Introduction
Halo: Spartan Assault is a twin stick shooter developed by 343 Industries and Vanguard Games. It was published by Microsoft Game Studios for Xbox, PC and Mobile.
Review
Have you ever wondered what other stories happened throughout the galaxy during the war? Well as a random UNSC soldier, you can look at recorded war stories to find out! That’s right. You’re not living through your own story, you’re learning history! So sit down and listen soldier!
The story is told about two Spartan Soldiers. Spartan Davis and Spartan Palmer as they help repel the Covenant forces from the planet of Draetheus-V and it’s moon, X50. The story was kind of shallow, as you get a brief paragraph for a mission briefing, then at the beginning of each act, there’s a small cutscene that explains the overall events of the following chapter. But it’s so hard to care about literally any of the characters.
The game plays as a twin stick shooter, and is broken down into 30 levels. Except each level is only a few minutes long. Some took as little as 2 minutes, and others took 5 minutes. This was honestly pretty great for squeezing in a level or two when I had the chance. The missions were all fairly different from each other too. Except it is the basic objectives you’d expect. Kill everything, or survive for x amount of time, or reach point x. But none ever felt over done. Maybe it’s because the levels were so short, so it didn’t feel bloated.
If you die in a level though, you do have to go back to the beginning of the level though. But this wasn’t a hassle. The big thing in this game is the scoring system as well. It’s all mostly based on how fast you can kill enemies. So if you’ve ever played Halo multiplayer, you’ll know the medals. Double Kill, Triple Kill, Quad Kill, ect. It was fun to try and chase the gold medal scores, but at the same time, a lot of levels felt like you needed to get the score boosting ability to achieve the scores. Which you can buy before each level for EXP, which is acquired at the end of each level. Or you can spend these points on getting different weapons for the current mission, but I never bothered.
The one thing that truly irked me though is that the game doesn’t have a co-op campaign. I love playing twin stick shooters in co-op. But when I saw it was single player only, I felt so sad. Sure there’s a co-op mode, but by the sounds of it, it’s more of a wave based survival thing, so I didn’t even bother trying it.
Rating
Pros:
- Short Levels
- Fun To Chase High Scores
Cons:
- Story Was Shallow
- No Co-op Campaign
Summary
Halo Spartan Assault was a fun little variant on the Halo formula. I really enjoyed the gameplay of it and chasing a high score. But with no deep story or full co-op campaign, I felt like I wasn’t having as much fun as I had with previous entries. But if you love wave based game modes with pals, there is that!
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Game & Developer Information
Developer Website: Vanguard Games / 343 Industries
Developer Socials: Twitter / Twitter
Publisher Website: Microsoft Game Studios
Publisher Socials: Twitter
Images – https://www.igdb.com/
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