Halo: Spartan Strike is a new top-down shooter. While not a sequel to last year’s Spartan Assault, it does have it’s similarities.
This time, the story takes place during the events of Halo 2. Many improvements have been made for the new shooter. Fred LaPorte, 343 producer, states the following in an interview with IGN (paraphrased):
• You can drive a Warthog now in the top down shooter.
• A new vehicle called the Kestrel VTOL (Vertical Take-Off and Landing) will be introduced!*
• Prometheans are brought into this game as well.
• When you buy it for one Windows device, you get it for all the other ones that support Spartan Strike.
• Difficulty in the game will get harder as you progress to later levels.
• 20 Achievments, 3 of which will give you an avatar, emblem and nameplate for the Master Chief Collection.
• Single player only, no multiplayer planned, ala Spartan Assault’s Flood Missions.
* What’s cool about this is that the VTOL is the SAME vehicle that Mega Bloks made last years as one of their ONI Reap-X sets!
The game comes out on December 12 for Windows Desktop, Suface tablet and Windows phone. It will cost $5.99. Spartan Strike will also be available on Stream for the same price.
The game will again include weekly challenges and leaderboards, as well as rewards redeemable in the Master Chief Collection. One VERY important thing to note, NO microtransactions! YES!!! They decided to get rid of those for this game. I think that’s a GREAT decision.
No official word on it coming to the XBOX, but considering Spartan Assault’s transition to XBOX, it’s likely. Spartan Strike will probably follow the same time frame as well.
Here are some screen shots from the video trailer/discussion of Halo Spartan Strike (click to make bigger as usual):
This of course is the start screen. Very similar to Spartan Assault. I very much like the logo on the right of this screen shot.
A sample shot of the load out screen. Again, bearing a strong resemblance to Spartan Assault.
Many of the following are the overview shots of either the full letter mission maps or the specific mission maps. For example, “A” is immediately below, while A-4 is below that. The game starts out in New Mombasa.
Here we see the Warthog in action!
As we see from the shot below, we are also playing on a Halo. YEA!
Check out that Promethean Knight Commander in the pic below to the right.
The Incineration Cannon makes an appearance in the game as noted at near center of the screen shot below.
A Promethean Knight Battlewagon on the prowl.
This screen shows us mission specific ops. The yellow circles are where your thumbs go for controlling the character. Again, much like Spartan Assault. However, there is some added room to allow for your thumbs to roam beyond these points.
In mission “D”, we are in New Phoenix.
Here’s the Kestrel VTOL as mentioned.
BTW, here is the Mega Bloks toy of it from last year.
and here’s the link to the review of it.
Now how did the Prometheans get to Earth???
So there you have it. I for one loved Spartan Assault. I have it both for the 360 and the One. I can’t wait for Spartan Strike to come to the One.
-Sal
If it takes place during Halo 2, then where do the Prometheans come in? Did the UNSC or ONI already know about the Prometheans before Halo 4?
I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense right now. Hopefully 343 has this part figured out. I really REALLY hate discontinuity in stories. I had to deal with that for decades with Star Wars. I DO NOT want to have to deal with that in Halo.
I believe they say in the video that part of the story happens during Halo 2 (2552), and part around the time of Halo 4 (2557). You can see in some of the screen shots that it says the date is 2557 (Halo 4 time frame). I would imagine that the Promethians show up in the parts set in the later date range.
I believe the other Kevin is right, and if I recall,the video even mentions the New Pheonix incident.
Yes the video mentions that. Perhaps I am confusing things. I thought it was mentioned that the Covenant back in 2552 were looking for an artifact to bring forth the Prometheans. That wouldn’t make much sense. If it’s 2557, then it would.
Kevin is right. It takes place in New Mombasa for a little bit and then jumps ahead a few years. I think its interesting how 343 really ran with the idea that this game and Spartan Assault are simulators for the Spartans since it provides a good reason for being somewhere where you shouldn’t have been, like being a Spartan-IV during the Battle of New Mombasa. It’s funny how you mention Star Wars because they did clean up their canon. Right now only the movies, The Clone Wars, and Rebels are canon. Anyways, I’m excited for this game as well because I too was a fan of Halo: Spartan Assault (have it for Windows 8 and Windows 8 phone).
Yes, I like that these are simulators. As for Star Wars…gawd, don’t get me started. I spent THOUSANDS of dollars back in the day on toys, comic books, novels and other merchandise. Much of which has now been deemed NOT canon. As a SW fan since the beginning (1977), I am really pissed off about that. Were it not for the supreme writing and story telling of Timothy Zahn and his Thrawn trilogy of novels, SW might not have moved forward. Many agree the prequels were trash when compared to the heart of the original trilogy. I gave up collecting SW 5 years ago. I’m glad I made that decision. I’ll go see these new movies, but unless something is original trilogy, I just won’t be buying any SW merchandise anymore.
That’s something I really want Halo to avoid. Continuity is extremely important to me.
Oh…my bad. Didn’t mean to bring back bad memories. I’m a “young” Star Wars fan (started out with watching the prequels XD) but understand why older fans like you might not like the direction Star Wars has gone. I think Star Wars just got too big too fast that Lucasfilm couldn’t make sure everything was canon. Oh well, it will be interesting to see how well “Disney Star Wars” will be…
As for Halo, it has been good with its continuity except for the fall of Reach (the book and the game don’t match up) which bothered me very much. What are your thoughts on that?
Let’s talk SW for a moment. Lucas didn’t want many authors writing SW novels for just the sort of thing that happened. Lucasfilm let that get out of hand and the only way to reign it all back in was to discount anything but what they’ve stated. That’s a real kick in the bards for those of us who followed the franchise for decades. It means more to me than an ‘oh well’ moment. With that decision, like I mentioned, I’ll go see the movies, but I won’t buy any more SW merchandise.
Now as for Reach, yes, I don’t like that the story has continuity issues. This is one instance where ONE novel could be rewritten to match the game. That would be a LOT better than to toss all other media except games out the window. I personally LOVED both the book and the game. When I heard there were to be new pages in the book’s rerelease, I had hoped it would address Reach’s continuity issue. Alas that didn’t happen. So long as that’s the only major hole in the franchise, I can deal with that. Moving forward though, 343 MUST be very cognizant of continuity between games, novels, comics, etc. Less they fall into the same trap that LFL did with SW.