Spartan OPs Episode-7 review.

Games Other Halo
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Disclaimer: I will not add any spoilers into this review seeing as some may not have played the Episode.

-This review is based upon my knowledge of this Episode, expectations and hopes for what Spartan OPs will be.

Episode-7 Review

This week OXM magazine suggested that this episode of Spartan Ops would be the best one to date. How could it not be? During the trailer and screen shots for a teasing preview we get a sense of how urgent the matter could be. The Infinity the most advance and equipped UNSC reasearch-battle station there is has an invasion coming onboard. This week promised to show players new environments plus stay true to the experience of a truly cinematic show! My anticipation had not been higher for any other week. I truly pegged the Halo 4 campaign to have been the best gaming experience I have ever embarked on and Spartan OPs says that we will be able to continue the fight or is it simply a leveled fire fight?

Lets look at the ‘Sweeet!’ and ‘Really? Why?’ points of the episode.

Sweet!

-New play spaces for players!

-New cinematic

-Finally a fight on the Infinity

-The Halsey plot thickens

-Loads of bad guys every single place you go

'Really? Why?

-Play space in chapter one unique, chapter 2-5 recycled over and over again.

-No real cinematic (in-game) moments or jaw dropping sequences

-Chapters felt way to short

-Chapter to chapter was a continuation in the same play space (Chapters 2-5)

-Player going point to point with no real decision making to be made

After culminating the facts these are my thoughts…

-Spartan OPs is still young in it’s game cycle and needs to be given time

-Developers need to be spending time making each level unique rather than
recycling play spaces to pump out new episodes.

-The addition of a reward or something to achieve in Spartan OPs beyond spartan points would be a refreshing change of pace.

-In episode 6 the level started off with the Spartans captive which was awesome then later in the episode showed off a gears of war like vehicle called the ‘Harvester’. I am sure 10/10 people would agree with forget being captive… lets have a fight with that thing!! But in episode 7 there was no moments like that to speak of.

-The story told in the pre-game cinematics and weekly cinematic are amazingly crafted and really pushing everything a long nicely.

-New environments really brighten up the new Halo 4 experience and bring players back each week from the already stationed hard core fan base.

-More efforts need to be made in host migration in spartan ops as some players experience flawless connection and others experience a 5ms response time on straffing for example.

-Spartan OPs has been tremendous but has room to grow to be a continuing factor in the market place not just a cheesy add on with the hopes of being good.

In Closing:

343 industries and it’s partners have embarked into one of the most legendary and known game franchises in human history. They have tremendous stress coming from all sides with Microsoft and fans-continuing payers of the game. Spartan OPs is still in the early stages and has a lot of room to grow but on the bright side we have a Spartan OPs. Not factoring in the breaks- a weekly episodic content stream that brings new missions, experiences and co-op fun to Halo 4. I am pretty blunt with my thoughts of this new episode in the hopes that someone reads this as constructive feed back. I want to see the continuing growth of Spartan OPs and I truly do feel that the developer for the job- who has been doing an incredible job- can get the job done and done astonishingly at the same time.

Thanks for Reading!
-Phenom

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Spartan Ops is still young in its cycle? What? There’s only three more episodes left.

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Episode 6 really was a high point in Spartan Ops with it’s new environments. Episode 7 started off strong with the beginning cutscene and mission, but the amount of backtracking was just bad.

THAT.-Yoinking!-.SERVER ROOM!

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I said Spartan OPs is still young in it’s cycle because we have not heard all the plans for the rest of Halo 4 and the Halo games to come. If 343 industries and it’s partners show that with time and effort placing new Spartan OPs content into the world could save fan base by giving players something new to do then it is worth it to make it.

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I fully agree with the Episode starting off strong! I was so excited after just the cut scene! Back tracking was certainly an issue for everyone. New environments > Recycled ones.

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yeah basically episode 7 was pretty okay, but it was a little lackluster due to the repetitive “wave after wave” sequences. Especially the one where you have to close all the entrances to the engine room.

and there’s some stuff I don’t quite get, as well as some canon thingys that are well-thought of by the game developers and some which aren’t. spoilers ahead!

-why in the world does the Covenant need 5-6 HAVOK nukes to blow up a single engine room? It would make sense if the nukes are transported by the Covies and we are supposed to intercept it or something, but they were just sitting there, and primed.
-some of the core facilities are almost directly accessible via that same hangar bay. Engine room, server room, control rooms. Either that or Murphy chose a pretty good bay to crash land into!
-pretty weird that we’re on a human ship and most of the time you’re left fighting by yourself. It’ll be really cool if there were AI Spartans.

