Halo: Spartan Assault

A direct HD port of the classic shooter designed for Windows Phone (and PC too). Fast and furious playability, but it´s a short experience too.

A solid port of its mobile and PC counterparts, Halo: Spartan Assault is an enjoyable twin-stick shooter that provides little in the way of real longevity or value for money. Still, if you've nothing else left to play on Xbox One, you could do a lot worse.

You can tell even from the UI that Spartan Assault is a mobile game re-edited for a next-generation console. Missions are too short and repetitious, and the shooting system worked better with a touchscreen.

Halo: Spartan Assault isn’t a terrible game, but more of a disappointing one. It is great that console players can finally play this once mobile-only title, and it is great the team added in the new co-op mode.

As long as your expectations are tempered, Halo: Spartan Assault is a serviceable game. It works as a top-down shooter, but you'll miss the enemy intelligence of the older games.

As a twin stick shooter, Halo: Spartan Assault is a decent game, but as an iteration to the Halo series, it leaves much to be desired both in story and content. Spartan Assault offers 30 short missions that, without the skulls, are an easy challenge for the player. The coop missions are the only pleasant additions, but there are only 5, in top of that, completing them also takes a very short time. Maybe if the single player missions from the campaign had received the same treatment, but that was not the case.

Though Spartan Assault boasts many of the aliens, armaments, and well-worn plot wrinkles we associate with the Halo universe, it lacks the polished sheen that just about every other game in the series enjoys.

Halo Spartan Assault is not the best debut for the Halo Series on Xbox One. Its mobile roots don't fit the console market, and the lack of any cooperative mode for the story, a flat level design and a linear gameplay, can't enthuse everyone. Halo fans anyway will enjoy the deep link with the series while waiting for the next major episode.

A decent twin-stick shooter that uses the touchstones of Halo combat effectively, but lacks the longevity or depth to warrant the price tag - and especially the microtransactions.

Halo: Spartan Assault succeeds in keeping the Microsoft series' feeling also thanks to a great sound design, but gets dragged down by game-crashing bugs, an half-baked co-op and an overly higher price considering the same game is available for much less in the Windows Store. The worst game in the Halo franchise as of today.

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.

The limitation on cooperative play is the game's biggest disappointment, so here's hoping that Microsoft Studios has more multiplayer levels in mind for possible downloadable content.

With all the crashing and lame microtransactions, it’s kind of ridiculous that this is the first Halo game to appear on Microsoft’s next-generation console.

A bad port for a game that simply didn't work on home consoles. Still waiting for a real Halo.

Even though Halo: Spartan Assault has a lot of charm and is somewhat fun to play, it is somewhat broken by greedy microtransactions.

Arguably the most damning thing you could say about Halo Spartan Assault is that it is very easy to see that this is a game ported over from a tablet (or Win 8 PC for the pedantic), microtransactions and all.

Even though there are a few moments where the game is quite satisfactory, you’re always wishing for more than it ever truly delivers.

There’s a decent game beneath some unfortunate flaws and irritating business practice, and I would genuinely like to see Vanguard have another crack at a top-down Halo without such questionable deterrents.

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.

Without any real ambition or challenging design powering it, Halo: Spartan Assault is bland, unremarkable and far too safe given the potential of a twin-stick shooter spin-off.

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.

Unsatisfying pad aiming. [March 2014, p.85]

On the surface, Halo: Spartan Assault is a solid twin-stick shooter, much better suited to consoles than mobiles and PC. 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.

Spartan Assault takes all the aspects that made the Halo series popular – expansive levels, an epic storyline, cutting edge visuals and inventive gunplay – and throws them all away.

Halo: Spartan Assault is simple and boring.

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.