Halo 3: ODST

With an indefinite wait till Halo 4, Bungie resorts to that old trick of a taking an anonymous minor character and spinning off a standalone episode to keep the fans occupied. In this case, it's an Orbital Drop Shock Trooper (ODST) referred to only as Rookie.

Based on the Halo 3 engine – albeit now filled with a darker colour palate filled with stark red skies, skyscrapers and smoke rising from the ruins – it's a small but well-formed filler. And yes, the main news is that there's no sign of Master Chief, as the game is set before his return to Mombassa in Halo 3. Although fans might miss Halo's surly protagonist at first, in gameplay terms it makes ODST a more unexpected game. With a less powerful character, capable of wielding just a single weapon and surviving less in the way of falls, bullets etc, suddenly the type of skirmishes and foes that were breezed through in Halo 3 become deadly serious.

Set-piece battles now take real skill, planning and stealth to survive – with formerly easy opponents like Hunters and Drones now posing much tougher challenges and Brute captains positively ferocious in their speed and determination. This is compounded by the fact that your Rookie has lost his ability to sprint as well as a shield, although he now has Stamina, which replenishes in much the same way before your health takes a more serious hit. The single-player game is basically a series of interesting flashbacks. As you come across artefacts left by your five ill-fated comrades, they trigger playable segments revealing what became of them. This takes you through the full gamut of weapons, vehicles and locations, all based around the familiar Halo hub-structure, albeit now played out in a totally free-form way enabling you to tackle the scenarios in any order.

Of course, Halo has never been just about the single player element, and this time you get two beefy new multiplayer modes – a Campaign Co-Op and Firefight, where up to four players face off against endlessly increasing Covenant waves in closed arenas. Together they add significant mileage to what is undeniably a short single-player story. And ultimately, that's it. ODST is unmistakably Halo and while Bungie deserves credit for an inventive twist on the familiar engine and universe, £40 is still a lot for a standalone episode that single players will complete well within the first weekend, a limited number of new weapons and maps and a flurry of extra multiplayer tools. ODST is as polished impressive as you might expect but, for me, a tenner less would have merited a higher rating.