I loved Firefly. As any sci-fi loving geek would, I wept a little when it was cancelled. So, when I originally heard that some of the talent from Firefly was doing voicework on the (then titled) Halo: Recon, I was pretty psyched. I’ve never relied on the Halo series to tell a magic story, or have characters deeper than a kiddie pool, but I’d be keen to see Bungie give it a shot. Halo 3: ODST takes a nice swing at it, and delivers (for the most part). What was originally slated to be a Halo 3 campaign expansion, then gained a new multiplayer mode, picked up steam from the hype machine, included a 2nd disc with all of those massive Halo 3 map packs, and bam! $59.99. Now, some people will cry that this one just falls short on the value scale. But, like any other lonely man, starved for gravity hammer & spartan laser loving, I’ll slip right back into the sack when the ex calls. Luckily, the sex.. ermm combat, is still awesome.

ODST stands for Orbital Drop Shock Trooper, which is an awkward acronym that really just means “You’re Not A Spartan This Time”. You can’t jump as high, your can’t dual wield, you can’t fall 10 stories with just a “little sting”, and you can’t take hits like a spartan, but you CAN still flip over a warthog.. so don’t feel too bad. The name of the game here is teamwork, and Bungie has done everything in their power to work teamwork into the game. The campaign mode works flawlessly with up to 4 people, and works it into the game in every way except putting the other players into the cut scenes. I had a blast running through the story with friends, and look forward to trying to run through again on Legendary, and hunt for skulls (yep, they’re back!).

Graphically, ODST looks exactly like Halo 3, with one exception. The ODST guys all wear the handily named VISR helmets, that give them some data overlays, and help identify friend & foe (we can’t all have military AI girls injected into our brains now, can we..). The light enhancing comes in super handy because most of the overworld (and interiors) are quite dark in the now abandoned New Mombasa. The edge effects also are very well done, and give everything a New Tron smell that is very enjoyable. Mix that up with the Vangelis-touched overworld soundtrack, and you have blended enough pre-millennial sci-fi homage in to pique the interest of anyone who values the phrases “Nexus 6″ “Neo-Tokyo” or “Flynn’s Arcade”.

The E3 clip gives a solid overview of the story mode..

Onto the fun factor. I’d say overall that ODST is the best attempt by Bungie to tell a Halo story. It uses character to much greater effect, and the Rookie-flashback storytelling mechanic works very well to tie the story together. The New Mombasa overworld sections also give you a few minutes to cool off after each of the individual ODST’s hectic end segments. It’s brilliantly paced, but you only notice it as soon as you’re done, and mutter to yourself about how short it was, then realize it wasn’t short, it was just smoothly paced. Note to anyone with an ounce of FPS experience, you MUST play this game on Heroic or Legendary, as Normal is a joke (just like in Halo 3). The PvP is actually just Halo 3, so nothing to note there that hasn’t been said for a long while now. It’s awesome, fun, and hopefully you didn’t buy all the map packs, so you’ll get a giant burst of new content all at once.

All the Halo 3 metagaming is here, Legendary taunts you with it’s difficulty, there’s skulls to be found all through the story, and there’s a sub-plot (which is arguably better than the MAIN plot) that is hidden in the overworld through 30 audiofiles to be found around the massive map. ODST adds in the now trendy “progress bar of the mini-achievements” feature that I first loved in Shadow Complex. If they just added the bait of your nearest friend’s count as well, I’d probably be itching to get them faster than I am now. Now let’s talk about Firefight. Firefight is the only new multiplayer mode added with the ODST package, and it’s a doozy. Ok, so you know how in every Halo game, there’s this perfection of the heat of battle, where you struggle to fire off enough shots to drop a shield, and run in for a melee kill, or drop a frag into that nice pile of grunts, only to alert the brutes with them and start a big ol’ mess of combat that you eat up like the best bbq ribs on the planet? Right. So take that, and drop it into a closed environment, like Gears of War 2′s Horde mode, then string together those moments and slowly increase the difficulty by 1 notch every 3 minutes. THAT is Firefight, and it’s a wonderful thing to experience. For people new to Halo, it may feel like a bit too much all at once, but.. for those of you who play Halo like you drive a BMW, fully connected to the world and expressive beyond your own controller, it’s heavenly. Think of Firefight as that curvy mountainside road that you get to drive on very aggressively to test out your skills (and your teamwork skills as well!). Sweetness.

One final thing to note. The Halo series is one of the few FPS games (especially being console based) that really nails the immersion factor. Way too many people think that “immersion” comes from a game’s perspective. There is nothing specific about the first-person camera view that makes a game more immersive. Immersion comes from the ability for a control system to disappear, a world to be reactive in a rock-solid way, and for game mechanics to be so reliable that you literally become expressive with them. To a seasoned player, the Halo universe feels like an extension of the real world, and that’s something that many other games, and generally no FPS’s, really attain. ODST is still Halo 3, and that’s a very good thing. I feel comfortable in Halo 3, I know exactly what box I can jump up onto, how many shotgun butts to the face that brute will take to drop, and if I’m feeling spunky, just what arc I need to toss the sticky grenade to drop it on that guys head over on the other side of that wall. Feels like home.

One Liner: ODST is the best Halo storytelling yet, and Firefight sweetens the deal.
Final Grade:[A]

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