They’re no replacement for Firefight, but on their own they’re pretty cool. This week, for example, I saw a lot of complaints that Multiplayer maps were used. Are you kidding? That’s awesome! I can’t tell you how many times I said back in Halo 2 and 3, “You know what’d be cool? Fighting Covies on these maps!”. It was a popular thing to do in modding, and having it in an official capacity was awesome!
The holdout in Valhalla, especially, was a very awesome mission and I enjoyed it thoroughly. I don’t get the complaints. Each mission has a cool little twist or style of play that makes it unique. The tank mission this week? SO MUCH FUN!
I don’t think they should have replaced Firefight, but Spartan Ops is shaping up to be something I’ll want to replay in the future with some co-op buddies, and not something to just breeze through once and never touch again.
I have problems with 343 with some parts of this game, but Spartan Ops is certainly not one of them.
Me and friend were talking about Spartan Ops the other day. You are right that it is no replacement for Firefight. We tend to see it as an extension of campaign, which I think was the point. That being said, we weren’t fans of the campaign. So the whole Spartan Ops thing is kind of ‘meh’. I don’t think of it as a ton of fun. I try to stick to customs or just BTB MM.
We don’t complain about it. We acknowledge it is there, and we move on with our lives.
The problem with Firefight is that it got old quick… it eventually came down to a no-brainer way to grind for experience. The actual gameplay never changed. At least with Spartan Ops, you’ve got variety in the missions. Even playing the same mission over and over is about as much fun as playing it the first time, because it can be so varied.
I think Episode 3 shows that we can expect some good things to come along. I do miss Firefight, but so far the best of SOps has been better than anything Firefight could offer.
> The problem with Firefight is that it got old quick… it eventually came down to a no-brainer way to grind for experience. The actual gameplay never changed. At least with Spartan Ops, you’ve got variety in the missions. Even playing the same mission over and over is about as much fun as playing it the first time, because it can be so varied.
>
> I think Episode 3 shows that we can expect some good things to come along. I do miss Firefight, but so far the best of SOps has been better than anything Firefight could offer.
The reason Firefight got stale is because 343 refused to offer any kind of challenge. It was entirely the playlist’s fault. I had some awesome custom Firefights that never got old, and some that were even designed to be tackled solo.
One of the few awesome things about Reach was the ability to customize the Firefight experience. I’m really sad that was taken away from us in Halo 4. Here’s to Halo 5!
I don’t know about anyone else, but the reason it gets on my nerves is Sarah Palmer.
People don’t like it because they think of it as
“Oh this is just recycled campaign/mm maps, its not good enough”
rather than the more accurate “its a way of increasing the replay ability of those maps”
I don’t mind them using campaign bits and multiplayer maps being used but it’s stupid as hell to rehash the same chunks over and over. Playing the same map three times but changing the direction you progress is lazy and boring.
If each mission was a different little slice of campaign it’d be find but replaying the same missions with slightly different objectives is just plain boring.
I don’t mind them reusing resources like maps and so on, since each mission does play fairly differently with different enemy combinations, vehicles and the like.
That said, I think it is bad of 343 to (from what I can tell) gradually unlock episodes on a weekly basis, considering all of them are already made, ready to play, and presumably installed to our hard drives. I guess it makes Spartan Ops matchmaking easier to handle but beyond that it just seems like a cheap move to try and keep players coming back.
Beyond that, I honestly feel as though every bit of effort that was put into Spartan Ops would have been better invested elsewhere.
EDIT: It’s good for XP though, which I like.
I have to agree with the OP here. Spartan Ops is amazing now when they put in Complex and Valhalla into the game. This is just what we wanted. Covenant invading human bases. Spartans are there to kill them and clear out the area. I sure hope in the next Episode next week, we get more mulitplayer maps into Spartan ops. I am hoping for Vortex, Exile, Haven, or Meltdown.