Metascore

Generally favorable reviews - based on 94 Critics What's this?

User Score

Mixed or average reviews- based on 875 Ratings

  • Summary: Halo 3: ODST returns players to familiar ground on a vital, top-secret mission. The gripping story, cooperative campaign and new multiplayer content will have Halo fans "Preparing to Drop." The new game brings the perspective of new characters to the Human-Covenant struggle, as it explores the ODST, or Orbital Drop Shock Troopers. Follow the story of the legendary ODSTs or Orbital Drop Shock Troopers as they drop into the ruined city of New Mombasa, looking for clues behind the Covenant's catastrophic attack on the city. A new hero: Prepare to drop. Known for their courage, valor and at times, insanity, Orbital Drop Shock Troopers are among the fiercest UNSC soldiers, priding themselves on being the first unit deployed into hostile situations. While not as large or supernaturally gifted as their Spartan comrades, these Hell Jumpers more than compensate with their ferocious attitudes and unwavering nerve. Multiplayer: All the traditional features of Halo 3 multiplayer will be included in the new game, including full-featured integration with the Forge map editor. [Microsoft] Expand
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 80 out of 94
  2. Negative: 1 out of 94
  1. Halo expands focusing on the smallest things, with new gameplay and the same excellence we are used to.
  2. There are several things that make Halo 3: ODST a winning combination. The story presentation and characterization clearly evolved beyond what we're used to witnessing in prior Halo games.
  3. To consider buying ODST, particularly for full RRP, will feel more or less like value for money depending on whether you already own the multiplayer from Halo 3 and the various expansion packs. If you don’t then the 24 maps, including three new ones and plenty of game modes offers potentially months of gameplay, and value. If it’s just the campaign mode and Firefight multiplayer you’ll be buying for the cash, which I suspect will be a lot of people, then maybe not so much.
  4. Ultimately Halo 3: ODST’s campaign is a big disappointment while it introduces some great multiplayer features.

See all 94 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Negative: 50 out of 226
  1. Story: 9 Characters: 7 Graphics: 9 Setting: 7 Multiplayer: 10 Technical: 10 Audio: 10 Gameplay: 10 Re-Playability Value: 8 Fun Factor: 8 Score: 8.8/10 = A Expand
  2. 8
    I normally really enjoy playing halo games and I enjoyed this one as well... just not as much.
    I don't know what happened but this was not ev
    en close to how good I thought halo 3 was and this game is good just the worst fps halo in the series. Expand
  3. i played through the campaign once, never played that again. Not because it was bad, it was just that there was really no reason to go back and play it again. The firefight mode is a very good mode where you fight waves and waves of enemies until you run out of lives. The downside is that there is no matchmaking for firefight. You are stuck playing either locally with 2 people or 4 players online. it is still fun but should have been tweaked before release. Expand
  4. One of the biggest disappointments I've ever had to suffer. I'm a long time Halo fan, and while I don't exactly love Bungie, I trusted them to deliver a great experience. I'd already given up hope for a great campaign since Halo 2, and all I really cared about was playing survival Halo. I was initially taken aback that a game Bungie themselves had dubbed an "expansion to Halo 3", with an estimated price for $40 was now being marketed as a full game (thankfully Amazon gave me $10 back soon afterwards). Loading up into the campaign, I was almost immediately struck at how.. well.. bad it was. The cutscene animations are laughably poor, and the characters are all bland stereotypes. The storytelling was rather annoying, as between levels you'd have to "explore" an extremely repetitive New Mombasa while fighting outposts of Brutes (more like driving past them with a ghost you steal) and then searching for 10 minutes to find the next "clue". Somehow this piece of garbage reveals an extremely complicated story to your "rookie". Honestly, this is probably the worst Halo campaign in existence. Besides that, two things stuck out to me:
    1. Where in the hell are the elites? I personally hate fighting brutes; they're dumb, slow, and boring. Obviously since this game takes place about 2 seconds after the Master Chief fights with about a MILLION elites, you'd think there would be.. I don't know.. some elites left over. Well you'd be wrong. I'm not sure what the canon explanation is, but basically the H3 engine didn't have enemy AI coded into the elite characters, so we're stuck fighting Halo 3 elites before they even existed.
    2. You're supposed to feel different. You're supposed to feel like a smaller soldier, without super shields, who can't take on 50 brutes by himself. You don't. You still feel like a spartan, but you can see your hands this time. You still run and gun as you kill dozens of grunts and elites with superior firepower to your own. Yeah, you have to find healthpacks from time to time. Big woop. You definitely do NOT feel like a small fragile soldier, and there is no more strategy than previous Halo games offer.

    On to firefight.. boy what a disappointment. There is no defense strategy, there is no teamwork involved. Playing with 4 friends, we just got into a game and found the best strategy was to run our separate ways and kill as many enemies as possible. What makes this incoherent mess even worse is that you're forced to deal with these stupid skulls that turn on after a couple waves. These skulls force you to melee enemies to regain shields, to constantly dodge enemy grenades while yours are rendered ineffective, to deal with a terribly low supply of ammo. Do any of these things sound fun to you? They sure aren't. I knew they would offer the skulls for those looking for additional challenge, but to force them on you? Ridiculous. It ends up playing like a 4-player co-op campaign, except there's only one tiny level, and there's no story... and it's not even remotely fun.

    Some people loved the "storytelling" and "style" of this game, but ultimately, as a Halo fan, it was a huge disappointment. I played ODST for about a week before stopping altogether. Do I regret buying it? Not entirely. For one, I now have all the H3 maps on a single disk and my HDD has much more space. Two, I was able to complete the achievements towards getting Recon armor in H3. And finally, I was able to participate in the Reach beta. All that aside, I found this game terrible. I'm a HUGE Halo CE to Halo Reach fan, and I found this game TERRIBLE. Take from this what you will.
    Expand

See all 226 User Reviews