Ep 10 was probably my favourite so far, a great end to the series. One great thing about this episode was the variety of combat. We had a vehicular action with warthogs and a mantis, a bizarre gravity, taking down a lich and even a mini hog run after that.
However, the best part about ep 10, is that all the chapters fit together to form a coherent story. So many times in previous episodes, I would stop and think “Yeah, it’s cool we killed all those dudes, but why are we doing this?”. Throughout this episode, I always felt like there was a purpose, a larger objective that we were working to: searching for the artifact, finding a power source, stealing aforementioned power source, escaping.
I feel this was achieved since I felt so much more involved in the story. In other episodes, it sometimes felt like the operation was planned on infinity, discussed among several people, and then the very basic order were passed to you without any explanation as to why you were doing it. This time I rarely felt like I was being kept out of the loop (aside from Roland’s plan, but he was keeping that from everyone). This was also done well in that first mission were you break free from your covenant captors, but the rest of that episode didn’t achieve it to the same level.
And finally, the link between the missions and the CG cinematic were clear. This was definitely helped by an additional cutscene following the missions.
Another episode which was pretty good for the same reasons was the one where you spent almost all your time defending infinity. You were working toward a larger objective, and felt involved with the story. That was good, but I prefer 10 because of the more varied combat.
In general, all the missions in episodes 6 - 10 were pretty good. You either felt you were pushing forward, or defending somewhere that mattered. This wasn’t usually the case in some of the first missions. You spent most of your time moving around areas of rather small maps. You weren’t really defending any specific location, since enemies either teleport in or get dropped behind you. If these smaller maps were implemented with firefight style gameplay, they might work a bit better.
All in all, SpOps was pretty good. A bit dull in some places, but more than enough great Halo moments to make up for it. If 343 can take on the feedback and recognise what works, I’m definitely on board for season 2.
TL;DR: Ep 10 had a constant objective throughout, which you felt involved in. More of that!