Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

10 to 20 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Almost, but not quite"

Halo 3 ODST is a prequel to the Original Halo trilogy, focusing on a group of Orbital Drop Shock Troopers who crash land in a covenant hot zone in New Mombasa (Earth's central line of defence). Through the missions you will encounter a few new enemies and a couple of different weapons but the controls and basic gameplay elements are still the same, which lets face it is not a bad thing. But we could have hoped for something more. The campaign is enjoyable and at a length of around 7 hours will keep you entertained throughout and encourage you to play again and recover all the collectables and achievements. The famous Halo multiplayer is lost on this game although when you buy a copy of the game it includes the halo 3 multiplayer with all of the map packs. Firefight replaces multiplayer here, a game mode where you and up to 4 friends fight of waves of difficult covenent forces in a small map area with limited health, ammo and respawns. This game mode is amazingly fun which is what will keep you playing this magnificent game, although on singleplayer it can be really challenging and will P**s you have a lot. So multiplayer is the best way to do it.

Visuals - 9.5/10. As usual Halo's definitive visuals live up to the expectations of previous games but the annoying red blurs on your screen when you are shot, are something that should maybe have been toned down a touch.

Gameplay - 10/10. Halo 3: ODST hooks you in right from the start and encourages you to replay the destroyed tale of New Mombasa. Along with the firefight mode to keep you interested way after the first playthrough.

Audio - 9/10. Some speech bugs where mouths move but no audio and guns that dont make a sound, although infrequent do occur when you least expect them.

Campaign - 8/10. Definetly not the best halo campaign. But still reasonably enjoyable. Some missions will not start until you recomplete a previous mission and the inability to spawn in New Mombosa to tick off collectibles and achievements can be quite annoying.

Firefight - 8.5/10. Amazingly fun when with 3 others but on your own it is tiring and just plain annoying. Score limits on some maps are just inachievable in a short period of time but there is still fun to be had fighting off waves of Brutes and Grunts.