Legendary difficulty?

If so, I can see why you'd take so long finishing it. :eek:

no, it's the one where you have to do the first 4 sets of firefight on heroic.

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Has Bungie said anything about patching in matchmaking at some point?

Not that I know of. Coming from Bungie, the exclusion of matchmaking would have to be intentional, for whatever reason. It's far too big of an oversight considering their massive online community. I'm sure there are all sorts of internet petitions for it, but you know how those turn out. It could even just be the way the matchmaking is set up. Firefight is essentially just a variant of online co-op. It could be that, as a "non-competitive" game type, their system can't treat it in the same way.

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Not that I know of. Coming from Bungie, the exclusion of matchmaking would have to be intentional, for whatever reason. It's far too big of an oversight considering their massive online community. I'm sure there are all sorts of internet petitions for it, but you know how those turn out. It could even just be the way the matchmaking is set up. Firefight is essentially just a variant of online co-op. It could be that, as a "non-competitive" game type, their system can't treat it in the same way.

I believe it could be because it doesn't support drop in, drop out gameplay so if playing with a random guy who drops out your game ends.

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I played some with a friend of mine. It's the first time a Halo game didn't feel boring and generic to me. Very good in fact! Although the way some characters started babbling about past relationships was crap.

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Awesome 'cast. I'm eager to get a hold of ODST now.

Chris, I just listened to the Kotick inspired song you posted on the blog, it's great! I get the feeling Beatles Rock Band has been fueling your musical inspiration with this.

I like your genuine singing voice too. It's nice that you did it like that rather than a comedy take on the subject. Two idle thumbs up from me!

Keep up the good stuff, and get that blog comment section up and running soon. :)

Edit: Apologies, I posted this in the wrong place. I'll leave it here though as I do now have ODST and can add that after a couple of hours I'm enjoying the atmosphere of the hub bit and also getting used to being a bit more fragile in combat. It has a nice familiarity to it but with a bit more tension going into those big arenas. I'm undecided on the hunting for health/eye doctor things aspect of it though.

Choosing a Legendary play through to start with may have been over estimating my apparently dulled Halo skills too.

Edited by F4T C4T
I meant to post this in the episode thread...

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I played some with a friend of mine. It's the first time a Halo game didn't feel boring and generic to me. Very good in fact! Although the way some characters started babbling about past relationships was crap.

I'm not finished the campaign yet but I agree, the whole relationship stuff was boring and has been done to death.

I particularly like the significantly more terrifying impact of hunters in the game.

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I'm not finished the campaign yet but I agree, the whole relationship stuff was boring and has been done to death.

I particularly like the significantly more terrifying impact of hunters in the game.

Another enemy that's much more intimidating - Wraiths. In non-vehicular based missions, these things are brutal. And taking one out by planting a grenade in the driver's compartment is totally satisfying.

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The latest episode of the Joystiq podcast really articulated my feelings about ODST. The essential point being that ODSTs are not as fun to play as Spartans are.

There's nothing fun about not being able to rip the driver out of a Wraith and take it for a spin yourself, and there's nothing fun about not being able to use items and not being able to dual wield small arms. And the ODSTs have no new abilities to get around these short comings.

For the majority of the game these deficits in the ODST arsenal are easy to overlook. But there are some extremely frustrating parts of the game (mostly involving Wraiths) that seem to have been designed more for Master Chief than for an ODST. This results in a rather uneven difficulty curve that greatly mares the experience of the campaign.

Compounding this are checkpoints which are all too often sparsely placed.

ODST's campaign is a still a fun experience, but for my money it doesn't hold a candle to the balance and care achieved in the levels of Halo 3.

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The latest episode of the Joystiq podcast really articulated my feelings about ODST. The essential point being that ODSTs are not as fun to play as Spartans are.

There's nothing fun about not being able to rip the driver out of a Wraith and take it for a spin yourself, and there's nothing fun about not being able to use items and not being able to dual wield small arms. And the ODSTs have no new abilities to get around these short comings.

I think that a lot of the fun that can be attributed to ODST is built upon what exactly you're trying to get out of a video game. I know that a reason that a lot of people like to play Halo is that the Master Chief is certainly no Gordan Freeman or Rookie, he's practically a god with a shotgun. If you're into that sense of empowerment, be my guest and enjoy the Halo "proper", because that series does a great job of giving you that rush.

But for me, I don't mind sort of roleplaying the ODST - sneaking through the shadows, choosing to flee rather than fight at times, or attacking opponents at range rather than head to head. The reduction in weapon types and balancing of weapons seems to complement that style of play, as well. The shotgun is a little less potent, the carbine is devastating, the new pistol is designed to dispatch groups of grunts, etc. Not only that, but I think I may have escaped a lot of the more frustratingly difficult segments by choosing to play in normal difficulty for my first playthrough.

I can see the position that you and Justin come from, but I simply don't agree at this point. Maybe in starting my second playthrough at Heroic difficulty and experiencing the story with a more fine-toothed comb I'll begin to notice the difficulty issues that you're talking about. Out of curiousity, though, what difficulty did you choose when you played?

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Sure, it sucks that you can't hijack a Wraith, but I never found it hard to destroy one. I even punched one to death because I had no grenades left when I grabbed it. An ODST may be more fragile, but that's kind of the point. You're not supposed to just jump in and kill everything without batting an eye. It requires more care and strategy.

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JonCole, I played through on Heroic.

Where stealth was presented as a viable option I found it useful, however outside the hub world there's rarely an opportunity to use it.

Korax, if you never found it difficult to destroy a Wraith I envy you, since half the time the game presented one it would massacre me from across the map.

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Ya, I love this game. Bungie has become really good at making amazing linear battles. The anxiety and fear that you feel when those drop ships come in is awesome. My favourite, actually, is that they have made the AI in a couple battles try and actually take ground (in Oni Alpha and the last mission), which can become pretty stressful, as you cant just hide and snipe constantly.

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