Rankings and Reviews of Halo 3: ODST

Halo 3: ODST is a first-person shooter game released in 2009 by Bungie and published by Microsoft Game Studios. This was the fifth installment in the Halo series as a side game, and it came out on the Xbox 360 in September 2009. In this game, players take on the role of soldiers from the United Nations Space Command, known as Orbital Drop Shock Troopers or ODSTs, during and after the events of Halo 2. The main part of the game is where you explore a damaged city called New Mombasa to find out what happened to some missing friends who were taken by aliens during an invasion. In another mode, called “Firefight,” players fight against waves of enemies that get harder and harder until they either win or run out of time; all the multiplayer options are on a separate disc that comes with ODST.

Bungie initially thought about making ODST as a small side project during a break between Halo 3’s completion and the release of Halo: Reach. Instead of using familiar characters like Master Chief, who was already an iconic part of the series, they decided to focus on the ordinary soldiers, or ODSTs. The team, led by story director Joseph Staten, came up with a detective story that used elements of film noir, including dark settings and characters. For the music, composer Martin O’Donnell put aside his usual Halo themes to create a quieter sound influenced by jazz. As development progressed, the idea for an expansion grew bigger than originally planned, eventually becoming almost as big as a full-fledged game. To promote ODST before its release, Bungie created tie-in materials such as a comic book, live-action videos, and ads in newspapers and online.

When it came out, ODST took over as the best-selling Xbox 360 game globally. Critics mostly liked the atmosphere, music, and storyline of the game. However, some reviewers thought that the relatively short campaign and bonus features weren’t worth paying $60 for. The game was the top-selling title in the US that September and sold more than 3 million copies worldwide. Several magazines like Softpedia, Time, and Wired said it was one of the best games of the year. In May 2015, a part of the single-player campaign became available as downloadable content on Xbox One as part of The Master Chief Collection. Later, on September 22, 2020, the same campaign also came out on PC, again included in The Master Chief Collection.

In Halo 3: ODST, players take on enemy Brutes in the game’s campaign mode. The VISR display helps identify friends from foes with colored outlines – enemies show up in red while allies are green.
Halo 3: ODST is an action-packed video game where most gameplay takes place from a first-person perspective point of view. The game is set in an open world environment based on the city of Mombasa, now called New Mombasa. Although the gameplay in ODST looks similar to previous Halo games, players don’t control Master Chief, the super-soldier hero from Halo 3. Instead, they play as ordinary soldiers known as Orbital Drop Shock Troopers or ODSTs.
Unlike Master Chief’s advanced armor and abilities, which allow him to jump high, move quickly, and withstand big falls, ODSTs have limitations. They can’t do these things as well, so players need to be more careful. Instead of having a magic shield to protect himself from damage, the game uses a special system where the player’s stamina runs out over time.
If the player gets hurt, their stamina meter will turn red and decrease. If they get hit again before it can recharge, their health will start to drop. If all their health is gone, their character will die and have to restart at the last place they saved.
Medical supplies are hidden throughout the game’s world, allowing players to heal themselves. The player’s special display screen shows them where enemies are (in red), friends (in green), and important items (either blue or yellow).

The game’s Campaign mode can be played individually or with up to three other players working together. As “the Rookie,” a lone human soldier, the player’s objective is to figure out what happened to his missing teammates. When the player finds clues like a sniper rifle hanging from a power line, they’ll enter a special flashback mission where they get to play as one of the missing soldiers six hours before a critical point in time. After finding the first piece of evidence, the player has the freedom to decide which level to go to next. The order of campaign levels can be mixed and matched.

In the multiplayer matching part of the game, ODST comes with all the multiplayer games from Halo 3 on its own disc. This package includes 21 special maps created for Halo 3, plus three extra maps called Citadel, Heretic, and Longshore. Along with these Halo 3 maps, ODST also has a version of the Forge tool that lets players customize their own multiplayer levels.

