Product 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.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #49 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: Microsoft
• Released on: 2009-09-22
• ESRB Rating: Mature
• Platform: Xbox 360
• Format: Unknown format
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .80" h x 5.60" w x 7.60" l, .22 pounds

Amazon.co.uk Review
A new Halo 3 game is about to hit, but the Master Chief is nowhere to be seen. This all-new first person shooter has evolved into something much bigger than a mere standalone expansion pack and is now a fully-fledged prequel to the last game.

Discover more about the build-up to the classic Halo 3

ODST stands for Orbital Drop Shock Troopers

You no longer play as the indestructible Master Chief

Sgt Johnson is available as a pre-order bonus character

You no longer play as a Spartan super soldier, but as a sort of futuristic paratrooper with less high tech armour and abilities. Much of the game is told in flashback, as you search for your missing teammates in New Mombasa and discover more of the backstory of the Halo universe.

Of course this being Halo the multiplayer is just as important as the story campaign, with the basic modes being identical to Halo 3 and using all 24 current maps. New mode Firefight though is a four player co-op mode similar to Gears of War 2's Horde - perfect for Halo fans looking for more action.

Key Features

• Semi-super soldier: Get used to a dirty, more tactical style of warfare as you join the elite ODST in a story set two weeks prior to the events of Halo 3.
• Halo world: For the first time ever in a Halo game you can explore an open world environment, with the freedom to go anywhere and use any vehicle.
• Classic action: Fight in the revamped multiplayer mode from Halo 3, with access to all 24 maps released so far, including all downloadable map packs.
• War without end: New Firefight multiplayer modes introduces four play co-operative action against an unending wave of Covenant forces.

About the Developer: Bungie
This U.S. studio had been around for ten years before they created mega hit Halo. Ironically in their early days they were know for their Mac-only games such as Marathon, as well as strategy series Myth. They were bought by Microsoft in 2000, but in 2007 they became independent again.

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Customer Reviews

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.

Nice add on pack, crap full priced game
I recently played through Halo ODST and really, come on now, we were all more than a bit ripped off here, weren't we?

Microsoft said the game would be an add on campaign that took around 4 hours or so to finish and (Most crucially), WOULD NOT be a full priced retail release. Then they changed their minds and said it WOULD be a full priced retail release, but the game had gotten a lot bigger since it's announcement. Fair enough, lets wait and see.

Game comes out, I fire it up and play through it on normal, and it takes me just under 5 hours to do so, and a LOT of that time is spent in the utterly pointless "open world" hub that you use to access the main missions (Even though there is nothing 'open world' about it, as it's just big areas that inevitably funnel you toward the same exits with no actual control over mission order or anything else that would constitute any other 'open world' game structure you'll be used to by now). The hub city is annoyingly dark, and your 'night vision' visor makes little difference beyond putting coloured outlines around enemies when you get close enough, and to be honest, the visuals in this game look really dated throughout. Halo 3 was never the best looking game, but still using it's engine today is really quite lazy.

The missions themselves are a mixed bag, with some being quite fun and engaging, and some being typical shooting gallery point A to B affairs, and overall there's little time to really get into the story of the game (Such as it is). There is some excellent voice acting, and the soundtrack is quite superb though, but there's no getting away from the fact the story simply isn't that good, and the climactic gameplay sequences are really really bad. I was genuinely shocked that the game was over when I saw the credits roll. It really does just cut you off with no warning.

Single player aside, multiplayer is pretty disgraceful. There's a single new multiplayer mode on the first disc, but then you have a second disc which literally just repackages all of the Halo 3 multiplayer content with a couple of new maps and nothing else. if you already have Halo 3 and want ODST you are literally FORCED to rebuy a large chunk of a game you already have, which effectively means ODST has practically NO multiplayer element of it's own, and you aren;t even given the option of only purchasing the newer game content if you already own Halo 3. That's nothing short of despicable.

Halo ODST is probably the worst Halo game to date. It isn't that it's a downright BAD game per se, but it's certainly very pedestrian, and for such a short game it utilises a lot of 'filler' elements to make it seem bigger than it actually is (Lots of walking between missions to draw things out for example), and then of course, the multiplayer that you will in all likelihood have already paid for once already when you bought Halo 3.

Basically, this is a heavily padded piece of downloadable content trying to justify itself as a full game, and in doing so it fails quite miserably, as there is simply no justification for making people pay for the same thing twice for such a small amount of actual new content for the retail price being asked.

But, this being a Halo release, most of you probably won't need to know anything beyond the name of the game before you empty your wallets. Good luck to you if you're satisfied by that, but I am not. Not by a long shot. I want the rest of the game content I paid for.

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.