Halo 3 ODST

Xbox 360

By Scott Bartley / Friday, January 01 2010

Still lurking near the top of the Xbox Live multiplayer popularity charts two years after its release, Halo 3 has proven it has staying power and a loyal fan base. Naturally, Bungie, the game’s developer, and Microsoft are keen to cash in on this undying love and wring a few million more dollars out of the existing game engine and story. This is where ODST comes in.

More like an expansion pack than a completely new Halo game, ODST (it stands for Orbital Drop Shock Trooper) takes gamers back in time (to somewhere between the Halo 2 and Halo 3 storylines) to the fighting between Earth’s home-based troops and the invading Covenant armies. Halo fans will appreciate being back on Earth to spend some quality time exploring devastated, alien-ridden cities right here at home for a change.

However, the experience is not a patch on the thrill we got from exploring the fascinating ring-world of earlier games and as such ODST seemed to be missing a little of that Halo magic that has stood the game in good stead so far in its life.

In fact, playing my way through ODST I couldn’t help but feel a little underwhelmed by the whole experience. Am I suffering from Halo burnout? Possibly. That’s not to say there isn’t a lot to like. Certainly the combat, the visuals and the sound are all every bit as good as that of the previous instalment. I particularly liked the new heads-up display (HUD) that automatically picks out both enemy targets and friendlies in your field of view and the vehicles are spectacularly good fun. Since you’re playing as a “mere” soldier this time around you’ll find it plays a little differently when compared to the super-human Master Chief. I found myself hiding and plotting my attacks more often than the Chief ever did simply because my game character wasn’t as nimble or tough.

But really, this just feels too much like downloadable content re-packaged and sold as a full game. The campaign doesn’t take as long to finish as Halo 3 either and gameplay, overall, is identical to Halo 3. It left me feeling a little short-changed given all the hype (How much did those full-length TV ads in the middle of Fringe screening on TV2 cost, I wonder?). Perhaps that’s why Bungie decided to chuck in a bunch of maps on a second disk. There are three new multiplayer maps, plus all 21 Halo 3 maps previously released and a further 10 maps for the new Firefight co-op mode.
These extras will be of varying levels of usefulness depending on whether you’ve already downloaded and bought half this stuff already. But if you’re a newcomer to Halo it’s quite the treasure trove of goodies. There’s also an invitation to join the Halo Reach multiplayer beta test when it opens next year.