Cool points:
-the engine does indeed look alien in origin, like it’s being held in place rather than being integrated into the ship, which is true to the canonical description of Infinity’s engine. Sort of reminds me of the Forerunner Dreadnought in the middle of the gigantic open space in High Charity back in Halo 2, albeit much smaller in scale.
-the screens and textures really reflect the effort put in by the designers to show this is indeed a part of the Infinity, and not some slipshod playspace. But as always, our expectations has always been high…but keep up the good work!

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Bro, your fighting on the Infinity, not the Forward unto Dawn.

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episode 6 was better than 2-5 but:

Stand still in front of these crates that are clearly UNSC weapons… let me scan them… dont move, its complicated! yep they are UNSC weapons…

really???

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> Bro, your fighting on the Infinity, not the Forward unto Dawn.

And we barely went that far into the Infinity. I saw someone suggest maybe going through the War Games room as it malfunctions with environments popping up, that would’ve been cool. But no, we get the hanger, engine room, server room and weapon controls all in four mission over and over.

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> Spartan Ops is still young in its cycle? What? There’s only three more episodes left.

…of Season 1. 343i were talking about having at least 5 seasons, we’ll have to wait and see if this was another example of an optimistic statement that they’ll later rescind.

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> Bro, your fighting on the Infinity, not the Forward unto Dawn.

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I still prefer Firefight myself , playing the same maps over and over maybe not in the new episodes but the other’s doesnt appeal to me . The objectives are very bland aswell . I wish Firefight would return :frowning:

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> And we barely went that far into the Infinity. I saw someone suggest maybe going through the War Games room as it malfunctions with environments popping up, that would’ve been cool.

Now THAT would be cool. 343i, listen to this guy.

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> > Bro, your fighting on the Infinity, not the Forward unto Dawn.
>
> And we barely went that far into the Infinity. I saw someone suggest maybe going through the War Games room as it malfunctions with environments popping up, that would’ve been cool. But no, we get the hanger, engine room, server room and weapon controls all in four mission over and over.

All I see is “complain complain complain complain.” Give it a rest and be happy with the effort that 343 has put into the game.

I have really enjoyed my experience with this week’s Spartan Ops. I’ve only played the first two episodes, but they are they most fun I have had on Spartan Ops yet!

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You can’t expect them to keep making game add-ons as detailed as you want for free. If spartan ops is a leveled firefight, then I say awesome. I loved firefight and a moving objective based version of firefight is even better.

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is it just me or is this episode really hard? like as in challenging. chapter 4 took me forever with like 14 deaths or something. (haven’t tried out chapter 5 yet)
maybe it was because there were only 3 of us, but it seemed a lot harder to kill enemies than it was in past episodes…javascript:__doPostBack(‘ctl00$MainContent$forum$ctl03$Cancel’,’’)

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> All I see is “complain complain complain complain.” Give it a rest and be happy with the effort that 343 has put into the game.

The first mission was nice, but then it just degenerated into recycled areas. There was so much potential, but was dropped. I’m not going to ignore that and if you expect others to, then you’re out of luck.

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> is it just me or is this episode really hard? like as in challenging. chapter 4 took me forever with like 14 deaths or something. (haven’t tried out chapter 5 yet)
> maybe it was because there were only 3 of us, but it seemed a lot harder to kill enemies than it was in past episodes…javascript:__doPostBack(‘ctl00$MainContent$forum$ctl03$Cancel’,’’)

first of all, dunno what all that junk is at the end of my post or where it came from.

and second, i just check and realized spartan ops matchmaking is in legendary now. that explains it, i was treating it like it was heroic, going have to change my strategy and play more carefully now.

i don’t know why i didn’t notice this before seeing as the change was apparently made a while ago (maybe b/c took a break from spartan ops for a little while, didn’t play it as much)

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Anyone else think that in the next episode John is going to rescue Captain Lasky and Halsey? I sure do…

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I have not played Episode 7 as of yet, but from what I have heard I am very interested in playing it, though I would agree that the cinamatics really got me pumped for an awsome time. What I dont like about many (but not all) of the episodes is that it seems to force the players into face-to-face firefights the entire time, severly limiting the usefullness of some armor abilities (such as my favorite Active Camo), though I could easilly be wrong and this mentality can be from playing with random people online most of the time who like to rush in guns blazing.

Though this Episode seems like it will fix one of my main complaints about SOps, that most of the actions of team Crimson are never mentioned in the cut-scenes, giving me the feeling of “why did I even do all that in the first place”. They talk about team Majestic more than Crimson. I just hope in next week’s opening cut-scene someone mentions how Team Crimson played a major role in defending the ship or something like that. That would (in my oppinion) make the SOps experience feel more rewarding.