Instead, the glut of repeated enemy wave after enemy wave that often outnumber you means you feel more like pest control than an epic warrior. While Halo 4’s fidelity necessitated shrinking the size of most levels, that simply means each Spartan Ops scenario should be just as bite-sized for an optimal experience akin to Halo 4’s campaign.
Halo 3: ODST not only has the open-world city of New Mombasa but also several large scripted arenas for players to duke it out in. We’ve had other games, even in the Halo series, that have managed to turn sandbox environments into well-paced, guided experiences still permitting player exploration. A vehicle supply drop tries to capture the energy of a set piece, only to feel like mandatory busywork as you clobber directionless waves of enemies.īy direction, I don’t mean linearity. Enemy dropships fly backwards and sideways along their AI pathing. That saves time, and I mean really, who would want to play Halo story content on their own? While clearly a desperate measure to get missions out on time, you can still see Spartan Ops straining to deliver. Or you could take the simpler route and just toss all the enemy waves meant for four players into every map regardless of if the player can get that big a group together. Done right, you can have something as infinitely playable as Mass Effect 3’s excellent multiplayer. With so little to vary things up besides enemy and vehicle spawns, crafting meaningful encounters demands precision balancing. Assembling a great, highly replayable co-op level is a struggle at the best of times. Reusing multiplayer assets isn’t necessarily a bad call, but the minimal changes made to each location as they’re reused upwards of five times never disguises how hastily each scenario is constructed.
Sprinkle in some bots and Jennifer Hale’s Sarah Palmer condescending to you regularly and boom - you have every mission in Spartan Ops! While Spartan Ops throws in a handful of objectives where you might push a button or destroy a piece of equipment, every scenario ends up feeling less involved than a player-made mod for Halo Custom Edition. Where Halo 4 proper is a light, fast-paced FPS that sends you rushing across every level, Spartan Ops locks you in a multiplayer map. Players become a glorified NPC in the background of someone else’s story, and this goes about as well as you’d expect. You’re caught in a directionless gameplay soup desperately trying to find a reason for why your squad Fireteam Crimson is doing things not half as interesting as the characters in the cutscenes are. Put simply, Spartan Ops’ missions are Halo 4 without a rudder. The problem was the role you and your customized Spartan play in that grand story during gameplay.
It captures the TV show aesthetic with dramatic cuts, breezy plots darting between twists and turns, and several plot threads spiraling out then reconnecting for optimal draaaamaaaa. We got to see what Catherine Halsey and the crew of the UNSC dreadnought Infinity got up to while Master Chief was off reuniting with some old friends in a graphic novel. All the cutscenes were gorgeous and did a solid job bridging the stories of Halo 4 and Halo 5: Guardians. So what went wrong? Why did Microsoft’s first attempt at a Halo Infinite-esque live “platform” fizzle out so soon? Well, it certainly wasn’t due to an overwhelming outpouring of unique content, let me tell you that. In the end, Spartan Ops’ first season would also be its last. 343 staff at the time were interviewed saying that Spartan Ops could last for years after launch. Instead of wave-based combat in Firefight, players would engage in an ongoing story that would unfold episodically over what was boldly called its first season.
While competitive players had Forge mode and a premium season pass, those who preferred campaign and co-op had the new free Spartan Ops mode to keep them company. They were going to make a game that could live for years, receiving regular content updates for both single-player and multiplayer fans. That’s why when Bungie stepped aside and left Microsoft-formed 343 Industries to continue the Halo franchise with Halo 4, the new studio had a clever solution. Other attempts, like a proper full-budget film and an MMO, both blew up in Microsoft’s faces. It’s not that the universe isn’t brimming with personality - especially thanks to a glut of tie-in material - but that’s all ancillary to the main games, rather than standing wholly on its own.
No series is quite as familiar with the highs and lows of this as Halo. For every Fortnite, an Amazon battle royale going back into beta.