The game ODST has a cooperative mode called Firefight where players face growing waves of enemies in a timed survival challenge. In this game, players can team up with two to three other people online or on the same console using split-screen mode. When starting Firefight, only the Rookie character is available for play; after completing the story mode, other characters and maps unlock. Players earn rewards for achieving special kills and their individual and team scores are tracked throughout the game. In Firefight, players share a pool of seven lives that refill after five rounds. The difficulty level increases with special modifiers called “Skulls” which give enemies new powers or handicap players – an example is the “Catch” skull where enemies throw more grenades. Each set of three rounds has a different Skull activated, and on the fourth round, all skulls are active, and players must last 60 seconds to survive.

The game takes place in the 26th century when humans are fighting against a group called the Covenant. The Covenant is made up of different alien races and they believe that one of their own should be in charge of everything. In the year 2004, in the video game Halo 2, the Covenant discovered where Earth was located and decided to attack it. They sent a big fleet of ships to Africa to hit the city of New Mombasa. Even though most of the ships were stopped by the humans, one big ship came down with a huge group of soldiers on board. This ship then jumped into space using something called slipspace and caused a massive explosion that made the whole area shake.

While other parts of Halo 2 are about what happened to that big ship, ODST is about what happened after the explosion and what it was like for the people who were left behind in New Mombasa. The Covenant still had control over the city even though the humans had stopped them from taking it completely over.

During gameplay, players can acquire audio files that reveal an extra narrative titled “Sadie’s Story”. This story revolves around a civilian girl who gets caught up in the Covenant’s early invasion and her search for her father. Additionally, this tale offers helpful details to the player while playing the game, such as assisting in finding hidden caches of weapons.

The main character of the game is known as the Rookie, who is new to a team of special soldiers called Orbital Drop Shock Troopers. These soldiers are also called ODSTs or Helljumpers and usually travel alone in small vehicles that enter space from spaceships high above the ground. The Rookie gets help finding his friends by talking to an artificial brain in Mombasa’s city, which is called the Superintendent or Vergil. The Rookie’s teammates are Buck, Dutch, Romeo, Mickey, and Dare. Dare is in charge of keeping track of everything because he works for the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) and is also a very important person on their team.

The game starts with Dutch (Adam Baldwin), Romeo (Nolan North), and Mickey (Alan Tudyk) talking about a Covenant Supercarrier above New Mombasa, where their friend Buck (Nathan Fillion) has just joined them. The team’s new member is Dare (Tricia Helfer). Suddenly, Romeo wakes up the Rookie and they all get into their special vehicles to descend into space. Just before they reach the Covenant ship, Dare changes course at the last minute because she needs to complete a secret mission with her teammates. A Covenant ship suddenly appears in slipspace, near the UNSC ship that is trying to help them, causing a huge shockwave towards the ODSTs. The Rookie’s spaceship crashes into Mickey’s and knocks him out for six hours. After waking up, he starts searching for clues about what happened to his friends.

After the drop, Buck lands roughly and battles through Covenant forces to find Dare, but she’s nowhere to be found when he arrives at her pod – all he can find is her helmet, which later turns up with the Rookie. Instead, Buck meets Romeo and decides they need to look for others and escape the city together. Dutch drops near a nature park and helps Marines fighting there, while Mickey commandeers a tank and battles his way along Mombasa Boulevard. When Dutch reunites with Mickey, the two team up to defend an ONI base from the Covenant – after destroying it to prevent capture, they get rescued by a police dropship and make contact with Buck, arranging to meet at police headquarters. However, their flight is intercepted and they’re shot down. Buck and Romeo come to Dutch’s rescue, but Romeo gets seriously hurt in the process. The squad takes over a Covenant dropship, then makes an unexpected decision – instead of leaving the city, Buck decides to have them search for Dare because he realizes she kept going on her secret mission without telling anyone.

