Halo: Spartan Assault for Windows 8 (metro app)

Finally, some interesting gaming comes to Microsoft's metro app store. This looks like a good way to spend $6.99.



Edit: ignore the preview image on the video: this is also available for Windows 8 PCs, not just Windows Phone devices.

 

So this is where we're heading. Nintendo DS type top down shooters.

 

It's a $6.99 casual game, not a $59.99 AAA title. Nobody screamed bloody murder when Magicka (or Bastion or any other of the top-down $5-$15 games out there) were distributed on Steam, but now the genre hits the Windows store with a Halo theme and it's a sign of the collapse of PC gaming?

 

no! you cant be logical!

this reminds me of alien swarm, loved the game

 

At least you can dual wield smgs again.

Sent from my SGH-T999

 

Only thing i dont like about the games on the Win8 App store is how low textured the games are.
Bought A world of keflings there and i swear the Xbox 360 version of the game looks better, but i guess thats what we get when they make the games so they can run on Tegra 3 tech.

Hopefully this game will look better.

 

Normally I'm right in line with HTWingNut, but on this one I disagree, I'm glad to see games like this on the market... I don't always want to be stuck to a mouse/full controller, etc and games like this are a great compromise! Plus, I just really enjoy some top down shooter type games! Of course, everybody has a different opinion, but every game doesn't have to be bleeding edge and require the latest gpu. Sometimes I just want a fun game that's cheap and easy to play when I want it on the go.... try that with BF3, FC3, C3 etc......... totally different target audience, not the death song of PC gaming

 

Downloaded this. Works very well as a two-stick top-down shooter even with touch, though I suspect it'd be better if you had an Xbox controller sitting around. Good graphics, good level of polish. Runs great on a ULV i3. It's not a $60 AAA game, but for $6.99, that's not what I was expecting. The polish and graphics are excellent for a $7 casual game.

What's disappointing is the emphasis on microtransactions. It appears that some gear (including functional gear, not just aesthetic) is only purchaseable with microtransactions, not in-game currency (XP). Maybe I need to just progress further before I can unlock these purchases with XP. I realize this is an industry-wide issue right now (upgrades for ME3 multiplayer were brutally slow without microtransactions, and that was a $60 game), but still worth noting.

 

The game is made up of five short campaigns of five missions each. I'm currently in the fourth campaign. The game isn't long, sure, but regardless, it exceeds all expectations for a $7 game. The gameplay is incredibly polished, with well-thought-out dual joystick controls, well-balanced weapons (there's not one superweapon that you always want, nor some awful weapon that's never useful), entertaining vehicle combat with several different types of vehicles and several static installations. Computer AI is pretty good--the low-level grunts just come at you like cannon fodder (though watch out for suicide-bombing grunts and try to use them tactically against their own forces), but Elites and Jackals attack sensibly and use terrain to their advantage, Jackals even using terrain to throw grenades at you when you can't fire back directly, and Elites using terrain to get close to use plasma swords.

There are no checkpoints, so when you die, you restart the whole mission. It's not a huge loss of time (most take about 5 minutes and change), but it feels more "real" to me than just going back to the last big fight in a mission. Your buddies are genuinely helpful, and when they die, they're dead for the rest of the mission, which also helps the atmosphere and adds another strategic wrinkle (you want to give them cover fire and help them out when they're in a pinch).

The plot follows five different Spartans; each campaign is a separate character in a separate theater of combat. The game's concept is that these are all training simulations at the school-to-be-a-Spartan or whatever they call it. This frees them from having to come up with a new plotline just for this game or the full theatrical experience of a AAA Halo game, while still maintaining a feel of hopeless, tragic grandeur very reminiscent of the Halo: Reach trailer. I don't know my Halo universe well enough to say when exactly this game is contemporary to (or more precisely, when the missions in the simulator are contemporary to). There's a human planet being overrun by Covenant, so maybe it's contemporary with Reach? I dunno. Still, the atmosphere is remarkably good for a $7 mobile game, and the well-made-yet-GPU-unintensive cutscenes between each campaign help.

The gameplay itself looks remarkably good. The game is detailed and has nice light effects, and the color palette is neither too gritty and anonymous nor too cartoony. Vehicles move well--the big tanks have a ponderous momentum about them, and the little hover-bikes hover and skate around just like you'd expect.

In my initial impressions, I complained about the pressure to engage in microtransactions. I take that back to a certain degree; after the first campaign you have a lot more variety in what weapons you have at the start of each mission and what you find during the mission. (Each mission has its own default loadout, one upgrade for primary weapon, secondary weapon, active ability, and passive ability that you can buy with earned-in-game experience, and two upgrades for each category that can be purchased as microtransactions; the choices are different for each mission). I mostly just use the default loadout and pick up what I find on the battlefield, though I've occasionally used in-game experience points to pick up upgrades for a campaign-ending mission. I don't intend on ever spending a cent on microtransactions, and I don't find that that either takes away from gameplay variety or makes the game prohibitively hard.

tl;dr version: probably the best game on the Windows Marketplace right now (I won't say definitively until I've tried Skulls of the Shogun), and a good game for $6.99 by any measurement. Absolutely worth picking up.

 

Let's be serious here. This is not a competitor to Magick or PC Gaming. This game was developed to get mobile gamers to buy a WP8 phone or tablet, not a WP8 PC. This is a mobile device game. If you think otherwise, then I think you're going to be alone or one of the few who think that.

I'm more curious about what Microsoft is doing to promote more app and game development on WP8 and what they are doing to make it more accessible and easier. From talking to a few devs, they tell me it's not worth their time to develop for WP8 with how Microsoft is currently controlling their app market. Apple can do what they do because developing apps on iOS is very profitable. So what else is MS doing besides this bland looking Halo top down $5 game?

