By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe.
Halo 2 and ODST are the best.
Let's talk about what they did right.
1) Halo 2:
The story is flawlessly structured together from two different perspectives. We see the battle through John's eyes and the Covenant through Thel's eyes. Hey, Bungie, you did good with this decision - no longer are we fighting mindless and characterless aliens on a screen. We're seeing deep into their religion and ultimates, as the story develops, how fragile the Covenant is because we never kill a single human (only Flood and Heretics).
We also have a very large variety of locations ranging from:
- Space
- Earth (cities, motorways, districts, courtyards and boulevards)
- Threshold Gas Mine
- Installation 05 (swamps, mountain ranges, flying gondolas, temples, underwater structures, the Library, the Control Room, open spaces filled with the Flood and Covenant going at it).
- High Charity (gardens, temples, shrines, alien corridors, prison blocks, massive gravity lifts, colossal cathedrals etc).
The point is is that there's much more variety in this game than the others, I'd like to also point out that the Halo series has a very distinct colour pallet compares to other FPS/TPS games. It's colourful, it has character and a backstory behind it instead of just flying dust particles, huge walls and the like. What is there in front of you is there for a reason, like those massive ship things on Quarantine Zone which have seemingly crashed and have become those arched bones in the desert.
The soundtrack is the most varied in any Halo game because each track is suited for a particular area. Whether it be Orbit of Glass for being high up in some alien space station, In Amber Clad for an all out battle or even Breaking Benjamin during that fight where all the Covenant are fighting each other and you just have to kill them all.
It's one of the best things to do right in a video game and Halo 2 pulls it off beautifully.
2) ODST
ODST has the best campaign overall and I'll tell you why.
Firstly, it's a character driven story. This is new ground for Bungie and they pulled this of very well by having Nathan Fillion, Alan Tudyk and Adam Baldwin do voice acting for it. This immediately establishes chemistry between the actors and gives their relationships more depth.
Bungie's inspirations for the game were fantastic too. The old-timey noir atmosphere and the structure of Dante's Inferno were very well warranted and it came off as a well thought up story which had time for players to emotionally invest in the characters whilst also enjoying blowing stuff up.
The city was alive, that's not something you can say about a lot of games. We wake up in an abandoned and shattered city trying to find our squad, over the course of the game you see different areas which are now destroyed but also how they got that way in the flashbacks. It almost makes the city a character itself and was a unique way to show the destruction of New Mombasa.
Then there's Sadie's story. This is one of the best things to ever happen to Halo, all I need to say is this: Everything was perfect. The story, the sound effects, the art and voice acting was absolutely perfect. It even had an influence on the game where you see the Olifant in the city and the NMPD trooper underground. You'll recall me saying that in Halo 2 everything is there for a reason, this couldn't be more true with ODST.
I'll conclude on the music. Ah, such a delight to have a fresh new soundtrack which wasn't simply recycling old tracks. There were a few throwbacks but walking around the city with tracks like Neon Night and No Stone Unturned playing is divine. Marty's sublime soundtrack is what makes Halo unique and ODST only reinforces how brilliant that man is.