Halo 3: ODST Revisited

Halo 3: ODST was an interesting release in the series as it wasn't entirely a full entry being a direct spin-off from the core Halo 3 game. Still, it came packed with the most definitive version of the game featuring the full Halo 3 multiplayer and a couple new maps in the largest map collection released for the game. It also brought players Firefight, a new yet now well known mode where players work together to fight against overwhelming waves of enemies. All of this came together for what was actually a solid, yet smaller release. The campaign was well done giving fans of the series a different perspective as a small Rookie ODST and provided a larger multiplayer experience.

Halo 3: ODST released in fall 2009 on Xbox 360 as an exclusive for the console. It was once again developed by Bungie and published by Microsoft. The core game brought a campaign, the second disc with just the Halo 3 multiplayer and Firefight to accompany the package. There was a limited edition available with an awesome controller that could be purchased and it was a nice smaller release for the series. The game was later available on Xbox One through The Master Chief Collection being remastered in 1080p 60fps. It was also later made available on Xbox One through Xbox Backwards Compatibility.


I found ODST to be rather interesting as you weren't a spartan and just one of the tough regular soldiers sent into war. It was a different perspective that felt familiar, yet completely different as you got views from other regular troops. This form of seeing a team and multiple different stories was certainly something unique to the release. In the past Halo 2 provided two sides of what was going on, but this game took it further. The Rookie was just this regular new soldier and then followed him searching for what happened to his squad. The story took place during the events of Halo 2 in New Mombasa, Africa as players work on protecting important ONI information. There was also a sort of sad back story going on if you went after the audio logs found along the way. Many key elements of Halo 3 were carried over from skulls to difficulties and the look. They did however had a new special vision mode that assisted with finding key clues along the way.

The new multiplayer maps included Citadel, Heretic, and Longshore which were all solid additions. The whole multiplayer being in a single package was excellent and it was nice to have this sort of send-off for the game. The Firefight mode was well developed offering many maps, variations and challenges for players to tackle. It was quite difficult even with a group of friends, but a welcomed one that lead into the mode being further developed for Halo Reach. The game worked well by doing something new and providing a simple package for Bungie to work on as they prepared their next game. For the most part fans enjoyed this cooperative experience and the new sort of perspective of characters.

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