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It wasn’t long ago that we were eagerly anticipating the final instalment, or so we thought, in the Halo series. When we were victorious in our campaign against the xenophobic alien collective known as The Covenant, we had found our self still wanting more even though we knew it was over. That’s because when Bungie released Halo 3 they said were done with the Master Chief and they weren’t lying to us. We had quickly assumed that since Bungie was done with the Chief they were done with Halo. However the Halo universe is just too much of a cash cow to simply let go and Bungie has simply decided to slip back in time.

Halo 3 ODST is definitely not, just another Halo game. From the very beginning the game makes sure you understand that you are no longer the Master Chief, you are now The Rookie, an Orbital Drop Shock Trooper or ODST. The ODSTs are a unique all-volunteer outfit that has a very special way of getting their boots on the ground. As a Navy ship in low orbit passes over a planet, the ODST’s get into small one man drop pods and are released into the planets atmosphere. This is how the ODSTs earned the nickname of “Helljumpers”.

From the beginning, ODST makes it clear that you aren’t the Master Chief

The game opens with your squad discussing an upcoming mission, to board a Covenant cruiser “sitting pretty” over New Mombasa and capture it. What follows is probably the best opening cutscene in the franchise’s history as you get in your drop pod and fall feet first onto the planet. However as you are falling towards the planet at an alarming rate the Covenant ship jumps into Slipspace, think a sort of hyper drive, which sends a shockwave throughout the city and knocks another drop pod into yours. You wake up 6 hours later, after being knocked unconscious from your crash landing, on the side of a building.

Here is where you finally get control of The Rookie and Bungie’s first, but not the last, sneaky way of reminding you that you are not the Master Chief as your pod falls off the side of the building and knocks off some of your health. Yes you did just read that correctly, health is back with a vengeance after being absent in the prior two releases.

Another way that Bungie reminds you that you are no longer a Spartan is by lowering your height. The Chief is 7 feet tall due to surgical augmentations that have happened to him over the course of several years. However you are not a Spartan and you have no surgical augmentation which means you are much shorter. Suddenly everything takes on a much more tactical aspect as you are forced to hide from even the smallest Covenant soldiers as they are almost your height.

In addition, Bungie has taken away your motion tracker and has instead added a VISR mode which outlines everything in a very easily identifiable outline (i.e. green for friendly, red for hostiles and orange for everything else). Bungie has also taken out the beloved Battle Rifle from the past couple of Halo games and has given the fans back the pistol from the first Halo, only this time around they silenced it to match the new ODST silenced SMG. Bungie have tried to take away Master Chiefs shield, possibly in an attempt to make you feel weaker. The problem is that they’ve replaced it with a Stamina bar which is essentially the same as a shield.

It has a tactical aspect as you are forced to hide from the smallest of the Covenant

Halo 3 ODST plays out through a series of flashbacks that allow you to figure out what happened to the rest of your squad after the drop onto Earth. While playing as the Rookie you’ll search the dark rainy streets of New Mombasa searching for items that your squad left behind during the time that you spent napping in your drop pod. It’s slightly boggling as to how exactly The Rookie can see what happened to his squad from a broken piece of equipment. You’ll uncover the mystery, as it were, it a little under six hours on higher difficulties and that’s slightly disappointing.

Luckily the game makes up for it with the brilliant Firefight mode which has you and up to 3 other players facing off against an endless series of enemies. It’s essentially Halo’s answer to Hoarde mode. Sound easy? Well it’s anything but; as you complete each round a new skull activates which modifies some part of the game. Each is different with one making all of the enemies throw more grenades while another forces dropped weapons to run low on ammunition. ODST also comes with a second disc that contains the entire Halo 3 Multiplayer with every map pack and three new mythic maps making it an attractive deal for newcomers.

ODST is an interesting look at the expediential rate of improving graphics. Halo 3 only came out two years ago and despite running on an engine that looked beautiful then, ODST shows it’s age and could have done with a serious facelift. I’m not saying that ODST is ugly, in fact ODST is great to look at but it doesn’t hold up to a Gears of War 2 or a Killzone 2. Despite that when playing as the rookie you’ll occasionally stop and stare at burning buildings in the background and the impressive attention to detail.

ODST is an extremely entertaining experience that, while short, delivers an insightful back-story to the Halo universe and while the graphics are dated this is still a great game that no Halo fan should be without. Is it worth the premium price tag? Well newcomers will enjoy the plethora of maps, modes and options and veterans were probably sold long before ‘It wasn’t long ago…’.