Halo: Spartan Assault Reviews
These issues aside, Vanguard's created a decent blaster which offers a couple of moments of genuine bullet-dodging glory: Halo's touch-screen debut is good-looking, colourful, and fun. It's all rather bittersweet, really. If Spartan Assault was terrible, nobody would ever have to know about it, since the combination of release platforms makes it a bit of a curio from the off. In the end, it's actually pretty entertaining stuff. Here's hoping it eventually gets ported around a little.
Spartan Assault features flashes of frantic Halo brilliance, but skip the touch controls. Play with mouse + keyboard!
Still essentially the same game as released on mobile, but at twice the price and with microtransactions that are even more cynically-designed than usual.
Spartan Assault ports many of Halo's best elements to the twin-stick shooter genre surprisingly well
Halo: Spartan Assault transfers adequately from mobile platforms to the Xbox One, with microtransactions in tow.
Spartan Assault's simple gameplay and broken economy misses what's special about Halo
It's by no means Windows 8's killer app, but provided you have access to a Windows 8 device, you could do much worse than Spartan Assault.
This game does nothing for the reputation of a series that was already shaken after the departure of Bungie – it would serve Microsoft well to re-focus the Halo franchise purely on what it does best.
Spartan Assault is simple but entertaining.
Microsoft's Windows 8-exclusive top-down shooter looks and sounds like a Halo game, but lacks the drama and spectacle of its Xbox cousins
I thought that Spartan Assault would be a great addition to the Halo universe while expanding the audience with a new genre. In the end the short campaign, lack of storyline, and ease of gameplay make this a tough sell. I enjoy dual stick shooters like this, so I did enjoy my time with the game. However, you might have to lower your expectations with your purchase.
This Xbox One port of the top-down Windows Phone shooter has fizzy gunplay but mediocre missions and questionable monetisation
Just remember before going in where this game originated, and set expectations accordingly.
Ultimately, however, it feels like a mobile game, containing breezy missions that aren't much to look at and provide little in the way of a challenge. Oh, and it costs twice the price to access.
At the end of the day Spartan Assault is not a bad game, but there are a few hiccups that hamper what could have been.
If you own a Windows tablet or Windows phone, just play this on those devices instead if you must. Even if you are a huge Halo fan, there is absolutely no reason to shell out $15 for this game when you can play the exact same game for $7 on mobile devices. It's a shame because I feel like Halo: Spartan Assault could have been a great game if they took the time to add more features to the game. Make the game more challenging, add tons of new levels, make the game feel like a real twin stick shooter where I am shooting all over the screen to avoid being killed. That, to me, would have been worth the price increase, but as it stands, Halo: Spartan Assault on Xbox One is just an expensive port of a game that was released months ago.
Besides its impressive sound effects, everything about Spartan Assault felt like a rushed-over port and does not offer any type of depth or impressions to warrant its release as an Xbox One downloadable title. Nevertheless, it still felt like Halo, which means a lot to would-be buyers.
As a first attempt at bringing the incredibly popular first-person shooter franchise to mobile and downloadable platforms using twin-stick mechanics, Halo: Spartan Assault is a decent result. However, the game's lack of originality and recycled mission types eventually catch up with it.
A cheap port of a mobile game with glaring flaws at its very core that does a disservice to the Halo brand, Spartan Assault should be avoided like the Flood.