Halo: Spartan Assault - - A Hands On Review

343's Halo: Spartan Assault for Windows 8 Devices

As stated a couple days ago in the station operations post, I know many of you have been expecting the "Everything We Know - - Destiny" post.  While it is nearly complete, I must confess my time has been absorbed by a newly released game.  As many of you know, Station 1621 and its contributors are huge Halo fans.  Thus myself and other station operators deemed it necessary to take a couple days off to absorb 343's newly released game, Halo: Spartan Assault.  While I was quite eager to begin playing the game, I know many other station attendees felt a Halo mobile game couldn't live up to the grand precedents set forth by the multiple Halo console game titles.  These sentiments were similarly echoed on various forums with popular statements being: "It won't feel like Halo to me," "343 is selling out to get me to buy Windows 8!" and (my favorite) "This isn't a true Halo game and I will not play it!"

In addition to these non-factual gripes from Halo fans, a few game reviewers wrote some harsh reviews about the game after testing it out at E3 (I don't really care to link them here, you can Google them if you wish).  The most glaring that I read was that the touch controls were poorly designed and that the game was difficult to play on Microsoft's Surface.  In addition, the game had many inherent flaws/bugs that detracted from the overall experience.  These were initial red flags to myself and many of my friends that 343's first mobile game could be a huge bust.

As many fans and gamers have pointed out, Halo: Spartan Assault is only available for Windows 8.  Quoting fellow Station 1621 contributor Zero21, "Why would 343 intentionally cut off Halo fans who don't own a Windows 8 device from enjoying this new Halo game?"  A valid question that, I believe, can be answered with simple economic and developmental principles.  I'm also a Windows 8 PC and Surface owner so I can't really share these concerns/complaints anyway.  Either way, the lack of support for the Apple/Android mobile communities was taken personally by some Halo fans.  With a smattering of complaining fans, a few poor reviews and platform restrictions, many at Station 1621 and the gaming community were left skeptical and not excited for the Halo universe's jump to mobile platform gaming.

After sitting down with the game on my own Surface RT, I am here to give a station observance report on how the game plays, looks but, most importantly how it feels.  All Station 1621 contributors agreed that Halo was Halo because of the way each game feels.  Whether it be thematic story telling or feeling invincible as a Spartan super soldier, the feel of a Halo game is the most important attribute when sizing up whether the game is worthy to be included in such a historic franchise.  This doesn't mean however that each game has the exact same feel.  In fact, each and every Halo game has contributed a new "feel" to the universe as a whole.  With the Halo universe's entrance into the mobile gaming community, it was important for us to recognize that the game had a correct but distinct Halo feel.  Here are Station 1621's findings:

Observational Report: Halo: Spartan Assault

Platform: Windows 8 Devices, observations were studied on a Microsoft Surface RT

Developer(s): 343 Industries and Vanguard Games

Price: $6.99 USD on the Windows App Store

Gameplay and Graphics: 


Taken using my GoPro Hero 3.  Shout out to my dog Annie relaxing in the chair.

As you can see, the touch screen controls require some practice but, in my experience, work rather seamlessly.  I didn't find any of the reviews stating that the controls were poorly designed to be truthful.  As with any Halo game, mastering the controls requires skill but any casual player could pick up the game and have fun blasting covenant. The game offers a tutorial which helps you gain some familiarity with the controls which I suggest everyone to try before diving into the missions. While controlling your Spartan, there is an aim assist, especially with grenades and vehicles, that helps pinpoint those perfect tosses and shots.  The vehicle driving controls will probably take the most time for players to master but after a couple minutes you will have it down perfectly.  The combination of driving around with one thumb and steering/firing with the other makes for a genuine Halo vehicle experience as you mow down the plethora of enemies in front you.  Your field of vision expands when entering and exit vehicles/turrets in order to help you survey those incoming enemies you normally couldn't see.  I will say it does feel weird at first playing a Halo game without a controller (or keyboard and mouse for the Halo CE PC community) but my anxiety was quickly lifted once the action began.  As renegade covenant fell at my feet, I began to feel more and more comfortable with the game.

