A great premise undermined by a short story.

User Rating: 9 | Halo 3: ODST X360
By bryntkd | Review Date:
Halo 3:ODST is a good game, but it doesn't live up to the hype that the live action commercials set up. The story set between Halo 2 and 3 and you play as an ODST (Orbital Shock Drop Trooper) squad that consists of The Rookie, Buck, Mickey, Dutch, Romeo and Dare. Their mission is to drop into New Mombasa and fight off the Covenant invasion of the city. However, during the drop the unit gets scattered and as the Rookie you find out, through a set of clues, what happened to your unit. Every time you find a clue, the game takes back to play as another squad member of the ODST. The story is near excellent if it wasn't for the extremely short campaign. You'll be able to beat the game in two days if you really wanted to, and it nearly ruined the game for me.

As of right now, this is the darkest game in the Halo saga. The game does away with the bright colors of the first three games a substitutes it for a much darker tone. When you're playing as The Rookie, trying to find out what happened to your unit, New Mombasa is in a state of eternal darkness. The graphics in the game are top notch, successful capturing the darker feel of the game

Have no fear about the controls, they are exactly the same as they were in the previous titles. They are easy and quick to learn for new comers and bring no surprises to veterans of the series.

The game play is almost exactly the same as it was in the first game with a few major tweaks. Since you play as a human and not a Spartan, you cannot make absurdly high falls and survive nor can you jump as far. You cannot dual wield weapons and you cannot move as fast. This also marks the return of the health, or stamina bar. Once your shields are depleted, you'll have a stamina bar after that that once it runs out, you're a dead man. The shields can replenish automatically, but to replenish health you need to find health packs either scattered across the map or on kiosks across New Mombasa. The mini map is gone and replaced with a compass to direct you where to go. The only downside of this being that you won't know what enemies are around the corner until you're around the corner. The select button will grant you access to a huge map of the city as well as a list of your objectives, but you have to be in the clear of enemies before you can access this feature. a brand new feature is a sort of night vision helmet mode, Which you will be using 90-95% of the time you're in the game. These new added features make the game a more in depth and challenging experience.

The length of the campaign almost killed the game for me, but great and challenging game play, easy to use controls and an interesting premise are the redeeming qualities in this title. try to buy it used if you can, cause it's not worth the 60 dollar price tag.

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