This week’s bulletin starts with Halo: Spartan Ops. BS angel intorduces the article, then hands it over to Frank O’Conner.
Here is what Frank had to say:
Many moons ago, I said online and in a couple of interviews that I would love to see an isometric Halo reboot of Moon Patrol, with current-gen graphics and full to the brim with recognized Halo items: Warthogs, Grunts, Elites, Brutes, Ghosts, boarding, Plasma combos, and anything else. As a matter of fact, Joystiq sort of reported it back in the day. The thing is, I wasn’t joking. I always thought the universe could translate well into 2D, or isometric 3D, or the combinations of both that polygons can craft. And I had always had some vision of Robotron controls. Plus, I am so old that I literally remember when Moon Patrol arrived in the arcade near my house.
I grew up playing scrolling shooters—vertical, horizontal and of course four-way. When tech and taste evolved with games like Gauntlet, Alien Syndrome and Sega’s Crackdown, I grew to love the multi-scrolling perspective, where you could (kind of) explore worlds while utilizing skills you’d built up over years of blasting ever-more complex creatures, with ever-crisper graphics.
Now we wanted to create a mobile experience in the Halo universe. The obvious first consideration is FPS, right? Although there are plenty of cool FPS experiences on phones and tablets, they are not necessarily trying to replicate control schemes and gameplay feel that players are familiar with. If we’d gone down the FPS route, we might have built something compelling, but it couldn’t on its own merit play as well as a traditional Halo game. So we knew right away that whatever experience we built would have to be appropriate to the device it was built for, and that meant taking a completely different direction.
So when Dan Ayoub, our handsome and enigmatic publishing director, asked me what kind of game this could be, I immediately and selfishly recommended an arcade shooter. We really liked Vanguard for their background, so Dan reached out to them, and the rest is history—or it will be after the game has shipped. Not only were we able to create a shooter in the Halo universe that looks, sounds and “feels” like Halo, they were able to do it with a control scheme that even I can handle. (I am notoriously stupid at playing touch interfaces any more complex than Angry Birds. My thumbs drift, kind of like the way some people lean when they’re playing driving games.) The team recognized very early that great controls were imperative and iterated for months to come up with something that felt amazing.
Spartan Assault’s controls adapt to natural thumb drift so that after a few minutes, they feel as natural as any twin stick shooter (and we might even support a real twin stick controller on the Surface version). The gameplay is tight, focused, simple and to the point, while still using the Halo schema of weapon interaction, vehicle control, sandbox activity and even dual wielding.
So it may be a bit more elaborate than simply Moon Patrol, but it captures the magic that game had for me and wraps it in a familiar universe to bring it up to date.
-Frankie
What’s posted next are the videos and some screenshots, that I’ve already posted here on the blog about Spartan Assault.
There is a link for Spartan Assault on HaloWaypoint that has a few things I hadn’t yet seen. So go
here for those.
Next up is the weekly Matchmaking Playlist Update. This is Bravo’s article and he listed the updates seen below.
| Abandon |
| Sniper Rifle moved above Gold Lift |
| Sniper Rifle moved next to red spawn by Back Cliff (Beach) |
| Overshield placed on first floor of center structure, equidistant from team spawns |
| Red flag moved to bottom of Gold Lift |
| Blue flag moved back closer to Back Cliff (Beach) |
| Adrift |
| Overshield placed in center of map below Mantis |
| Twin Sniper Rifles placed on the corners of the map |
| Needlers replaced the frags in the center room in the corners |
| Cover and line of sight adjusted in the top hallways to help attackers in objective modes |
| Complex |
| Spawns moved farther apart and in proper bases |
| Flags moved to their respective bases |
| Red team Sniper Rifle moved to the second floor of their base |
| Rocket Launcher replaced Sword in the courtyard |
| Exile |
| Mantis replaced Scorpion and placed equidistant from both team spawns |
| Spartan Laser spawns in center cave |
| Railgun replaced SAW in front of each team spawn |
| Removed Gauss Warthog and replaced with Rocket Hogs for each team |
| Exile CTF |
| Team spawns and flags pushed back into their respective bases |
| Sticky Detonator spawns in Banshee hangar (no Banshee) |
| No team Warthogs |
| Gauss Warthog spawns in the center of the map and is flipped onto its side |
| SAW placed in front of each team spawn |
| Beam Rifle spawns in the cave by the Scorpion Bay |
| Haven |
| Rotated team spawns 90 degrees to oppose each other on the opposite axis found currently in matchmaking |
| Sword spawns in the upper center |
| Concussion Rifle spawns next to closed ramp |
| Sniper Rifle spawns next to open ramp |
| Lifts moved to the drop-downs to allow more flow to the upper level |
| Colored lighting to distinguish player/map orientation |
| Miscellaneous grenades placed around the map |
| Landfall |
| Moved spawns and flags to opposite corners of the map (Blue flag in lift room and Red flag by Dock) |
| Shotgun, Sniper Rifle and Overshield spawn at start |
| Longbow |
| Gauss Hog and Banshee added at each team spawn |
| 4x Shade Turrets placed at the center fort on the ridge |
| Overshield added in center cave |
| Beam Rifle and Rocket Launcher placed at each team spawn |
| Meltdown |
| Fuel Rod Cannon replaced Incineration Cannon at each team spawn |
| Gauss Hog added at each team spawn |
| Plasma Cannon Turrets placed inside each side bunker |
| Scattershot added at each side bunker |
| Meltdown (CTF) |
| Mantis added at center of map under bridge |
| Beam Rifles added on top of the side bunkers |
| Plasma Cannon Turrets added inside each side bunker |
| Ragnarok |
| Rocket Hog added to vehicle set |
| Ragnarok (CTF) |
| 2x SAWs at each team spawn |
| Railgun placed in the field opposite Pelican crash site |
| Solace |
| Removed Incineration Cannon from low center |
| Sword now appears alone at low center |
| Fuel Rod Cannon spawns on the side of the map equidistant from the team spawns |
| Vortex |
| Gauss Hog and Mantis added at each team spawn |
| Banshee added low center equidistant from team spawns |
After this comes the results of the 343 playdate with the Halo community to show off the new weapons tuning. There are several game stat graphics shown. (Go to the article on Waypoint for those. (See at end of this article)
And finally the weekly Screenshot Spotlight. This time focusing on all things BLUE.
To see the above gallery and read the full Bulleting, go HERE.
-Sal