In the city, the Rookie got help from Superintendent Vergil, the AI that took care of the place’s maintenance. The Rookie received a message from Dare about an emergency in the underground tunnels beneath the city. The two quickly made their way to the Superintendent’s main room, which had important information that the Covenant was trying to find hidden under the city. Inside the room, they found a Covenant worker who had merged with the Superintendent, creating a new being. Dare explained that these Engineers were like powerful computers but were controlled by the Covenant and one of them wanted to escape and work with humans. With this Engineer’s information combined with the Superintendent’s data, Dare’s mission changed to helping the alien find safety instead of just downloading the data. The Rookie, Dare, and the Engineer teamed up with Buck again and fought their way out of the city to meet up with the rest of their team. As they flew away in a hijacked ship, the squad watched as Covenant ships attacked New Mombasa and extracted a huge alien artifact from the ground.

In the final part of the story, one month after everything that happened during the mission, the group in charge of protecting the Engineer has been standing guard over it. Then, Sergeant Major Avery Johnson arrives and tells the Engineer he wants to ask them all about the Covenant and what they are looking for. Since everyone hates the Covenant just as much as humans do, the Engineer nods their head in agreement by lighting a cigar for Johnson. If the game is completed on the hardest level, a scene shows the leader of the Covenant watching over the excavation of an important Forerunner object buried beneath a big pile of computer data.

Most of the team working on ODST had also started building Peter Jackson’s Halo Chronicles game when working on Halo 3. However, when their planned Halo movie adaptation failed and Chronicles got canceled, this left many people without a job. Around that time, production for Halo: Reach began, and Bungie realized they had a chance to make something new in the next two or three hours – essentially a short game campaign, as producer Curtis Creamer put it. After examining the plan and budget, Harold Ryan gave the project the green light.

With their game engine ready, the team started refining their idea. The team at Bungie wanted to make some changes to the traditional Halo format, which had remained largely unchanged for three games. They spent weeks deciding which characters they should focus on. If players controlled previous main characters like Master Chief or Arbiter, it would bring along a lot of preconceived notions about the story. At one point, they even considered creating a game centered around an elite strike force from the Covenant side. However, the developers decided to explore human characters instead. They thought about Avery Johnson, but ultimately chose the ODSTs as their main characters. “The ODSTs have always been very popular among fans,” said Brian Jarrard, Bungie’s community director. “We’ve never really gotten to know them well enough,” said Joseph Staten, who saw this game as a chance to learn more about the black-armored soldiers.

To keep Halo gameplay feeling classic, but still offer new experiences, making the player an Ordnance Dispenser Tactical Soldier (ODST) required some significant changes to the game’s formula. To give ODSTs special tools, the developers added silenced guns and gave pistols new abilities that weren’t in Halo 2 or Halo 3’s “battle rifle.” They also made the sound of the submachine gun louder so it felt more intense. This new health system was created to make players feel a little scared – as one designer put it, because you know you’re not invincible.

Once the main characters were in place, the development team had to choose a setting for their game. Fans wanted to know what happened on Earth after being left out of Halo 2’s storyline, and they were eager to see how humanity was defending its planet. New Mombasa’s cityscape fit the tone that Bungie wanted to achieve, as they thought it would be necessary to change locations since the main character had shifted from Master Chief to a new protagonist. “The settings we choose have an impact on the kind of story we can tell,” one team member explained. “When we’re playing as other characters like Master Chief, we get to explore ancient alien ruins and fight giant monsters. For our newer characters, like the Rookie, we want them to be able to tackle challenges that feel more realistic and manageable in a day.”

By returning to New Mombasa, the artists faced new creative challenges and opportunities to expand on the city’s world. Walking through the streets at night inspired a dark and gritty atmosphere reminiscent of film noir movies. To enhance the game’s visuals, the team experimented with bold color shifts and contrast levels that set it apart from previous Halo games. They also made sure that even darker areas of the city could still be explored by the player. The entire development team studied commissioned concept paintings to determine how lighting schemes would affect gameplay. The genre influenced not only visual elements but also character names and archetypes, including the lone hero who serves as the game’s protagonist. To add depth to the surroundings, Bungie added everyday details like advertisements, trash collectors, and civilian versions of familiar military equipment.

