Decided I would get this written tonight
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQEuBneFi3g# "You know the music, time to dance." On December 26th, 2007, I made a purchase that changed the way I viewed gaming forever. The prior day I had recieved an XBox 360, my first gaming consel since the PlayStation One, for Christmas. After playing around with Guitar Hero and the free games that the system offered on that first day, I realized just what game it was that I wanted, though I had no real idea why. There was name floating around my head, one that I had heard countless friends say, one that I had seen plastered all over the internet for months. I am obviously talking about Halo 3, the game that kickstarted what some may call an obsession, though I myself would probably refer to as more of a passion than anything else. From the moment I popped the disc in, I was hooked. The beautiful music, the jaw dropping landscapes, the fun and easy to learn gameplay, and even the terrifying Brute Chieftians cinimatic Scarab battles swpet me away in a world that I never wanted to leave. After the two months that it took me to complete the game on Easy, I obtained both Halo: Combat Evolved and Halo 2, and immediately set my sights on Halo Wars. I was so caught up in this world that, by the time the next entry into the franchise was set to release, I was already hooked.
Halo 3 ODST was the game that took my love of this great saga to an entirely new level. As the first FPS in the series to move away from the Master Chief, Halo's hyper-athletic superhero of a main protagonist, and instead focus on a silent, unnamed "Rookie" wandering around a ravaged, desolate city looking for his missing squadmates, this game had a lot to proove to Halo's loyal fanbase. Smaller in both size and scope than the previous entries in the series, ODST set out to change the pace and tell an entirely new type of story (for this universe, at least). ODST's campaign relied heavily on atmosphere and loneliness as you travelled around New Mombasa, fighting against overwelming numbers of Covenant soldiers in your seemingly useless attempt to discover clues as to where your squad may have gathered in your absence. Like the excellent CGI announcement trailer that kickstarted my immediate hype for the game, Halo 3 ODST made brilliant use of a soundtrack that differed greatly from the grand, epic scores of the main trilogy. Down-to-Earth, somber, and heavily influenced by jazz rather than orchestra, the beautiful music only helped to add to the eerie sense of isloation that the game so prominently featured.
The entire game is not completely gloomy, however. Through the clever implementation of flashback sequences the player was able to transport back in time a few hours to play as the Rookie's partners in more classic, traditionally styled Halo missions. Balanced in a near flawless, non-linear way with the Rookie's journey through New Mombasa, these flashbacks helped only to aid in expanding and progressing ODST's game-noir (yes, I know that's not a real term
) story forward. When a flashback ended and you were sent plummeting back into the isloated city with only fragments of information and encrypted instructions by the city's AI to guide you, the music kicked in and the lonliness element really hit hard. I felt compelled to complete the game more than I did any of the other entries in the series because I genuinely cared about finding the missing members of my team. And just when I did find them, the game took another dramatic turn. Focusing on a character that I never would have expected, the game's sudden change of direction left me dying to find out what happened next.
Like Halo 2, though certainly not to the same extent, Halo 3 ODST also took time away from the human characters to cater a bit to the Covenant side of the story. In this case, Vergil, an Engineer (a species that I find to be criminally underused in the game series) with the complete knowledge of both the Covenant and New Mombasa's Superintendant at its fing-, erm, tentacle-tips. At the end of the game, with the now regrouped squad tasked with escorting this Engineer safely out of the city, I felt the intensity rise as the game's eerie atmosphere shed away and led into a dramatic conclusion. By the time the credits started rolling, once again with the beautiful music sweeping me away, I knew that in front of me was my favorite video game. So far my outlook has not changed. Even with the amazing addtition to the franchise in the form of Halo Reach, my love for ODST in the top spot has not budged. I honestly don't even think that Halo 4, Master Chief's first major appearance since 2007's Halo 3, will be able to make ODST budge from that number one spot on my list. Everything about this game just clicked with me. The realistic (and quite funny) characters, Marty's game-changing score, and dreary atmosphere of the city, and the intense, action packed conclusion combined to make this a gaming experience like no other.
