Halo 3 ODST Photograph: Copyright, Bungie Studios, 2006./PR After the grandiose, space-trekking plots of the previous titles, ODST is far more personal, focused on the lives of a few individuals rather than the struggles of entire races. The single player in ODST promises something quite different: a free-roaming, tenser game, sporadically mixed with bursts of classic Halo gunplay all wrapped up in a mysterious story as the Rookie tries to locate his fellow human beings.
Halo 1, 2 and 3 were mixtures of intense corridor shooting and burning Warthogs through sunny, grassy tundras, all in a very linear fashion. Likewise, Tapping X brings up Rookie's night-vision VISR – crucial for spotting Covenant in the dark before they clock you.Īll this amounts to a dramatic change of atmosphere and pace. Packs of Covenant will show up on the map too, adding to your sense of vulnerability: go in guns blazing if you want, or use the map to avoid danger entirely. Bringing up the new map – an enhanced, almost 3D version the one in Fallout 3 – shows the entire city, a nightmarish playground for you to trek across in whatever order you see fit. Halo: ODST's biggest party trick is that New Mombasa is an open world. The HUD, the controls, the enemies – all are very Halo, but there are apocalyptic shades of Fallout here too.