Halo 3: ODST Re-visited & Halo: Reach Preview 

By Patrick Newman

Developer: Bungie

Rated M for Mature

Halo 3: ODST, the most recent addition to the Halo franchise, is a surprisingly immersive, visceral first-person shooter that takes the series in a welcome and unexpected direction for gamers. In spirit, ODST's game-play moves closer to the intense, realistic combat of Modern Warfare 2 than the weightless akimbo run-and-gun of Halo 3. Though ODST lacks the wealth of multi-player content typically expected from new Bungie releases, the compact single-player campaign leaves a lasting impression. The game's grittier tone and style, as well as an addictive new cooperative mode called "Firefight", set the game apart from its predecessors.

ODST tells a tighter, more character-driven story than Halo 3, focusing on a smaller-scale reconnaissance mission across Earth's New Mombasa instead of taking the gamer on an epic intergalactic journey. The main character is an Orbital Drop Shock Trooper called simply "The Rookie", who, along with his more streamlined aesthetic, features a different set of attributes than the Master Chief of previous Halo installments. This new character features a special night vision visor, can only wield one weapon at a time, requires periodic recharges at health stations to stay breathing, and cannot jump as high nor drop as low. Playing a significantly weaker protagonist only serves to improve the game-play, by making tactics in firefights a necessity. As an ODST you are more isolated, and especially when dropped in the game's war-torn, nighttime setting, it benefits the gamer to hang back and pick enemies off more discriminately. To aid in that effort, a scoped pistol similar to the devastating weapon first introduced in Combat Evolved has been added to ODST's arsenal.

The story involves retracing the steps of other ODST squad members on New Mombasa, in a narrative structure reminiscent of a good mystery. The player is intermittently transitioned from a suspenseful nighttime setting to the all-out warfare of daytime, in which the personalities and back stories of the remaining ODST squad members are more closely explored. Bungie wears its love of the TV series Firefly on its sleeve by casting series leads Nathan Fillion, Adam Baldwin and Alan Tudyk in key roles, and fans will be happy to find the familiar banter of that series transplanted to the Halo universe intact. The single-player campaign is over before it really begins, but for its meager six hours, ODST manages to both adhere to what made the previous Halos great as well as expand upon its style, tone and game-play.

The multi-player aspect of ODST is a mixed bag, porting over the pre-established Halo 3 multi-player mode without making any significant additions beyond three new maps. To help compensate for this, a thrilling new cooperative mode called Firefight has been added, which enables the player and four friends to fend off an increasingly deadly barrage of Covenant troops. Reminiscent of similarly-structured cooperative game modes in Call of Duty: World at War and Gears of War 2, the camaraderie involved in fortifying yourself with three teammates and standing your ground make for some of the most thrilling moments in ODST, leaving one hoping that the mode carries over to Reach for its release in the fall.

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Halo: Reach, which will hit stores on September 26th, is said to offer "the definitive Halo game" as it completely reworks the Halo engine, featuring sound design and visuals that far exceed anything Bungie has done before. Reach, named after the planet on which the story's Spartan program resides, was conceived as a prequel to Combat Evolved, and will take the franchise further down ODST's grittier, more tactically-oriented path. This is in part because the protagonist of the game - a member of the Reach-based fighting squad Nobel 6 - has technical limitations akin to those of ODST's drop-shock troopers. Covenant forces will be more challenging opponents to face, and will be rebooted from the ground up to induce greater dread in the player during classic standoffs.

Graphical and sonic improvements, recently demonstrated at Microsoft's X10 event, will add tremendous detail not only to the characters, but to the environments. The maps, which are said to be unprecedented in scale, will have incredible view distances to accommodate epic-scale battles of up to thirty Covenant enemies, four Spartans and eight marines. Multi-player mode, which is receiving the same attention to detail as the single-player campaign, offers equipment that can be found and used repeatedly, unlike the equipment in Halo 3 that expires after its first use.

The multi-player beta will launch on May 3rd, available for download to those who have a copy of ODST. During this test period Bungie will take into account players' comments as they hone the game's details for its debut in September. In the nine years since Halo: Combat Evolved made its splash on the gaming scene, the franchise has been the flagship shooter for the Xbox, and the bar to which all competing games are inevitably forced to rise. With the release of this new title, it's a good bet Halo will keep its place at the table for years to come.

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