Really good shooter
I was playing this all yesterday from my shopto delivery and have to say the game is a great change. The plot takes the viewer to a time where the covenant are attacking Earth on a city called New Mobassa. You intially start as a rookie ODST trooper whos pod crash lands off course. From heere and through flashbacks you peice together what happened during the 6 hours you were out cold. This lets you play as the other ODST troopers untill you solve the whole mystery surrounding New Mobassa.
Graphically similar to Halo 3 but with a much different approach and with a few new parts. You have to find health as a pose to regenerating it (your just a human not Master Chief), your visor can act as a low light vision and enemy detector (appear with red outline). Your not near as quick as Master Chief and you have to take cover a lot and play each enviroment to your advantage.
The game is set into two discs (single player, multiplayer)and I haven't got round to playing the second disc, although I did play some Firefight, the new mutplayer mode. Here you have to take on waves of enemies which grow stronger each round, similar to horde on Gears of War 2, but this is more varied as different skulls are activated during each round to mix up the gameplay.
Overall Halo3:ODST is a great stop gap before Halo Reach (or any other shooter i.e. Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2) and for £29.99 you get a great 360 exclusive that I recommend to any gamer.
Fun first time around but pales
I'm a huge Halo fan and I did enjoy playing this game first time around. However it has a number of flaws. The basic structure is pretty good with the city-based Rookie missions leading to the larger flashback main missions. The problem is that even for Bungie this has a very repetitive feel to it. The Mombassa streets Rookie missions are virtually identical and the novelty of night vision and new etc soon wears off as you wander endlessly in the dark looking for clues to the whereabouts of your team. The hidden weapons caches behind shuttered fronts are a big help in those missions.
The main missions are a bit more varied but each one has a similar theme with almost identical large arena gladatorial shoot-out endings where you battle huge numbers of enemies and wraiths. Its all a bit frantic and although I've played through twice (normal/heroic) I dont feel driven to play again and again like with Halo 3.
I think the graphics leave something to be desired, especially when the night vision is on as everything has a 2-D cartoon quality. There is also no recognizable "Halo storyline" to this and apart from the weapons and the enemies you wouldn't know it was a Halo game.
Firefight is a good addition but nowhere near as good as GOW2 horde and is limited in a couple of ways. Firstly teamplay is limited to friends and (I could be wrong about this), there is no restart option to resume at a wave level, I could only see you can start from the beginning each time. I haven't played online (no XB Live) but again you dont get the GOW2 option of playing multiplayer locally with team and enemy AI.
All in all a reasonable game but not up to the standard of other Halo games, nor of recent competition.
No matchmaking for firefight
I got it for playing online and although it has all the halo 3 multiplayer maps, I wanted to play firefight, but it is not possible to play online unless you find yourself four friends to play it as the game lacks of matchmaking
About Halo 3: ODST (Xbox 360) detail
- Amazon Sales Rank: #12 in Computer & Video Games
- Brand: Microsoft
- Released on: 2009-09-22
- ESRB Rating: Mature
- Platform: Xbox 360
- Format: Unknown format
- Original language: English
- Dimensions: .22 pounds
Halo 3: ODST (Xbox 360) Description
The year is 2552. Covenant forces control the city of New Mombasa. They are searching for something beneath its darkened streets. You are an Orbital Drop Shock Trooper. Your orders: stay alive, meet up with your scattered squad, and escape the embattled city.
- Fan favourite and Halo series stalwart Sergeant Avery Junior Johnson is a tough-as-nails career Marine who has been in more life or death battles than you've had hot meals. He's survived more infectious Flood outbreaks, greased more Covenant bad guys, and earned more medals than any other twenty soldiers. And now you get to walk a mile in his shoes!
- Dropping in as "the rookie," a new member of an elite squad of Orbital Drop Shock Troopers sent into New Mombasa on a classified recon mission, you'll be armed with specialised weaponry and upgraded technology, including silenced weapons and a VISR enhanced vision mode.
- Drop feet first into a new way to play Halo with the cooperative campaign mode, Firefight. Form a squad of your friends over System Link or Xbox LIVE and put your skills to the ultimate test against the invading Covenant war machine for glory, high scores, and achievements.
- Three all-new maps make their debut for Halo 3's traditional, chart-topping multiplayer. Heretic, Longshore, and Citadel drop in alongside the original Halo 3 Multiplayer Maps, all packed in and playable from one standalone disc.