Bungie started working on ODST in March 2008. It was an impressive feat that Bungie accomplished in less than three years, with the game taking only 14 months to complete. Given the small development time frame, the team had to focus on what was essential – for instance, instead of completely changing the enemies, they added just a few new behaviors that made them behave smarter. Since ODST was set in an open world, unlike most Halo games, some gameplay changes were necessary, such as updated guns and a bigger map that showed where everything was. Unlike traditional Halo games, where designers knew exactly how players would approach certain areas to fight enemies, ODST needed different strategies because of its urban setting. The team leader, Creamer, explained that their goal was to make the Covenant forces patrol in groups all over the city so that they could react quickly and look smart doing it. Even though the game engine remained the same, some tweaks were made to enhance graphics like a more detailed shader system and parallax mapping to add more realism and depth.

The Firefight game mode was added late in the development process of the game. A team member named Tim Williams created an initial prototype right after Halo 3’s release, putting players into a section of a Halo 3 campaign map and having them fight enemies. When work began on ODST, Williams’ idea was taken and improved upon. The designer, Lars Bakken, pointed out one benefit of this game mode – it gave players a more relaxed multiplayer experience compared to hardcore gamers playing online. To make the game mode more competitive, the developers reused some scoring and medal systems from Halo 3.

Sadie’s Story was made by Fourth Wall Studios in partnership with artist Ashley Wood and Staten. Fourth Wall Studios was started by people who used to work for 42 Entertainment, which created an alternate reality game called I Love Bees to promote Halo 2. Staten said that they realized Halo did a good job of showing the conflict between big companies and the military, but it’s really about what soldiers go through, and Halo 3: ODST was a chance to tell the story of ordinary people affected by war.

By December 2008, the game had become fully playable, even though it wasn’t completely finished. The whole Bungie team stopped working on other projects to play through the game and give their feedback. One thing they found was missing – the finished conversations between characters that voice actors were supposed to deliver, but there was just placeholder sound effects instead. Just before the game’s big showcase at the Electronic Entertainment Expo 2009, everything was finally completed.

Bungie’s audio director Martin O’Donnell and his collaborator Michael Salvatori created the music for ODST. Unlike Halo, which features Gregorian chant, there’s no choral music in ODST. Also, none of the previous Halo themes are repeated. About two hours of the game’s music were released on a two-disc soundtrack that came out on September 22, 2009. Because the main character has changed, O’Donnell made new music that was still connected to Halo but had a different style. The game tells a “human story” instead of a “cyborg story”, so O’Donnell wanted the score to be more “personal” and “intimate”. When it comes to the Rookie’s detective work in the rain, O’Donnell thought using music with jazz influences was perfect for creating a dark atmosphere. The other characters didn’t have their own special themes, but they were matched with musical ideas that fit them well.

The game’s music was started by O’Donnell when Bungie was making an announcement trailer for ODST. O’Donnell created the music for the trailer by using a small part from one of his earlier pieces called “Rain”. In February 2009, Salvatori joined the project and finished the music tasks in just two months. When O’Donnell thought they had enough music, Salvatori flew to Seattle to finish the arrangements with live musicians. Most of the music was recorded early in 2009. Other music jobs were handled by Bungie’s sound designer C. Paul Johnson and orchestrator Stan LePard. The Northwest Sinfonia, which worked on Halo 3’s music, also did some orchestral parts at Studio X in Washington.

Bungie fans of the TV show Firefly brought some familiar faces to the set of Halo 3. For the Marine voice roles, they cast three actors who played key members of the ODST squad: Nathan Fillion, Adam Baldwin, and Alan Tudyk. These actors were also huge fans of Halo – Fillion was especially enthusiastic about the game! Tricia Helfer joined the team as the ONI agent Dare, and she recorded her lines with Fillion in the same room for a unique collaboration. Staten praised their performances together, saying it made their work even stronger. While Staten wrote most of the script, some combat dialogue could be come up with on the spot by the voice actors. Adding Sadie’s Story to the game required even more voice acting, which doubled the total amount of voices in the game. After casting was complete, Bungie got permission to use Fillion and Helfer’s real-life likenesses for their characters.

