6. Halo 3: ODST

Zack: Any Halo game that lets me kill Brutes at night using a cool new weapon while jazz plays in the background is a winner in my book. And seeing as only Halo 3: ODST lets you do that, I adore this strange spin-off of Halo 3. ODST also introduced firefight, the horde mode that I sunk way too many hours into as a younger man, and helped give us a new angle on the world of Halo. Playing as a more fragile and smaller ODST soldier and not a spartan made combat more intense and failure more likely. Great stuff.

Ari: It makes sense that Joseph Staten, who was brought in last year to spearhead creative development on Halo Infinite, headed story development on ODST back in the day. You can see the overlap in DNA between both games. In fact, ODST—with its hub area, and choose-your-own-way approach—almost feels like a first draft for Infinite. And, yes, firefight good. ODST could’ve been easily been a half-thought spin-off. Instead, it proved a quietly revolutionary benchmark for a series that had way more in the chamber beyond the original trilogy.