Playing as a relatively regular soldier, rather than a superhuman Spartan, is interesting too, because it lets you experience the Halo universe from a more grounded perspective. These bits have a melancholy, almost noir-like atmosphere that I find really effective, and they’re a nice change of pace from the more action-packed flashback missions.
And I love the sections between missions set in the dark, moody hub city of New Mombasa. It's like a box of Halo-shaped chocolates, giving you a little bit of everything from the games prior to it. What I love about ODST is that it uses its flashback structure to present you with a 'greatest hits' of brilliant Halo set pieces. Halo 3: ODSTĪndy K: The secret best Halo.
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Hanging with a Spartan crew was a fascinating view into the highest tier of military culture the series protagonist sprung from, and the pared back gunplay (no dual wielding!) suited what felt like a more stark, punishing perspective of the Halo universe.
James: Reach didn’t focus on Master Chief, but it ended up telling me all about him by the end. The finale, as the Pillar of Autumn leaves your Spartan on a dead planet to fight down to the last bullet, is one of the only Halo moments that's made me a little emotional. Terrific game. That's a fantastic storytelling approach-as the marketing said for Reach at the time, you, being anyone with a loose understanding of Halo's universe, know the end. It starts slow, but Reach successfully frames all of your triumphs in the game as fruitless in the face of a growing catastrophe, as the titular planet gradually falls to the Covenant. Why isn't there an entire Halo spin-off game that's just about that, complete with multiplayer?
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Most of its levels are nice and repeatable, plus it has a tremendous one-off set piece that lets you dogfight in space. I just finished Reach with a friend in co-op for the second time-totally unaware it would be announced for PC days later-and I actually think it's pretty close to the first and third games in quality. But everyone else put ODST ahead of Reach, so I'll politely go with it. Samuel: On my personal list, Reach would definitely be above ODST, and by a wide margin. Phil: I played the first three games back-to-back for the first time a couple of years ago, and even I don't remember anything about Halo 2. Samuel: Dual wielding, Andy! It's all that mattered in 2004. But mostly I'm drawing a blank, so I guess I didn’t really like it. I have vague, fuzzy memories of driving a tank along a giant bridge in a city… and playing as the Arbiter, stabbing other aliens with a pink laser dagger. It just ended so abruptly.Īndy K: I can't really remember anything about Halo 2, and I'm pretty sure I finished it when it first came out on Xbox. I’m all about the sandbox shootin’, and Halo 2 certainly scaled things up. I’ll be honest, the Halo story sort of sloughs off me. Trading one grim, macho protagonist for another? Yeehaw.īut yeah, I can’t recall much about the campaign either. James: Remember the Arbiter reveal? That was something.
Can't fault the multiplayer, though, which basically changed online console games forever. It just wasn't close to being as good as its predecessor-but damn, what a high bar Combat Evolved set. Halo 2 has a famously abrupt finale, and I recall fans being hung up on the disappointment of the final game versus this E3 2003 footage for a long time. Samuel: A great opening in New Mombasa City, where you get to drive a Scorpion tank over a bridge shooting down flying Banshees, leads into a series of levels I barely even remember now.