Even without Master Chief, Bungie's latest shooter has plenty of dramatic moments, sweet visual effects and most importantly, aliens to kill.
by Chris Buffa on Wednesday, September 09, 2009
It's easy to dismiss Halo 3: ODST as a cheap cash-in, especially if you never played the game. Like Halo Wars, there's no Master Chief, and it doesn't pick up where the third chapter ended. Rest assured, however, that Bungie and Microsoft created a compelling first person shooter full of intense moments and assorted bells and whistles. In fact, we have five reasons why you should rush to the store and buy the video game when it debuts September 22nd. We should know. We just beat it.
1. Enjoyable story that fills in the gaps
Every Halo player knows that the Covenant invade Earth, but previous Halo games fail to provide details about what happened in New Mombasa. Halo 3: ODST, on the other hand, features a story driven narrative with likeable characters defending their planet from aliens. We actually cared for these Orbital Drop Shock Troopers; the dialogue adds some much needed depth to these grunts. We'd say more, but Microsoft's non-disclosure agreement has us tight lipped.
2. It's the toughest Halo yet
It took us nine and a half hours to finish the single player campaign on Heroic, sixty minutes longer than initial estimates. That's because we spent a good chunk of time dying. It's one thing to blow through Halo 3 as the super powered Master Chief. Running and gunning in ODST as The Rookie and his comrades, however, takes a certain amount of skill. Unlike the Chief, they don't have radar, an energy shield or the ability to dual wield. Now imagine going up against at least ten Covenant with just a handful of bullets in each weapon. Bottom line, gamers looking for a fight will get it, and then some.
3. Firefight
Last year, Epic Games scored a huge win with Gears of War 2's Horde Mode. In it, up to four players team up through Xbox Live to outlast 50 waves of enemies. Well, Bungie has its own version called Firefight, AKA, Horde on steroids. It sort of plays the same, with four gamers banding together to destroy bad guys, except the games go on forever, or at least until everyone dies. Oh, and players share a set number of lives, and it's impossible to determine what types of Covenant will appear wave to wave.
Now throw humongous levels and vehicles into the mix, and you have a brutal multiplayer mode where mapping out a strategy is key to survival. On a side note, it's also a ton of fun.
4. Competitive multiplayer
When you purchase Halo 3: ODST, you'll receive two discs. The first contains ODST, while the second has 24 multiplayer maps. These include the original Halo 3 maps, the Legendary map pack, the Heroic map pack, the Mythic map pack, the Cold Storage map and three new locations (Heretic, Citadel and Longshore). Think of it as a smorgasbord of Halo multiplayer goodness. You don't even need Halo 3 to play it.
5. Plenty of visual stimulation
Bungie bathed most of Halo 3: ODST in darkness. To find your way around, the developers came up with the VISR, a special piece of tech that not only brightens the environments, but also color codes fellow ODSTs and Covenant in green and red, respectively. Beyond that, the VISR adds plenty of neat graphical affects to the video game, and we suggest using it most of the time.
http://www.gamedaily.com/games/halo-3-odst/xbox-360/game-features/five-reasons-you-need-halo-3-odst/
