I’ve been playing Halo 3: ODST for almost a week now and thoroughly enjoying it.  I have not even touched the second disc that comes with it which is Halo 3 multiplayer with all 24 DLC multiplayer maps included.  I’ve played a lot of Firefight as well as the Campaign, but I’m going to wait on covering Firefight until I can spend more time on each of the maps.  The campaign is not overly long at around 7 hours but I am already on my second play through to work on some of the achievement, and I’ll probably play through it a third, and possible fourth, time with some friends in co-op. A lot of the achievements are easy to get the first time through the campaign, but there are a few that will require a second play through because they are mutually exclusive.  Also, you will want to have three good friends to play co-op with to get some of the Legendary and Firefight achievements.  If you are only wanting to play alone you will not be able to get one of the achievements because it requires 4 people and the Firefight ones will be difficult.

The game definitely feels like Halo even though you do not play as Master Chief.  You have all the same weapons and vehicles available, but just no shields to keep you safe all the time. You have familiar enemies as well.  There are no Elite in the game, but there are plenty of Brutes, Jackles, and Grunts to make up for it.  The campaign splits into two distinct types of game play.  Part of the time you are exploring New Mombasa as the Rookie trying to find your squad mates.  Most of the exploration occurs at night, until the last couple missions, by yourself.  You have to use your new Visor to help spot enemies, extra weapons, and health packs. As you explore you will find clues about your squad mates that you got separated from.  These clues trigger missions where you play as the squad mates to learn what happened to them. These specific missions feel a lot more like the Halo campaigns I remember because it is in day time and you’re using warthogs, scorpions, lasers, rockets, and snipers to complete set objectives. The side missions were a lot of fun because each one was different and you never do the same thing twice.  Each squad mate has a specific role and it is fun to be pushed into trying different things you may not normally in campaign mode.  I found these two contrasting types of game play to be very enjoyable.  No one specific section was too long and it keeps the pace of the story moving along at a very nice pace.

The story of the campaign was really enjoyable, and the characters were really well done.  They got professional actors to do the voices and it shows because that pat is very well done. I also really enjoyed the side story that you get to hear bit by bit as you find hidden audio files around the city.  There are 30 of them in all and after about the 5th I found myself wanting to find the rest of them as quick as possible to hear the rest of that story. If you have played Halo campaigns before and you should consider starting on the Heroic or Legendary difficulty because Normal is not that challenging. However, if you just want to get the story then playing through on Easy or Normal is the way to go.

I enjoy the Halo universe (yes, I’ve read all the books) even though I don’t like Halo 3 multiplayer that well.  So, for me the campaign portions of ODST were great.  It was fun to play in that universe again and to get a story that was not about Master Chief.  If you’re not interested in playing the multiplayer you should at least rent ODST and play through the campaign.