Ok, I’ve played the first three missions, and will start with the good.
CGI scenes leading into each episode is fantastic. I want a 90 min Halo movie with this incredible attention to detail. Just breathtaking…
The actual gameplay for each mission is pretty basic. This almost feels like 343’s answer to a Horde mode (Gears of War), but the constant reuse of the same levels over and over is pretty weak.
I was kinda hoping for more. Have yet to play Ep4 and Ep5 - not rushing, but hoping that they at least show some new locals
Thoughts on Spartan Ops? Is there going to be a season 2? if so, let’s hope its way better
That would come with the expectation that it is a MAJOR improvement over the 1st season. I don’t mind that maps get reused so much but it’s dialogue that gets repetitive. Crimson this, Egghead that, flip the switch the spawn an enemy ambush in your face this (well that last one is kind fun actually). Plus, i felt that there is still a disconnect between gameplay and the amazing CGI cut scenes telling the story.
I am enjoying Spartan OPs but with a season 2, it can be so much better. I will say that it beats the tedious and broken Strike Force missions from BO II. At least Spartan OPs is functional and not like it was gametested by soccer moms.
It could be more, and I wish there were more CGI than just at the beginning of the episode. Some of the dialogue is a little cheesy and doesn’t really fit with what was set by the campaign. All in all I like it though… It’s more Halo
I think Spartan Ops is pretty awesome. When it first started I did not like it too much besides the CGI cut-scenes and mostly did them for XP. But once Ep 3 came it just blew me away and now I love Spartan Ops and think its pretty awesome.
I love the idea, but the execution is a little lacking to me. I get that it is the replacement for firefight, but I think it should play a bit more like campaign, especially now that there is a narrative attached to the gameplay. In my opinion it would be better served if there was checkpoints and penalties for deaths as there is in campaign,as I think it sort of breaks the tension of the story a little bit if deaths are meaningless. There is no reason to survive against all odds, and the stakes don’t feel high. This one might be a little less feasible due to the amount of work involved, but I would like to see a greater diversity of maps too instead of the same few recycled campaign ones multiple times.
All that being said though, I am having fun with Spartan Ops, and I hope to see it carry over in some form to Halo 5, the cinematics are great and I like the expansion of the overall story and the way it demonstrates an effective UNSC military outside of Master Chief.
I’m enjoying the cutscenes, the extra story they tell is cool. I wish that you’d see your own Spartan model in some cutscenes, like in Reach though.
It would be a nice to change to play more maps rather than the same 5 or 6 every episode, but it’s free, so you can’t complain much.
You also get a nice amount of XP playing, but another complaint I have is you can only play the present episode online, I wish you could play them all, but it’s understandable.
Gameplay is getting a little repetitive, and the dialogue can get a bit meh at times, but in general it’s enjoyable, there’s some replay value, it’s free, and something to look forward to every week.
> It could be more, and I wish there were more CGI than just at the beginning of the episode. Some of the dialogue is a little cheesy and doesn’t really fit with what was set by the campaign. All in all I like it though… It’s more Halo
+1
The CGI is amazing, but it really seems disconnected from the actual gameplay. Personally, I would love it if they kept the CGI at the beginning, but added in-game cutscenes throughout the missions that showed our customized Spartans.
The dialogue’s probably the worst offender, but the writing in general could be better. I face-palmed so hard when Thorne walked up to the Forerunner artifact - it was so obvious what was going to happen. Combined with the incredible amounts of stupid required on the part of the UNSC (“Hey, let’s just leave this mysterious Forerunner artifact, which has already made one scientist disappear, completely unguarded.”), that scene just shattered my suspension-of-disbelief.
The gameplay is generally fun, and I enjoyed the extra urgency the defense missions brought this week (though I’ve found they can be a -Yoink- and a half when trying to solo). The possibility of failure makes the missions much more engaging. The biggest thing I’ve felt Spartan OPs is missing is the potential to fail. I think future epsiodes should include a limit on respawns, a revive system, or some other system to avoid the infinite-respawn-charge-everything-until-it’s-dead monotony that befalls some of the episodes.
