When 343 first told us about Halo 4’s episodic Co-Op Campaign that would be updated weekly, I like many others fell in love with this idea. However, when the game came out, Spartan Ops wasn’t what I thought it would be.
I honestly expected brand new levels and locations, but instead, it seems we mainly get re-used Campaign segments, just with a small twist (for example, in Sniper Ally, you progress through the area the opposite way you do in the Campaign). Spartan Ops is obviously trying to be Half-Firefight, half-Campaign and I’m not too sure that it works.
If you want to convey both a story and the sense of competitive amongst friends in Firefight, then perhaps there should be more of a “plot” to each mission beyond “Covenant are doing stuff here, go stop them.” or “Eggheads want to have this place cleared out so they can open a lab”. I feel like out of all of the missions we’ve done, Chapter 5 is the only one that is actually going to matter, considering Crimson recovered some sort of Forerunner artifact from the Covenant and Promethean. Everything prior to Chapter 5 is just grunt work.
Now, if you want people to compete with their friends to see who can get the best score (and thus increase replay value), then you need to incorporate the Scoring System and Skulls, features that are present only in Multiplayer and Campaign respectively while Spartan Ops is neglected of both.
In short, I’m disappointed with Episode 1 and I hope future episodes and seasons will include new locations, and that the Scoring system will finally be added in. Actually, Theater for Spartan Ops wouldn’t hurt either. I’m one of those people who likes to watch their custom Spartan do an assassination animation frame by frame, but now I can’t do that outside of Multiplayer.
So, what do you think about our first experience with Spartan Ops?