Halo 3: ODST was created in around a year, with a smaller team than past Halo titles, and was originally conceived as an expansion for Halo 3. Later, ODST was turned into a full product, with a few additions to try to make it a little more worth it for fans of the series. Not only does the new title boast a full campaign that features co-op, but the game includes every multiplayer map ever released for Halo 3, and a few extra for good measure. Buying the $60 release also gets you access to the Halo: Reach beta, when it goes live at some future date. Finally, there's also the Firefight mode, which puts players in a number of settings and then throws wave after wave of enemies at them.

Those are a lot of new features to check out, so I invited a friend over, cracked open some beverages, and got ready to take part in what we were sure was going to be an epic experience. We had played the past Halo games together, spent numerous hours online and in co-op, and were ready for something new.

Around four hours later the credits ran. "Well, that saved me $60," my friend told me wearily.

Title Halo 3: ODST Developer Bungie Publisher Microsoft Price $59.99 Shop.ars Platform Xbox 360

What went wrong?

Does anyone play Halo to wander around an empty city, searching for items to move the story forward? Of course not, but the hub concept is used in Halo 3: ODST, and while it doesn't add to the game, it does give the campaign an extra hour or so. That's great, because if players weren't forced to root around the city to find out where to go next or look for audio files that tell a side story, the campaign mode from the game would be around four hours long. In fact, on normal mode a friend and I beat the game in around four hours, meaning that without the tacked-on hub concept there would have only been around three hours of play time.

Jacking up the difficulty will, of course, add an hour or two, and if you search for all the audio of the side story then that will add another hour, but the actual core of the game—the missions—is incredibly anemic. If the game were arranged with one mission after the other in the manner of past Halo games, you'd get something you could beat on your lunch break. This game was made with a smaller team in under a year, and it shows; the methods used to stretch the experience are both unsatisfying and obvious.

I've since gone back to play the game again on Heroic difficulty in single-player, and I can see where the six-hour playthrough times are coming from. The padding added to get to that point is even more apparent when you don't have two people exploring the hub, however. Our advice: play through the game first in single-player, and then move on to co-op.

The game begins with a number of ODST dropping in their pods for a mission; the scene is very Starship Troopers (the book, not the movie) and is exhilarating. For soldiers with "Orbital Drop" in their name, you may be surprised to learn this is the only time they'll exhibit this behavior in the campaign. The story weaves into Halo 2, but doesn't seem very consequential; although you'll meet another alien race, they won't do much to actively participate in the proceedings. Due to events outside of your control, your squad has been split up, and it's your job to search the city of New Mombasa for clues as to what happened. You do this searching by wandering around and following the waypoints, helpfully provided to you by the city's AI, and when you find an artifact from your friends' adventures you get to move back in time and play the adventure directly.

The problem is that it's just no fun to roam around this desolate city, looking for these clues. It's boring, the environments seem bland, and searching for the next item to trigger an actual mission is nothing but filler. These areas may add an hour or more to the game, but it's not an hour you're going to enjoy. The way the city's AI interacts with you is nifty, since it changes signs and other background details in the city to help you find your way, but it's merely window dressing; it's yet another cool idea that doesn't go anywhere.

The missions themselves are made up of the standard firefights and vehicle sections, but they seemed very linear and, again, way too short. You're given two new weapons for this fight, including a machine gun and a pistol that zooms in and has some nice kick to it (sound familiar?) but mostly you'll be using the ordinance from Halo 3 and killing enemies from Halo 3, but in some new environments.

As for the music, there is nothing that breaks the atmosphere like randomly placed saxophone solos. You're supposed to be in a warzone, and it sounds like the softcore porn they show on Cinemax after midnight. During one battle we were treated to some of the cheesiest, squeedle-ridden guitar ever heard in a game. When music is good it adds to the flavor of the game in an almost subconscious way; this seemed like it was aiming for the satirical in places.

We were told that the game featured interesting things to do and see in co-op mode, but that's certainly not the case. In fact, co-op doesn't even fit in with the story; the game makes a point of giving you a sense of loneliness as you track down your team, and then when the actual game kicks in there's two or more of you. The co-op aspect of the game is slapped on top of the actual game, and would break the story and cinemas if we took things literally. You're basically one person, until you're suddenly a squad, and then you're one again. You never control anyone else in the actual squad of characters: one player is the rookie, and the others are an impossibility. If you play with three other players it's even worse. For a game that was built from the ground up to include co-op, it's odd that so little thought was given to how it fit into the story and the world. Having multiple people comb the hub level simply underscores how little there is to do there.