Orbital Drop Shock Troopers. It rolls off the tongue like a peanut butter-superglue compote. There’s a knack to acronyms. They must be approached in a certain order. First you come up with the letters to spell the end result you’re looking for – like F.E.A.R., or U.N.C.L.E. – then, once satisfied that it has the right impact, you can start mulling on words that may fit the order, such as First Encounter Assault Recon, or United Network Command for Law and Enforcement. In fact, the latter’s mortal enemies T.H.R.U.S.H. are a great example of how things can go entirely wrong. An itchy genital rash doesn't exactly strike the right note for an international criminal conglomerate. U.N.C.L.E., in a move to strike back, narrowly avoided being called Covert Agent National Espionage Security Task Enforcement Network. Probably. We digress.

Whichever way you slice it, ODST as an acronym is neither clever nor dumb. It’s just a lot of big fat nothing to nobody until you have it spelled out to your limply nodding face.

It’s a funny thing – writing about highly anticipated games while being ultimately disappointed with the end product. Over the years working in this industry, you become keenly aware that there’s a whole raft of individuals who have put their hearts and souls into making it and who, largely speaking, have played no part in undermining the end result to the point where it emerges partially collapsed like a flan in a cupboard. You also become aware that there are further defining factors at play; primarily the relationship between developer and publisher, but also budget constraints and indeed the specific way in which a product will eventually be marketed.

Back in the day, Bungie announced an exciting expansion for Halo 3 in the form of Halo 3: Recon. Over time, someone somewhere made the decision that it would be of the most economic merit to spend a little more at the outset with the pay-off being that Recon nee ODST would come in its own shiny box along with the additional promise to players of involvement with the Halo: Reach beta. Lucky you. Of course, if we were cynical – and cynics we damn well be – we might point out that enlisting a couple of million beta testers for the price of a bushel of Caledonian fog is not exactly a generous gesture, but has more in common with the time Homer gave Marge a bowling ball. It's a selfish gift, and one on which you’ll have to spend cash to receive. Makers of PC MMOs demand nothing for the privilege of becoming a bottom-feeding bug-hunter. Xbox Live is the ideal delivery system for beta testing, so putting it on a full-price game disc to sell more copies feels to us just a tad exploititive. But maybe that's just us.

The inclusion of more than half of the male cast of Firefly (Nathan Fillion, Alan Tudyk and Adam Baldwin) along with Battlestar Galactica’s Cylon seductress Tricia Helfer, certainly kicks things off at a level of quality that’s hard to follow. The voice acting is nothing short of superb throughout. In fact, this point in the review marks the jetty from which we’re about to set sail on a short tour of the joyous contentments that the game offered us throughout. Call it a buffer between here and the shitty-gritty.

… continued