Being a WP7.8 user for over a 1.5 years before I upgraded to my current phone, I knew about this Halo game for a LONG time. Wasn't enough for me to stick with Windows Phone, I switched to Android. There are way too many other issues with Windows 8 Phone. I realize this will be available on PC, but time is limited for games. I'll spend that on PC gaming on Payday 2 and SR4 instead.

I noticed even Nokia are making their annoyances with Microsoft and WP public.

Spoiler

- They are infuriated at how slow WP updates are released, the lack of features that are available compared Android and Apple. The lack of effort MS is putting into to encourage app and game development.
- I think in just a few months, BlackBerry had more relevant and useful apps ported from iOS and Android to their market than Windows did and they still do. There are countless apps that I wanted that are available on even BlackBerry but not on Windows.
- Intel and Samsung are promoting app development on Tizen. It would not surprise if by end of 2013 Tizen has more relevant and useful apps that people actually want and use. Not only that I believe i read Tizen will support Android Apps! Have you even heard of Tizen? Yeah, that's how bad MS is with supporting their OS.
- Did you know you can't attach documents in Windows Phone 8's email client? Yeah... seriously. And if you do, you have to use their office app to create a NEW email to reply to someone. If it's a PDF or another doc, forget it.
- Nokia and HTC are creating amazing devices for WP8, but MS is not providing the OS or software to support them. It's very strange that Microsoft would make their next OS optimized for touch and mobile devices and yet do so little to make sure the OS is competitive or desireable over Android, Blackberry or iOS.
- At this point, if you care about apps and being task oriented, getting work done, other than playing a cheap Halo game, I'd recommend a BlackBerry over a WP8 phone, even if BlackBerry phones are boring, mediocre hardware and subpar camera.

So good for MS for releasing this Halo top down shooter that to me looks nothing like or resembles a Halo game. But it won't be enough for Android tablet and phone users to switch to WP8 mobile devices. And as Deagleson said, the Tegra they developed for, is a waste of space. Qualcomm, PowerVR and Samsung are making fools of Nvidia's ARM solutions right now.

Too bad too since for me, user experience on Windows Phone 8 is still far superior to Android and iOS.

Spoiler

Android and iOS just feels and looks clunky and and so cluttered. And yes I am running a 4.3 custom rom, rooted, unlocked. A blend of CM + AOKP and PA with a kernel using the latest updates from CAF and with Qualcomm optimizations. And yes I can OC, overvolt my SOC, though I do opposite, battery life > performance. And yes I have adblock and Pie, tried Halo and more. Stock WP8 UI still blows away everything Android has for me, even with PA's interesting multi-tasking solutions. I hope Microsoft provides more incentive to use their mobile OS than Halo if Nokia decides to continue to produce incredible devices. Nokia 2014 with Pelican camera + WP 8 that can go head to head with Android? Lots of joy there.

 

This thread is about the game Halo: Spartan Assault, which is available for Windows PCs (hence the thread in the PC gaming forum), not Nokia and not your annoyance with Microsoft over Windows Phone 8.

The game has two control schemes in its control panel--touch, and mouse-and-keyboard. I haven't tried the latter as I play it on my Vaio Duo 11 (an Ivy Bridge PC) with touch, and touch works very well. But this game absolutely can be played with mouse and keyboard on any Windows 8 PC, in addition to being played with touch on Windows 8 touchscreen PCs. And frankly, in terms of $6.99 games, it stacks up very favorably to other PC games released at that price (I'm not comparing it to three-year-old AAA games discounted to that price, but instead new PC games released at that price).

You say it "looks nothing like a Halo game," but it does. This is not the first top-down Halo game (Halo Wars anyone?). Just because it doesn't look like a first-person shooter, doesn't mean it doesn't look like a Halo game. The art design and atmosphere is absolutely 100% Halo. It's just top-down instead of first-person.

 

Then you are alone, even in this thread believing this is a PC game and not a ploy by MS to convince Android/iOS tablet users to buy a Surface tab.

And unfortunately for MS, this ploy will fail. Very few, if any will switch to W8 tab just for this touch game. W8 just has way too many problems.
- Making an exclusive game for WP8 and W8 Tablets is laughable considering the mountain of other, more basic problems WP8 and W8 has.

All the videos you post just convinces anyone else, other than you it seems, it's just a touch screen, scrolling mobile $5 game for a tablet, NOT PC.
- ROFL, even the dev said they made the game for mobile touch devices. This is not a PC game and MS won't care if W8 PC users will go for this. This is a ploy to attract people to the WP8 and W8 tablet devices. And it will fail since it can't even do some very basic things that any Android and iOS user will expect from a competitor MS OS.

 

Dammit, why do you try to insist on turning a game review into a "do you like Windows 8" thread or "do you like Microsoft" thread or "Surface sales numbers" thread or something along those lines? There's a whole forum for those discussions. We're discussing the game "Halo: Spartan Assault" here. Capiche?

And no, I'm not "alone" in liking it. It has 1084 reviews on the marketplace, averaging 4 out of 5 stars. As for saying I'm alone on this forum for thinking this is a legitimate game instead of a "ploy," I guess you missed the posts of Karamazovmm, be77solo, and others. Actually, only you and HTWingnut have expressed displeasure so far; everyone else is either interested or undecided.

It's a good game, and with full keyboard and mouse support if you don't have a Windows tablet (hell, several reviews have commented that the kb&m controls are superior). If you've got any comments about the game itself, instead of about Microsoft or Windows 8, I'd be glad to hear 'em.