The graphics, as many have speculated, appear to come from the Halo Wars engine outfitted for Windows 8 devices.  As seen in the video above, the cut scenes played at the beginning of each set of five missions (think Spartan Ops) use a similar art style to the videos created for the terminals found in Halo 4.  The cut scenes are well put together and should be applauded for accompanying a mobile game.  While one could certainly argue there are more graphically inclined mobile games, the graphics in Halo: Spartan Assault serve the game well and look very good.  The colors are amazing and incredibly vibrant, some of the best on the market to be sure. The details of the environments from the barricades, plants, UNSC structures and more are Halo franchise worthy.  In addition, the environmental features going on in the background such as banshees flying around or other troops fighting each other are well done and compare favorably to the Halo 4 multiplayer environments (see "Environmental Story telling")  343 and Certain Affinity of course do a better job than any on making beautiful environments (note the various multiplayer mapacks) and Halo: Spartan Assault is no different.

The sound and music in Spartan Assault are on par with the other Halo games.  The weapon sounds seem to come straight from Halo 4 and the music accompanying the menus, cut scenes and more is great.  The sound of a game is often overlooked and, especially with Halo games, enhances the gaming experience.  This is by far the most well put together, in terms of sound, mobile game I have seen.  You can definitely tell this was an important component for the game.  Great sound and music is just a staple of the Halo franchise now.

I was pleasantly surprised at how helpful the friendly AI are in the game.  We all know in the console Halo titles that sometimes marines don't do what you want them to do as its difficult to implement non-player controlled units that act like players in a first-person shooter.  In Halo: Spartan Assault, your computer controlled marines are rather effective at downing that rogue grunt outside your vision range and help you take down the tougher elites when needed.  I haven't encountered any glitches with the AI units so far.  Expect good help from your computer friends when playing through the campaign missions.

Overall, the controls and graphics make Spartan Assault an incredibly fun and beautiful game to play.  After just owning it for a couple of days, I can already tell you the replay value is high.  The $6.99 price tag is well worth the experience so far.  Obviously, my experience is limited to the tablet version and I would be curious to see the game on a mobile phone.  That said, the experience on a computer should be top notch and even better than a tablet.

The "Halo" Feel: 

As we discussed earlier, each Halo game has a distinct feel that distinguishes itself and yet makes it apart of the Halo universe.  For Spartan Assault, fellow station operators were concerned that this experience and feel wouldn't translate over to the mobile gaming platform.  After a full play through, we feel as if Spartan Assault has succeeded in bringing a Halo experience to mobile platforms.  The twin-stick top-down shooter style fits Halo well (better than even I expected) and creates a new experience that you need to try.  Playing through the missions gives me a similar feeling to the firefight modes of Halo 3: ODST and Halo: Reach.  The scoring system resembles firefight and with the constant kill combos displayed on your screen, the firefight/arcade feel is very prevalent. Since many Halo fans were upset firefight wasn't included in Halo 4, Spartan Assault could give you a little relief to your firefight craving.  The game feels distinctly like a Halo game even though it is not of the FPS variety.  Many complained before Halo Wars was released that it wasn't a true Halo game because it wasn't a first-person shooter.  However, the game turned out to be a fan favorite and still has a thriving community to this day (Note to 343: please make a Halo Wars 2).  I imagine Halo: Spartan Assault will be no different.  Over time, the game will develop a following and, if 343 sends the game some updates, fans will be playing it for a long while.

Conclusions: 

Halo: Spartan Assault has far surpassed my expectations.  I know the game would be good and worth the $6.99 price tag but I didn't expect the replay ability to be this high.  The arcade scoring, good gameplay/controls and beautiful graphics keep me playing the game.  I understand some of the frustration with the game only being available on Windows 8.  That said, this gives those who own Windows devices something that finally separates them from the Android/Apple communities.  I also imagine that the game was much easier to develop for Windows 8 than any other OS.  That's the beauty of developing games on Windows and Xbox, the ease between which you can platform between the two. I would like to suggest to our readers that if you have a PC go ahead and make the upgrade to Windows 8.  Now that the Halo universe has made it to the mobile gaming platform, Station 1621 does not expect this to be the last Halo mobile game (not mention the future for Windows 8 connectivity on the Xbox One but that's another discussion entirely).

