So, I’ve now had a chance to play through Spartan Ops for two episodes both cooperatively and solo and I’ve now formulated my basic ideas into a thesis which I want to present to 343 and the community.
First off, let me say to 343, well done! Halo 4 is fresh and fun to play and interesting. I enjoyed the campaign story and it didn’t feel like the campaign was short changed in any fashion. Humanizing MC was also brilliant. I’ve also enjoyed War Games and can’t wait to get to my first Specialization!
But Spartan Ops demonstrates several of the core problems with the game design that has existed since Halo 2 and has really driven me nuts. Let me describe Halo: Ce a bit first. On Normal and Heroic settings, the Covenant are pretty much the same enemy, it takes about the same number of bullets to kill them and they are about at intelligent (as game AI) goes between the two modes. What Halo:CE did though for Legendary was to keep the basic mechanics of the game the same, and throw more enemies at you. This meant it took about the same number of bullets to kill an enemy no matter what setting you were playing. But on Legendary in any battle, instead of the usual one Elite, there would be three Elites and they would be far smarter (running to hide if you took their shields down, etc.), but other than that, everything was more or less the same. So, how did 343 do in the campaign? Pretty well, it seems like most of the enemies are about as easy to kill on Legendary as they are on Heroic. There are of course buffs to shields and HP and intelligence on Legendary was awesome.
But Spartan Ops was another matter. Particularly, Ep 2 Mission 3: Hacksaw. First off, this board so freaking small I don’t think it makes a particularly good Spartan Ops board but that’s just my opinion. My complaint really comes in from the buffs on the enemies moving from Heroic to Legendary. The number of Elites wielding Fuel Rods , instead of the storm rifles, Needlers etc. they were previously wielding, more than quintupled and they were deadly accurate. I died 20 freaking times on the board as I was systematically hunted down and had near-zero chance of killing any of them. Eventually I managed to kill the Fuel Rod wielders and grab one, but I would literally spawn five feet from the Elites without any chance to be able to get the hell away and formulate some workable strategy. (Game in question) I don’t consider that a challenge, I consider that poor game design. It’s a substitute for good AI and coordinated strategies and really needs to be fixed. IT also deeply interferes with people being able to effectively come up with strategies if all they are doing is dying because every guy is wielding the biggest one-hit-kill weapon on the Covenant side. I would like to see a return to Halo roots in this regard. If Elites carry storm rifles on Heroic, that’s what they should have on Legendary too. Just gives us more Elites to take out. Then the insta-death stupidity doesn’t have to happen. Plus, then when you run across the big boss enemies they actually make sense that they’re like the big boss enemy. OOOO, look the Elite General is carrying around a Fuel Rod. Better be careful of him!