Talk about the Xbox or Xbox 360 console, and you have to start with Halo – the console‘s most successful game franchise. So, when Halo 3 “finished the fight”, you’d be forgiven for thinking that was it for Halo. Of course, it wasn’t and Bungie is set to release Halo: ODST (Orbital Drop Ship Trooper) taking gamers back to the Halo universe, only this time things are a little different.

First and foremost, Master Chief is missing from Halo: ODST. Not as in lost, as in, not in the game. Instead you play the part of a rookie soldier in a more experienced drop team. You start the game preparing for a drop onto a Covenant ship. It all goes wrong, and you appear to fall to your death. Fear not though, as you awake, albeit alone, several hours later and the game proper begins.

The story for Halo: ODST then unfolds via a series of flashbacks in which you can play your more experienced team mates as well as the rookie, as you seek to find out what has happened. It makes for a varied experience and an engaging storyline. One thing you will notice with all the characters though is that they don’t have the speed or agility of Master Chief, the super-charged Spartan, as they are all human.

Running around the campaign, gamers will also notice another change since Halo 3, the quality of the graphics. Halo: ODST is significantly better looking than its predecessor. Developer Bungie says that having the existing engine to use, they have focused their efforts instead on detail and the results speak for themselves.

Halo: ODST wouldn’t be a Halo game without multiplayer though, and while it uses the Halo 3 mode for competitive games, Halo: ODST does have a new collaborative mode. Named Firefight, it will be familiar to gamers who have played Gears of War 2′s Horde mode, as it sees four of you taking on wave after wave of Covenant forces and just trying to stay alive for as long as possible.

Where Horde felt like a defensive game, at the least the early stages of Halo: ODST’s Firefight feel more like taking the fight to the Covenant. You can rack up the points by offensive play.

The mode gives you a total of seven lives spread across the whole team, although how long these will last against the increasingly difficult waves is down to your team. Having experienced it, the new Firefight mode is a compelling addition to Halo: ODST.

The Xbox 360 has always been known for its great downloadable content that expands a game beyond the original disc. Originally Bungie said that there would be no DLC for Halo: ODST, but the box says otherwise as it lists downloadable content as a feature. The best guess is that there will be some downloadable map packs for the game.

Halo: ODST is set for release exclusively on the Xbox 360 in September 2009. It has been developed by the original developers of Halo, Bungie and will be published by Microsoft. The anticipation is that it will be a worldwide success for the Xbox 360, and once you’ve played it, there’s no reason to believe otherwise.