Spartan Assault is fun, addicting and delves fans further into the Halo universe.  So far, Station 1621 has zero complaints with the game other than grumblings from Zero21 that it isn't available on Android.  Hopefully a multiplayer component could be possible one day for the game but the single player alone is worth playing over and over again.  Station 1621 also wishes you could spend the in-game currency on something other than weapon upgrades.  Maybe cool color combos for Spartan Davis and Palmer? The possibilities are endless.

To close our hands-on review and observational report, Station 1621 would like to officially give Halo: Spartan Assault a 10 out of 10.  343 and Vanguard have done an amazing job bringing the Halo experience to mobile devices and deserve a ton of praise for their newest game.  We would even go as far to say that this is one of the best mobile games available on any OS today.  We hope to see many of you climbing the Spartan Assault leaderboards soon.  Check back tomorrow as our Mass Effect live stream continues.

As always,

See you starside.

-1621

Station Operational Status: Green

The Traveler

After a brief dark period due to solar flares from the adjacent star shutting down communication (you know, got to leave video gaming and enjoy outside some time this summer!), Station 1621 is returning to full operational status with communication to the home system being placed as the number one priority.  On our mission progress and communication reports, Station 1621 will continue looking at some of the biggest games coming out this Fall as well as delve into the past to explore some games forgotten in time but that should share a unique place in your gaming knowledge and repertoire.

I'm really excited about starting a new piece, along with our on-going Mass Effect tribute, that will take me back to one of my favorite games of all time.  More details to come soon.  I am very excited and hope you will be too!  Still working on a way to stream it on Twitch.  Hopefully that will come to fruition very soon.

The next game slated to be previewed, as given away by the picture above, is Bungie's newest franchise Destiny.  This game has been so hyped that much of the public knows and understands details about the game.  Therefore for this report of "Everything We Know," Station 1621 will provide more opinions about the game as opposed to just facts.  Possibly we can meld minds together and come to even greater conclusions about the massive blockbuster arriving on next-gen consoles this Fall.

Some updates the station would like to bring to your immediate attention:

343 announced that a new map pack will becoming to Halo 4 on August 20th.  Details can be seen here.  As you can probably tell, Halo is one of our favorite gaming franchises and we are always interested in Halo news.  The "Champions Bundle," as it is being called, will have 2 new maps including Pitfall and Vertigo, new armor, new skins and even a new game type.  We are excited that some new armor configurations are coming to game and the new game type looks promising as an alternative to Grifball.

The people over at Gearbox have been giving away free Shift codes for Borderlands 2 to accompany their newest DLC.  If you haven't jumped on the Borderlands bandwagon I highly suggest you go pick up the game which most likely can be bought at discount now.  The game is great fun and the developers have shown a consistent devotion to providing new content and FREE rewards.  Check it out.

There has been a ton of hoopla over Square Enix announcing that the Final Fantasy MMO or whatever you want to call it won't be coming to Xbox One due to Microsoft's policy to not allow cross platform connectivity.  I have a suspicion that Microsoft simply doesn't want to pay to implement this practice on future Xbox One games.  Its been prove that Microsoft is more developer friendly than Sony (I will debate you if you like) so I don't believe this stems from some notion that Microsoft doesn't want to share its games with other platforms.  That said, its possible there might be a reversal from the company in order soon, you never know.  Honestly I'm skeptical about this Final Fantasy multiplayer anyway.  I wish Square Enix would stick to what they know (single player campaign) except make them better than the last Final Fantasy.

And with that the station is signing off for now.  Check back soon and often.

See you starside,
-1621