I wasn’t old enough to know/care back when Halo 4 came out. So over a decade later now, I played Spartan ops and I thought it was the best thing to play with a 4-man squad. It gave new missions, new areas, overwhelming enemies, all-you-can-eat buffet arsenal sometimes. Even had its own little story too that I thought was nice before Halo 5 was a thing. It allowed you to play as your multiplayer spartan. My only problem was that I didn’t like how dying was irrelevant and I felt no punishment in playing.
Besides that, what was the problem with Spartan ops in Halo 4 and why is it so disliked?
It was really just overshadowed. It wasn’t exactly that it was hated but it was barley given any attention and the whole game of sparten ops just felt like the devs spent little time on it. Also it was hard to access. In MCC most you can’t even find it in the campaigns section. It is hidden in the Extras section.
A few things that irked the community:
- It was largely re-used levels (in the first half) making it feel lazy. Also h4 has pretty badly designed levels in the first place didn’t help either. They fixed this in the 2nd half but the first impressions mean a lot.
- It was more of h4’s poor sandbox and poor enemy design.
- Cutscenes felt disconnected from what you were doing, and could just be watched on youtube and skip all the above.
- Infinity/Palmer/S4’s were not well liked, and Spartan Ops is largely to blame with how it portrays all of them. Furthermore, it continued the halsey hate bandwagon the lore community was already sore about at the time.
- Required an xbox live connection which not all story fans had.
- Came at the cost of Firefight
I think Spartan Ops was a great idea, but it needed better writing and level design, and be attached to a better halo game. I think cutscenes should have also involved your custom spartan ala halo reach. Pre-rendered cutscenes are nice, but having your own spartan be in in-engine cutscenes would help cut down on the ‘binge from youtube’ approach.