Halo 3 ODST brings a new campaign, all the multiplayer maps, firefight, and a beta to Halo: Reach. The new campaign is fairly short and comprises mostly of wandering through a free roam version of New Mombosa after the covenant carrier does a slip space jump and messes up your way down into the city and knocking you out for six hours. After you wake up and jump out of your pod, you take damage and know what its like to use the new health system. The health system really adds a sensation of you being vulnerable to the covenant, and also the fact that you can no longer duel wield weapons. Some new features the ODST's have that are different from the Chiefs is the VISR, which has a map, objectives, night vision and a database of all the audiofiles. These audiofiles can make you spend hours wandering the city looking for them. Not only do they have side story, but the more you unlock the more supply caches you unlock around the city. The main objective while your wandering around the city is to find clues to what happened to your team mates. When you find these clues it triggers a flashback to what happened and these events feel very halo.
The story seems to revovle mostly around Dare and Buck, it would of been nice to hear more about Romeo, Micky, and Dutch more instead of the akward moments that Dare and Buck have. The voice acting was good, but thats all it is. Even though Romeo is known to be sort of a cocky sort of guy it just doesn't really feel like he is. Neither of the personas that the characters have really have an impact on you even though they made a big hype of it with the comics and interviews and all that. It is nice to hear the firefly cast, but it felt like they could of done a better job.
Firefight is very exciting to play by your self or with a friend. You can play with up to 4 people and you all share lives. To make it even harder skulls are turned on after each set. After each set though you get one life back and you get ammo. Firefight doesnt do anything new, but what does do is add difficulty. Some other games that have the same mode like Horde in Gears of War 2, raised the difficulty but for some reason it just didn't feel like it until you were really high into the levels. Each time a skull turns on you litterly shake your head and just prepare for the onslaught ahead. Firefights flaw is that it gets boring after awhile and it also lacks a matchmaking forcing players to either invite friends to play it or band up on forums.
The other disc has the complete Halo 3 multiplayer experience which includes all the maps including three new ones. If you were late on buying the maps then this will be a bargain for you. For others this will feel like you're buying three maps sixty dollars.
ODST is great for fans of the story and gameplay. Bungie did a great job with the health system and made me smile, remembering times playing combat evovled. If your a fan of the multiplayer and play straight through the singleplayer you most likely not enjoy this especially if you bought all the maps.
