Finished: Halo 3 ODST

It really is about 6 hours long.

But I still really enjoyed every minute of it. And of course, having my favorite type of ending in the game really helped (I won't say what it is). Okay, it's driving. I love game ending driving missions. Halo 3 was my absolute favorite!

All the hype about figuring out the mystery of the what happened to everyone is really a bit over sold. The flashbacks in the game, the levels dealing with your lost squad mates, are fun to play though, but there's no "mystery" to it. It's just revealed to you. And you don't meet up with them until the very last level of the game. I think to have had this Halo game be a mystery game would have been truly fascinating, but I'll settle for tried and true gameplay. And if you read the books, you can kind of see the ending coming, not because it's in the books, but because characters are revealed in the game and the book and you can make a logical connection between the two.

Achievements in this game really play a major role. I could imagine playing through this without giving them a second thought and think the game was pretty standard. Halo games have always had somewhat easy achievements to remember and get while you play (I got 95% of them in Halo 3) and ODST is no different. I don't know if having achievements so closely tied to the natural completion of the game is really challenging or not, but there are quite a few you need to concentrate on to get (ex. X-number of kills with X-weapon). Playing the game through and trying to get some of the achievements makes it a fun challenge, especially with a friend who can help you look for weapons and ammo of certain types and selectively killing certain enemies or whatever to help you reach the goal.

I'm looking forward to spending the next couple of months with this game and going back and forth between it and finishing Fallout 3 until Modern Warfare 2 drops in November.