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If you recall, this is our recently announced stand-alone extension to Halo 3 that features an all new campaign played from the perspective of an ODST in the heart of a Covenant occupied New Mombasa. In addition to sleuthing around the city and piecing together the details surrounding your squad’s whereabouts, the game will also include some new Halo 3 multiplayer content as well as one or two unrevealed surprises when it’s released next Fall.

This new title is a more straightforward account of the experience that awaits and the role you will assume as you explore the streets of New Mombasa. But don’t worry, you can still has Recon. (the armor that is, it’s still tied to the Vidmaster achievements and will be accessible via the final retail release next Fall).

“ODST” (literally pronounced “Oh-Dee-Ess-Tee” and not “ohdst”) is the acronym for “Orbital Drop Shock Trooper.” This special forces branch of the UNSC military force is called into action for highly specialized, small scale operations. ODST units were deployed during portions of the Halo 2 and Halo 3 campaign and have also been featured in some of the Halo novels. To learn more about this elite military operation, check out this recent interview with Bungie’s Halo fiction guru, Robt McLees.

Halo 3 : ODST will drop into stores next Fall and the Halo 3 Mythic Map Pack will be coming to Xbox LIVE Marketplace sometime early next year*. (More info as soon as we have it!)

Stay tuned to Bungie.net in the coming weeks and months for development updates and new details on our latest project. In the meantime, please remove “Halo 3 : Recon” from your memory banks and replace it with “Halo 3 : ODST.” Also note that all existing content on Bungie.net and Xbox LIVE Marketplace will get replaced to reflect this new name. The announcement trailer is the same one you’ve already seen or downloaded with just a minor change to the new title card at the end.

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Halo 3 is an interesting mix of established protocol and intriguing new stuff. For example, the gameplay doesn’t stray too far from Halo 2, which, in turn, didn’t exactly reinvent the original Halo. Don’t take that as a negative, because it means that Halo 3 plays extremely well, with the same types of light tactical considerations that have made the series stand apart from other, faster-paced shooters. The balance between your guns, your grenades, and your melee attack has always given Halo a unique feel in the genre, and those same considerations apply today, both in the campaign mode and in multiplayer. You’ll also have new weapons and items to consider, such as a host of Brute weapons. One example is the spiker, which is an exciting automatic pistol that fires quickly and decimates opponents, especially if you’re holding a pair of them. Another is the mauler, which is a one-handed shotgun that can level enemies up close. You’ll even find weapons so huge that your movement speed slows when you carry them. When you use these weapons, the camera pulls out to a third-person perspective so you can see your missile pod, plasma cannon, or flamethrower as it fires. And then there’s the gravity hammer. Originally shown in Halo 2 (where it wasn’t usable by the player), the gravity hammer is a large melee weapon that will wipe out most regular enemies in one swipe. Needless to say, it can be especially fun in multiplayer settings. The end result is gameplay that feels wholly familiar without retreading the same ground too heavily.

The campaign is structured in much the same way as past Halo games, with multiple chapters and effective streaming that ensures you’ll see load times only between chapters. There are also lengthy vehicle sequences to break up the on-foot action. You’ll pilot the classic Halo vehicles, such as the Ghost, a hovering one-person craft that’s fast and deadly, and the Warthog, a dune buggy with a turret mounted in the back. You’ll also see new vehicles, such as the Brute Prowler, which is a two-person vehicle with turrets. Like in previous games, the vehicles are fun to use. Also similar to previous games, the artificial intelligence can’t drive very well, so if you’re playing alone, you’ll usually want to grab the steering wheel rather than the weapons.

The concept of “equipment” is new to the series. These deployable special items have a variety of effects. The most obvious example is the bubble shield: You (and your enemies) can walk through it, but bullets and explosions bounce right off. It’s especially entertaining when your enemies use it, given that you can just walk through and bash them with the butt of your gun. You’ll also find items that make your shields regenerate more quickly, and others that drain enemy shields and stop their vehicles dead in their tracks. These items also show up in multiplayer, where they’re a little more interesting.

