- Publisher: Microsoft
- Developer: Bungie
- ESRB Rating: “M” for Mature
- Genre: FPS
- Pros: Great campaign; co-op; Firefight mode; complete Halo 3 MP; gameplay; amazing music
- Cons: Graphics are showing their age
Halo 3: ODST takes place before Halo 3 in the city of New Mombasa. The Orbital Drop Shock Troopers (ODST) are the first line of defense for Earth and show up to the party long before the Master Chief. Once your mission starts, however, things don’t go quite so smooth. Your ODST squad is scattered all around New Mombasa, so you start out playing as the unit’s new rookie member and have to explore the city to find your squadmates. When you find a sign of your squad (a helmet, a rifle, a medical device, etc.), the game goes into a flashback and you actually play as that person in the events leading up to you finding their stuff. You see things from a lot of different perspectives and the way everything connects is simply awesome.
Through the course of the campaign the stories of the other ODST members weave throughout the city and across each other and it is pretty darn satisfying all in all. The ODSTs are normal people that you can actually care about a lot easier than the Chief, so even if you think you don’t care at the beginning, you will by the end. The story is really quite good and goes to show that you don’t have to have the Master Chief to tell a Halo story. The Halo universe is big and complex and it is nice to see it being filled out this way.
Gameplay
We really liked the campaign in Halo 3, but ODST’s campaign is even better and may be the best campaign in any Halo game yet. There is a great mix of vehicle and on-foot missions, with and without A.I. alongside you, and just great mission and level designs overall. The best thing we can possibly say about it is that there aren’t any levels that you are going to hate and not want to ever play again, which is something you absolutely can’t say about any of the other Halo games. It is also nicely replayable with great co-op (as always with this series) and there are lots of hidden items to find in the hub world that you probably won’t find on your first playthrough. It takes a good 6-8+ hours on Heroic difficulty or above, so it is pretty much on par with the other games in the series in terms of length.
ODST isn’t just about the single-player, however, and offers a full selection of multiplayer goodies as well. First off is the brand new Firefight mode. Firefight is the Halo equivalent of Gears of War’s Horde mode, so just like in that game you fight wave after wave of enemies on closed maps to see how long you can survive. Up to four players can play cooperatively in Firefight, and it definitely gets more fun and hectic and enjoyable with more people. The straightforward, meat and potatoes combat is the best part of Halo games, and Firefight is basically that part of Halo’s gameplay concentrated down into a frantic, awesome, satisfying mode.
Halo 3 Multiplayer
Included as a second disc with ODST is the full Halo 3 multiplayer experience. It has all of the maps that came with H3, all of the DLC, and 3 more brand new maps for a total of 24. When you put the disc in, your Xbox 360 recognizes it as Halo 3 (and it is literally everything Halo 3 had minus the single-player campaign), which means that it also has the Forge editing tool and full screenshot and movie making features of Halo 3. To clarify, Halo 3’s multiplayer and the ODST Halo 3 multiplayer disc are one in the same, so it is all fully cross compatible. The benefit of having the ODST version of the game is that all of the maps are on the disc so you can clear up some hard drive space. If you haven’t already paid for the DLC maps, this is a pretty darn good deal.
Graphically, ODST looks pretty much like Halo 3, which, unfortunately, is kind of starting to show its age. The lighting and explosions are nice, and everything is clean and nice looking, but it just isn’t as detailed as other recent Xbox 360 games. Nice, but it won’t wow you.
Sound
The sound, just like the graphics, is just like Halo 3, but that is a good thing in this case. The dialogue and sound effects are all exactly what you would expect in a Halo game and all very well done. Where the sound really excels is the music. The music overall is really good – perhaps the best the series has seen – and the themes that play as you explore the hub world are particularly good. They are dark and moody and just great.
Bottom Line
All in all, Halo 3: ODST is a simple game to recommend. Do you like Halo? Then you should buy it. And if you don’t like Halo, I gotta tell you, your “ we hate everything that becomes popular” attitude is really wearing thin at this point. Sorry, someone had to say it. ODST plays incredibly well and has arguably the best campaign of any Halo yet. When you add the new Firefight mode along with the full Halo 3 multiplayer experience onto all of that, ODST is a pretty darn good deal. You’ll also gain entry to the Halo Reach multiplayer beta (coming 2010), which makes it even better. Know this, as fun as it is, Halo 3: ODST isn’t Earth shatteringly different or has genre-changing new stuff, but it is good or great in pretty much every area. What else can we possibly ask for. My recommendation – buy it.