> I love the idea, but the execution is a little lacking to me. I get that it is the replacement for firefight, but I think it should play a bit more like campaign, especially now that there is a narrative attached to the gameplay. In my opinion it would be better served if there was checkpoints and penalties for deaths as there is in campaign,as I think it sort of breaks the tension of the story a little bit if deaths are meaningless. There is no reason to survive against all odds, and the stakes don’t feel high. This one might be a little less feasible due to the amount of work involved, but I would like to see a greater diversity of maps too instead of the same few recycled campaign ones multiple times.
>
> All that being said though, I am having fun with Spartan Ops, and I hope to see it carry over in some form to Halo 5, the cinematics are great and I like the expansion of the overall story and the way it demonstrates an effective UNSC military outside of Master Chief.
Yeah, I think it really, really needs some sort of penalty for deaths. For instance: you can only respawn X number of times, and once you’re out of respawns, you can only respawn at checkpoints. There are already very noticable breaks between “waves”, so there are already places where checkpoints would make sense.
Without any penalty for dying, it’s really hard to feel any sense of urgency or tension during gameplay.
> > It could be more, and I wish there were more CGI than just at the beginning of the episode. Some of the dialogue is a little cheesy and doesn’t really fit with what was set by the campaign. All in all I like it though… It’s more Halo
>
> +1
>
>
> The CGI is amazing, but it really seems disconnected from the actual gameplay. Personally, I would love it if they kept the CGI at the beginning, but added in-game cutscenes throughout the missions that showed our customized Spartans.
>
> The dialogue’s probably the worst offender, but the writing in general could be better. I face-palmed so hard when Thorne walked up to the Forerunner artifact - it was so obvious what was going to happen. Combined with the incredible amounts of stupid required on the part of the UNSC (“Hey, let’s just leave this mysterious Forerunner artifact, which has already made one scientist disappear, completely unguarded.”), that scene just shattered my suspension-of-disbelief.
>
> The gameplay is generally fun, and I enjoyed the extra urgency the defense missions brought this week (though I’ve found they can be a -Yoink!- and a half when trying to solo). The possibility of failure makes the missions much more engaging. The biggest thing I’ve felt Spartan OPs is missing is the potential to fail. <mark>I think future epsiodes should include a limit on respawns, a revive system, or some other system to avoid the infinite-respawn-charge-everything-until-it’s-dead monotony that befalls some of the episodes</mark>.
These ideas that i like because there is no punishment for dying. Though none of the missions reward player death like they should. If this is a second Campaign, shouldn’t it act more like it instead of bigger scaled FF Arcade with a story?
Bringing a scoring system with skulls and a punishment from dying would make the experience more challenging and therefore, more rewarding in the end. It’s not like players are playing on Legendary anyways.
I can see why 343 did this though. They didn’t want players to be able to finish missions, which a bit insulting IMO. You can make something challenging while keeping it relaxing at the same time.
For such amazing CGI scenes for the STORY, the GAMEPLAY was lacking for a ton of the episodes. I, for one, have a huge problem with always playing the same maps again. Like i’ve said in previous threads, I would have rather played a mission where CRIMSON was the one who infiltrated that Covvie Cruiser above the map in mission 2 of this weeks episode…
Mildly entertaining at best, very frustrating at worst. At least now they seem to be providing lots of ammo around the maps so that if you hit a section where you die repeatedly you still have new weapons you can grab.
The first chapter of episode 5 was insane. I didn’t 12 times playing it on Normal.
Whoever said that if you like Firefight you’ll love Spartan Ops must have been smoking shoe leather.
> Without any penalty for dying, it’s really hard to feel any sense of urgency or tension during gameplay.
Staying alive is my main goal. What I hate are the missions where I’m so overwhelmed with enemies the only thing I can do is kill a few between deaths until I whittle them down. I died 12 times in the first mission this week. So not fun.