Announcements from Microsoft gave the public their first glimpse of ODST at the 2009 Electronic Entertainment Expo Xbox 360 media briefing.

In July 2008, Don Mattrick, head of Microsoft’s Xbox division, told MTV that Bungie was creating a new game for Xbox. This game would be separate from other Halo games like Halo Wars and Chronicles. A big announcement about this new project was supposed to happen at the E3 trade fair in 2008, but it was put off by Microsoft.

Microsoft wanted the game’s release to be a special event. Later that year, on September 25th, Bungie released a teaser for their new project on their website. The company kept the details of the game secret until the Tokyo Game Show in October 2008, when they showed a full trailer and revealed the game’s name as ODST and its planned release date was Autumn 2009.

Bungie took an unusual approach to making this trailer by using pre-made graphics instead of their actual game engine. The company said it didn’t want to spend too much time on the trailer, or they wouldn’t have been able to include fun details that fans would love to discuss.

In interviews after the release of Recon, Bungie developers told gaming journalists that this was the final installment in the Halo trilogy. Even though they didn’t consider it a full-fledged game, writer Luke Smith compared it to an expansion pack for WarCraft III called The Frozen Throne. However, Recon came with all the multiplayer maps from Halo 3 and could be played on its own without needing Halo 3. Smith also made it clear that Recon wouldn’t involve stealth or squad-based gameplay, saying “this has nothing to do with Brothers in Arms: Halo” or Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell. Later, on November 25, Jarrard revealed that the game had been re-titled to Halo 3: ODST as a more straightforward title.

Bungie and Microsoft first showcased ODST in playable form at E3 2009, where they finalized the release date and retail versions. At first, Bungie promoted ODST as a game with less complexity than its previous numbered titles. However, when the retail versions were announced, it was revealed that the game would cost US$60, which was more than expected due to the project expanding beyond its initial scope. According to Lars Bakken from Bungie, “As development progressed, the game grew much bigger than we initially thought.” Bakken also mentioned that since the foundation of the development platform was solid, they were able to add a lot more content than originally anticipated. The overall length of the game increased from an initial estimate of 3-5 hours to 8-10 hours. The change in length wasn’t discussed until E3 2009 when Microsoft decided it would be considered a full-length game. Unlike Halo 3, ODST does not have any downloadable content after its release.

A specially designed military vehicle truck traveled across the United States to visit GameStop stores, giving fans the chance to play Firefight mode and win prizes.
Halo 3: ODST came on two discs. The first one had the campaign mode and Firefight co-op mode, while the second disc had the multiplayer mode with all of Halo 3’s maps. People who bought the game received an invitation to try out the Halo: Reach multiplayer beta, which started on May 3, 2010. If you preordered the game, you got a special code that let you play Avery Johnson as a character in Firefight multiplayer mode. This code was only available from some stores. There was also a special edition called the “Collector’s Pack” that included the game and an ODST-themed wireless Xbox 360 controller. Toys “R” Us offered an action figure of the ODST soldier and a $20 gift card to help people buy the game.

By April 2009, a market research company named OTX said that the video game Halo: ODST was the most eagerly awaited game at the time. Later in August, it remained at the top spot. Before its release, the game had become the best-selling game on Amazon based solely on pre-orders. It stayed at number one for 107 days on the website’s top 100 list of video games and software. Copies of the game were sold to people in France before its official launch. Microsoft decided to look into the situation and threatened to stop players from playing the game on Xbox Live if they had gotten it before the release date. However, the person in charge of Xbox later said that this didn’t apply to people who bought the game legally.

Microsoft planned an enormous marketing effort for the game, with Entertainment Director Stephen McGill stating that the game was a vital title for them – this was their first major push like this and they wanted to start strong. Several promotional materials were sent out through Xbox Live, while even more were shown on TV and in online ads. To add to the hype, Marvel Comics released a special comic book series called Helljumper, which featured the main characters from ODST.

