I would have written this sooner but I’ve been really busy, well, playing this new game I got – Halo 3 ODST. ODST is the 4th game in the Halo series put out by Bungie Studios and the first one not centered around the Spartan super soldier known only by his rank, Master Chief. This game also is a bit out of chronological order, actually taking place during the storyline events of the Halo 2 game. The name itself might be a bit confusing to those not familiar with the game (are there any people left who haven’t heard of Halo?). ODST is an acronym for Orbital Drop Shock Trooper (yeah, the military in the future is just as fond of acronym use as ours is today). This time around, instead of playing the bad ass Spartan Master Chief you play as a simple ODST soldier newly assigned to his squad. Just as in the other Halo games, your character remains unnamed, known only as ‘Rookie’.

ODST is a game that was made because of opportunity, not necessarily planning. A few years ago Microsoft and Bungie were looking at putting out a Halo based project. They even got movie director and producer Peter Jackson in on it. As the planning progressed, Bungie sent different creative personnel down to work with Jackson’s team in New Zealand. Eventually, however, the plans for the project were scrapped. Bungie now had a great team of people who had been involved since the first Halo game and they had nothing to work on. Development on the next game was already underway so they decided to do something that surprised a lot of people (but shouldn’t have. After all, they are a game studio…). They decided to make another video game. The team came up with a great storyline and plot for the game. Making use of the existing Halo 3 game engine they were able to kick out a stellar game in just about a year’s time. Most new video games take three to four years to make.

In ODST, as I mentioned, you play as the rookie on a squad of veteran soldiers. The war with the Covenant, an alliance of alien races, has been going on for years. The game takes place soon after the events in Halo 2 started, with the Covenant having just discovered Earth and in the process of controlling the African mega city, New Mombasa. The game starts you off on one of the UNSC (United Nations Space Command) carriers in orbit, preparing to attack one of the Covenant carriers below. Prior to starting your mission, your squad gets new orders from ONI (Office of Naval Intelligence) that you aren’t made privy to just yet. In the middle of your orbital drop you divert course away from the Covenant ship. As you do so, the Covenant ship jumps into slip space creating a massive electromagnetic pulse and explosion in the atmosphere, sending your squad ballistic.

You wake up six hours after the orbital drop in a dark corner of occupied New Mombasa. You’re separated from and out of contact with your squad mates. As you move around the city you need to use stealth as much as possible to avoid Covenant forces. As an ODST you don’t have the armor or weaponry you may have been used to as the Master Chief in the other Halo games. Your character doesn’t have auto regenerating shields like the Spartan soldiers and has to rely on cunning and stratagem to get by the sentries posted around the city. Soon after starting, you make contact with Virgil, the city’s artificial intelligence, who is able to upload to your suit’s internal navigation maps of the city and locations of enemy forces. This information is vital if you are going to survive, find out what happened during the six hours you were unconscious in your drop pod, and regroup with your squad mates. And after you do all that, you still have to figure out what your mission was and find a way to complete it.

Probably the biggest breath of fresh air Bungie gave to the franchise with this game was with the voice acting. This game features a whole new cast of characters and Bungie didn’t short change us on the actors they got to play the parts. Voicing your ODST squad Sergeant Eddie Buck is Nathan Fillion. Most of you may know him from playing Captain Malcolm Reynolds in the cult sci-fi series Firefly and the ensuing movie Serenity, or even from his latest television show Castle. Bungie must have been Firefly fans because they also got Adam Baldwin and Alan Tudyk, both Firefly veterans, to play Cpl. Taylor Miles aka ‘Dutch’ and PFC Michael Crespo aka ‘Mickey’ respectively. Topping it off is everyone’s favorite Cylon from Battlestar Galactica, Tricia Helfer, who plays the ONI officer codenamed ‘DARE’.

In addition to the campaign of ODST is a special multiplayer co-op mode called Firefight. If you’ve played Gears of War 2 or Left 4 Dead, this is similar to the Horde mode or Survivor mode in those games, respectively. The basic premise is that your team faces off against wave after wave of enemy reinforcements, battling for a higher place on the leaderboards. The Firefight play is divided into Sets, Rounds, and Waves. There are five waves in a round, three rounds in a set. After a set is completed (all enemies killed) you earn a bonus round. In the bonus round you can earn extra lives for your team if you get above a certain score. At the start of each new round you get bonus lives added to your total, which are shared by your whole team, and at the start of each new set you get ammo refills. If your team is able to play through the fourth set on Heroic difficulty, you will earn the Vidmaster: Endure achievement, one step on the ‘Road to Recon’.

What is the ‘Road to Recon’ you ask? Well, I’ll tell you. In Halo 3 you unlocked different armor and helmet combinations you could use in multiplayer matches to give your character your own distinctive look. One armor set that was withheld and not unlockable was the ‘Recon’ armor. This became one of the most coveted armor sets in the game, only able to be used when some generous soul at Bungie decided to bestow it upon you, and they only did so on the rarest of occasions. Because of the demand and probably because they are tired of gamers whining about ‘I can has Recon?’, Bungie built into ODST a series of achievements gamers can get that will unlock the Recon armor for them. Three achievements of the Road to Recon are in Halo 3, three in ODST and one that requires both games to get.

Along with the ODST game itself, you get a Halo 3 multiplayer disc that includes all of the Halo 3 content for multiplayer as well as 3 additional maps (Heretic, Longshore and Citadel). Two of these are new creations while Heretic is almost an exact replication of the very popular Halo 2 map ‘Midship’. The downside for many gamers is that most rental stores, including online renter Gamefly, don’t rent this multiplayer disc with ODST. This is kind of a shame considering it is required to get the Vidmaster: Brainpan achievement which is a vital part of the ‘Road to Recon’.

Overall though, ODST is a great game with an excellent sound track to boot. It’s a refreshing change to the status quo of the Halo franchise with enough change to feel different yet similar enough to still feel like you’re playing Halo. ODST also gives gamers the chance to help defend earth while Master Chief is off fighting Covenant on the other side of the galaxy.

Cross Posted at CodeMonkeyFoobar.com