Halo 2’s ending was widely criticized for being too much of a cliffhanger and leaving you with no sense of progress or resolution whatsoever. It’s good news, then, that Halo 3’s story doesn’t suffer from that problem at all. It opens immediately following the events of Halo 2: The Covenant is on its way to Earth, continuing its religious zealotry and attempting to activate the floating space weapons known as Halos, which could destroy civilization as we know it. The Master Chief and the other Earth forces of the UNSC are in hot pursuit to stop them, with newfound allies such as the Arbiter coming along for the ride. We’ll spare you the specifics because they’re quite compelling and should be seen firsthand. All you really need to know if you’re on the fence about Halo 3’s campaign is that it’s a delicate balancing act that manages to provide satisfying closure for the trilogy, make perfect sense of all the cryptic events in Halo 2, and leave you filled with anticipation for more adventures set in the Halo universe. Not bad for a game that will take most players between 10 and 15 hours to finish on one of four difficulty settings.

But you’ll probably go through the campaign more than once, thanks to the inclusion of a strong co-op mode. Previous Halo games have let two players go through the campaign; Halo 3 ups that number to four players and lets you do the whole thing over Xbox Live, if you so choose. This is a really fun way to experience the campaign’s nine chapters, and you can choose to go through them in any order, provided you’ve already played through it alone. Furthermore, this method of play (which you can also do alone) lets you turn on scoring in campaign mode, in which you earn points for kills and lose them for dying. This adds a sense of competition to the co-op, and there are also achievements associated with finishing chapters with high point totals. You can also customize the experience a bit by turning on a series of unlockable modifiers that open up as you collect hidden skulls. The skulls are stashed around the game, and some of them do things such as increase the amount of damage you’ll need to deal to take an enemy down, remove the heads-up display and make your weapon invisible, and so on. This gives the story-driven section of the game some more replay value, although it doesn’t get significantly more difficult as you scale up the number of players. Consequently, finishing the game on legendary difficulty is a breeze if you’re rolling through with three experienced fellow triggermen.

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As Isaac, you are separated almost immediately from the rest of your team by the former crew of the Ishimura, which has been transformed into horrifying monsters called Necromorphs. Forced to fight for his survival, Isaac makes do with the tools at hand to defend himself with, which are for the most part repurposed mining instruments like plasma welding guns or buzz saws. These improvised weapons are put to graphic, gruesome work as bodily damage and even severe head trauma isn’t enough to kill a Necromorph–only by severing their limbs can you put them down for good. This nuance, referred to as strategic dismemberment, vastly alters the way combat is approached in Dead Space from the typical “aim for the head”-style gameplay seen in most action games and zombie apocalypse scenarios. Every class of Necromorph requires a different strategy to handle, and knowing how to combat multiple types simultaneously is an essential skill if you want to survive for long. Though dismemberment is ultimately the key to victory, failing to finish off a monster properly will only send it into a berserker rage and force it to adapt to its new, partially appendageless situation so that it can continue trying to eat your face. Even more alarming than their ghastly appearances and uncouth manners is the fact that they are quite intelligent. Necromorphs attack in packs using loose team tactics, and are capable of traversing the ship’s extensive ventilation system to sneak around for outflanking or ambushing. They feign death among the corpses of their peers to rise up and attack when you least expect it, and they often come in waves, leaving you wondering if it’s truly over or if they’re simply toying with you. The most basic Necromorphs are humanoid monsters that attack in a frenzy. Horribly mutated undead babies also make an appearance, and they run along the walls and ceilings sprouting tentacles from their backs capable of throwing organic projectiles. Others still are heavily armored but vulnerable from behind, are bloated with dozens of spiderlike parasites that are released upon their host’s death, or shriek madly as they carry explosive pods toward you in a suicidal charge. In one fully interactive game play sequence that comprises some of the more amazing moments to be experienced in Dead Space, you’re assaulted by the gigantic tentacle of an even larger, unseen beast that drags you to a gruesome and bloody death as you struggle to shoot yourself free. Finally, at several key points in the story, Isaac stumbles upon some of the most incredible and truly terrifying boss monsters to be seen in the survival horror genre. Though revealing the circumstances around which you confront these nightmares would do much to spoil them, it is safe to say that these epic encounters are easily some of the most remarkable seen in years.

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