A live-action trailer titled The Life was released on the Internet in September and later shown in TV ads as part of the game’s promotional materials. Filmed at various locations in Budapest, Hungary, The Life tells the story of an ODST named Tarkov from a military funeral where he gets inspired to become a soldier, through training and combat all the way up to becoming a leader on the battlefield. This short film was created by advertising agency TAG SF with special effects by Asylum, and directed by Rupert Sanders from production company MJZ, who also handled another popular Halo ad called “Believe”. Legacy Effects made props, guns, armor, and even a Covenant Brute costume within just two weeks. Bungie provided 3D shapes that allowed the company to create accurate versions of in-game items quickly, and they also gave input on what the soldiers wore. The initial cemetery scene was filmed inside an active nuclear power plant’s cooling tower in Budapest, while outside the tower the team created a muddy area and obstacle course to show basic training. Members of Hungary’s special forces even played the role of drill instructors during this part of the film, firing blanks. In the end, filming moved to an old Soviet-era aluminum factory for the final memorial scene. An extra scene was filmed there too, but didn’t make it into the finished movie.

The official launch party for ODST took place at the Experience Music Project and Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame in Seattle, Washington. Several cities across the US hosted similar events. Bungie and Microsoft organized an official event at the same venue, with panels about the game series and early looks at other Halo content like the anime collection Halo Legends. A group of around 800 fans attended from 6-11 pm before heading to nearby stores to buy their copies of the game. GameStop hosted nearly 3,700 launch parties across the country.

When Halo 3: ODST was released, it became the top-selling Xbox 360 game worldwide right away. In just two weeks, more than 2.5 million copies of the game were sold and that made over $125 million in sales. ODST took the top spot on UK game charts, which meant it was the 12th biggest seller for a single console. It also topped the Australian game charts when it came out, but then lost its position to FIFA 10 in October. However, after some time, ODST regained its place as the best-selling title. In Japan, where many people don’t like first-person shooters, only 30,000 copies were sold by September 27. But in the United States, ODST was the top-selling game for that month, selling over 1.5 million units. Later, in October, it sold 271,000 units in North America, and Microsoft said that ODST had sold over 3 million copies worldwide by November. Overall, ODST was the ninth best-selling game of the year in the US, which is one of only two Xbox 360 games to be on the list. Before its sales increased when people wanted to try out the Reach beta, UK retailers cut the price of the game in April 2010.

The updated Halo 3: ODST campaign was released as part of a special download package called Halo: The Master Chief Collection on May 30, 2015. This new content was offered for free to anyone who had bought and started playing Halo: The Master Chief Collection before December 19, 2014. However, people who didn’t have the free code were able to buy it separately if they wanted.

Reception of Halo 3: ODST was mostly positive, with an average score of 83 out of 100 on Metacritic. Lev Grossman from Time said that ODST was a significant step forward for Bungie, allowing them to create new and exciting experiences within the same franchise. On the other hand, Pete Metzger from the Los Angeles Times thought that while ODST had its strengths in terms of storytelling, action, and graphics, it wasn’t unique compared to many other first-person shooter games released at the time. Jeremy Parish from 1UP.com noted that despite some flaws, ODST’s biggest achievement was bringing together players who preferred different aspects of the game – either multiplayer or the campaign – into one cohesive experience.

