Our time at the Halo 3: ODST press event wasn’t all hands off. Whilst we weren’t able to get any hands on time with ODST’s single player campaign, savoring what we saw from our demonstration, we tucked into some serious downtime with the new co-operative multiplayer mode Firefight.

 

You may already know by now that Halo 3: ODST comes packaged with two discs. As Bungie’s Lars Bakken put it ‘the entire Halo 3 multiplayer experience’ packed with all the previously released maps and three new ones is crammed into one disc but this isn’t all the multiplayer action you’ll be getting out of ODST. The Halo 3: ODST disc comes with its own unique cooperative four player multiplayer experience. Gears of War 2 had Horde, Resident Evil 5 had Mercenaries, now Halo 3: ODST has Firefight.

 

 

New to the Halo franchise, Firefight pits you and three teammates against the gradually challenging waves of Covenant foes flooding in from Phantom Dropships. The more waves you kill, the bigger and badder the next will be. Of course this doesn’t sound much different to any other horde mode in any other game but as usual, Bungie have added their unique touch.

 

Skulls are Bungie’s twist on the horde formula. Skulls are rule changing attributes that will randomly change as you plough through each set of waves. The more waves of Covenant forces you eliminate, more skulls will be unlocked and to turn up the difficulty that extra notch, more than one skull can be applied during each one set. We didn’t get to see all the Skulls available on Firefight but the ones we did see really showed us how the Skulls can mix up the gameplay. It’s a little more bizarre than just having a wave of tougher foes, try evasive enemies who attack by throwing grenades in every direction.

 

 

In our previous preview, we highlighted the changes made to the ODSTs in an effort to make them feel and control differently to the traditional Master Chief so you might be wondering how differently the ODST controls. The answer: not much different. The ODST can’t run as fast, jump as high and missing a motion tracker but the difference is almost minimal; the jumps are still pretty high and floaty and you’ll hardly notice that the running is any slower. Bungie were keen to remind us the changes were made to give the games protagonist ‘The Rookie’ a unique feel but if you were ever worried that ‘The Rookie’ would be a step down from the Chief then you shouldn’t fear.

 

The only major difference is the Health bar which, unlike the past games, does not regenerate, similar to the experience in Halo: Combat Evolved. You can regain health by finding health packs in battle but otherwise you will have to make use of cover. You’re health doesn’t seem to deplete that quickly even when you’re surrounded by enemies, the best way I can describe it is as being identical to the health bar from Metroid Prime minus the ability to stock multiple Health bars.