Halo: Spartan Assault

Hearing the word "halo," fills my head with memories of Master Chief, Covenant, Cortana, spartans, arbiter, sticking enemies with plasma grenades, flipping over Scorpion tanks, SWAT playlist, Slayer playlists, battle rifles, Grifball, etc. Halo is probably one of the most well know franchises alongside Call of Duty, Battlefield, and other first-person shooter games. Nowadays it seems that more Halo-related material is being spewed out into the market. For example, the recent release on Xbox One/Xbox 360 Halo: Spartan Assault. Originally this game was released alongside the release of the Microsoft Windows 8 Operating System and was a tablet/Windows 8 phone game. Reviews for it were mixed and as I already mentioned it was released for Xbox One/Xbox 360 as Xbox Live game. I purchased it off the Xbox marketplace and after playing I wish I didn't spend the money.

Gameplay: Again this was first released as a tablet/Windows 8 phone game and it's pretty noticeable if you're playing on any of the Xboxes. What you have is a sky-view third person shooter. You can control the distance to throw grenades and your direction of fire with the right analog stick. It's also a complete various objectives to finish the level. Most of the gameplay mechanics/controls are similar to past Halo games with the difference being it's from a bird's eye view. There's also options to choose your armor abilities, weapons, campaign boosters, etc. Aside from campaign there's a cooperative game play mode that I didn't try out yet. I'm unsure if I'll even give it a try.

Story: The setting is between the events of Halo 3 and Halo 4 on the planet Draetheus V and its moon. The Covenant truce from Halo 3 crumbles and humanity is again at war with the Covenant. Spartans Davis and Palmer are stationed on Draetheus V and lead a resistance against the Covenant. In the end Spartan Palmer successfully drives the Covenant away and loses the planet and Spartan Davis.

Critique: I bought this game out of sure curiosity and to satisfy my Halo nerdom. After playing I found the game to be boring and somewhat entertaining if I wanted to briefly pass the time. The missions are super short pending on if you're trying to get the achievements. The objectives are repetitive and get dull after doing them four or five times. The only real story elements are from the movie introductions and mission descriptions. The whole game itself is just repetitive to the point that your mind will go numb. The only positive I can think of is that Halo feeling/elements that many of us are quite familiar with. What really takes the cake is the birds-eye view which to me should be reserved to real-time-strategy games like Age of Empires.

Pros:

• Halo feeling/elements.
• Somewhat entertaining.

Cons:

• Repetitive gameplay
• Birds-eye view camera.

Verdict: I give this game a rating range between 2 to 3 out of 5 stars. Yes the game is bad to almost decent but only because of the repetitive gameplay. I actually wish that this game was made into a console game and had a similar style to Halo 3:ODST. To me that would make more sense and give big-time fans a better experience.