Some reviewers thought that Halo: ODST was worth its price tag, while others were unsure. Ryan McCaffrey from Official Xbox Magazine said that with its single-player campaign and multiplayer mode, there’s no reason to doubt the game’s value at $60. However, other critics who considered it a full game came from Edge Magazine, Parish, and Computer and Video Games’ Mike Jackson. Erik Brudvig of IGN described ODST as more like an expansion than a sequel, suggesting that those hesitant about buying should still go for it. But others disagreed, including Ben Kuchera from Ars Technica, Charlie Barratt from GamesRadar, Tom Bramwell from Eurogamer, and Narayan Pattison from IGN Australia. The New York Times’ Seth Schiesel thought Microsoft Game Studios had overpriced the game at $60, considering it should cost less or have a lot more content in its single-player mode. Critics were also divided on how much of an improvement ODST was for the series. Parish said that while there wasn’t as much enemy variety, the changes he liked were some of the most experimental Bungie had done in years. Edge and Bramwell appreciated the contrast between the Rookie’s nighttime segments and fast-paced flashback scenes. Edge thought the narrative design might not be groundbreaking, but it helped players explore every possible play style in the series. Meanwhile, Parish believed that the ODST’s abilities were quite different from those of the Chief, while Jackson argued that the Halo feel wasn’t changed much. Brett Molina of USA Today was disappointed by how little time was spent exploring the Rookie’s open environment and thought too much of the game felt like a traditional Halo experience instead of introducing new mechanics.

The visuals and atmosphere of ODST received praise. The game’s art design was able to impress, despite the aging Halo 3 engine. When playing together cooperatively, McShea noted that the feel of Mombasa changed dramatically. G4TV found that adding more players ruined the solitary experience. Travis Moses from GamePro wrote that although the graphics were outdone by other shooters, the frame rate remained stable as expected in a Halo game. Digital Foundry stated that despite some improvements to AI, the main issues with the graphics engine, such as sub-720p resolution and poor human face quality, persisted.

The game’s audio and sound received great praise. McCaffrey said that while Halo 3’s music was too similar to other games, ODST allowed O’Donnell to create his best work ever, which he thought was good enough to buy on its own. However, not everyone agreed. Kuchera had a different opinion, saying the saxophone parts sounded like something you might find on a late-night TV movie that’s not very exciting. Meanwhile, Anthony Gallegos from GameSpy felt that the music didn’t work well when the action got intense.

Firefight was widely praised for its engaging gameplay, particularly for demonstrating the impressive artificial intelligence of enemies. Jeff Marchiafava from Game Informer gave credit to the enemies for making Firefight stand out from similar game modes found in other games like Gears of War 2 and Left 4 Dead. These games often featured hordes of mindless zombies or easily defeated opponents, which didn’t offer much challenge. In contrast, the staff at Official Xbox Magazine UK noted that Firefight’s depth and customization options made its comparable mode seem weak compared to it, and that playing this mode actually extended the game’s replay value. On the other hand, Bramwell pointed out that in Firefight, players could feel both hopeless about their chances of survival due to the odds being against them, and tired from fighting levels that were essentially just rehashed versions of those already experienced during the main campaign.

Interviews with G4TV revealed that some Bungie representatives believed part of the game’s mixed and negative reviews came from their own marketing tactics. When analyzing lower scores, many reviewers mentioned that they felt the game lacked value due to an initial expectation set for an ‘expansion’ pack, only to be overcharged when it turned out to be a full game. Jarrad explained this sentiment by stating that if Bungie hadn’t labeled it as an expansion pack, review scores would likely have been better. Other areas where the team wished they could have made improvements were the pacing and navigation of nighttime levels in Firefight mode and matchmaking for online multiplayer sessions. Frank O’Connor, director of Halo manager 343 Industries, was glad that ODST didn’t receive widespread attention, as it allowed the focus to shift to Reach’s launch and marketing campaign.

Rankings Lev Grossman and Peter Ha put Halo: ODST in eighth place as the top game of the year according to Time magazine. They praised the game for being a “dark, slow, jazzy, and hard-boiled take on the Halo universe”. Softpedia gave ODST the highest rating for first-person shooter games that year; its editor, Andrei Dumitrescu, thought the game’s story was good, the music was great, and players could connect with the supporting characters. Chris Kohler from Wired ranked ODST as the third-best Xbox 360 game of the year, saying it “brought new energy to Bungie’s shooter series by shaking up its usual routine”.

Halo 3: ODST took home the prize for Best Original Score at the 2009 Spike Video Game Awards. The creators of “The Life” won an award for their impressive work in visual effects from the Visual Effects Society, which was part of its eighth annual awards ceremony.