One of the main concerns with gameplay is the AI of your teammates, who don’t seem to be much help most of the time. The worst AI exists in escort missions that you will occasionally come across. There is one specifically where you must escort three different snipers to separate marked locations on the map. The problem is the actual escorting, as the snipers constantly get caught on obstacles around the map, such as the blue shields. This leads you to have to backtrack a lot to move them in directions to get around the different obstacles.
One element of the game could technically be seen as bad, but I personally enjoyed it. That element is the short and sweet nature of the missions. This allows you to jump in and play a mission very quickly if you are short on time. Past Halo games had campaigns with levels that could take you an hour to play through, and even with checkpoints, it could be difficult to play through unless you had a good amount of time to set aside. Most missions in Spartan Assault won’t take you more than 5 to 10 minutes to complete, with most being on the lesser end.
Halo: Spartan Assault runs smoothly most of the time, but there are definitely some glitches that you will find while playing. The most common glitch throughout follows the use of a turret. Many times when leaving a turret, my character would do one of two things, repeatedly start shooting my weapon or slowing down of my character. The former was bad because it would waste a ton of ammo, which happened in some situations where I was very low on supplies. The latter seems to put you into the aiming stance automatically, which causes you to move slower. Often times the only way I was able to get the glitch to stop was to get back on the turret, which got annoying very fast due to it’s regular occurrence.
Halo: Spartan Assault for Xbox One adds in a brand new game mode that allows for online co-op in a mode that is reminiscent of Firefight from past games in the series. This allows you to team up with others online to take on the various enemies that you know and expect from the Halo franchise. This prolongs the somewhat short single player experience, but it would be better if you could do local co-op in this game mode to have more fun with friends in-person. Also, it would have been fun to have competitive multiplayer, even if it did have to be online only to avoid splitscreen. With the variety of different guns and vehicles, there is a lot of missed potential with no competitive multiplayer, which was one of the most important things that helped to elevate the Halo series to what we know today.
Halo: Spartan Assault is quite a fun little game, especially considering the library of titles on the Xbox One is relatively small due to it having just launched. The short, but satisfying missions are very easy to just jump right in and play when you may be in a hurry, while also still being fun in longer play sessions. The game actually feels just like a Halo game, even with a completely different playstyle, due to the familiar weapons and vehicles that are synonymous with the franchise. A lack of local co-op or competitive multiplayer is disappointing, but Halo: Spartan Assault is more than worth the $14.99 price tag, especially for fans of the Halo series.
[Editor’s Note: Halo: Spartan Assault was reviewed on the Xbox One platform. The game was provided to us by the publisher for review purposes.]
