So what can we expect from the game? A practical tutorial first teaches us the genre-typical, simple operation: With the usual combination of W,A,S,D our character is moved, while the mouse is used for aiming, firing the weapon and throwing grenades. In addition, weapons can be stolen from enemies or their ammunition can be collected during a battle. As in the original games, a maximum of two weapons can be carried at the same time. Alternatively, the game can also be played via gamepad and even a touch screen, if you have a corresponding notebook. The preferred control variant can be conveniently set up as standard and therefore does not have to be selected anew every time, regardless of whether the mouse, keyboard and gamepad are connected at the same time. That's all well and good, but what is the "small" Halo all about?

A small sect of the Alliance, under its leader Merg Vol, has broken the peace treaty with the humans and attacked the planet Dreatheus-V. The cult leader is determined to take possession of a Blood Father facility, which is located on the moon of "Dreatheus-V", and thus drive away the human inhabitants. Under these conditions, we take on the roles of Spartan Palmer and Spartan Davis, who are now sent to stop the invasion.

The missions that have to be completed to achieve this goal are pleasantly varied: First, certain buildings or guns of the opponents are to be destroyed, then you have to protect a human convoy or intercept an enemy one. Fortunately, there aren't too many missions in which only all enemies have to be killed, although of course they are also part of the game. However, there are also regular vehicle sequences from the game, which provides enough variety. Sadly there are no aircrafts and dogfights, but since the game is only "Top-Down", that's ok.

Whenever the task seems to become monotonous, the mission design changes and sometimes adds a time limit that has to be adhered to. It doesn't bother that the missions are quite short and can be solved pretty quick. If a mission is successfully completed, there are some experience points as a reward, which can be exchanged for weapons or special abilities at the start of the next mission. Conveniently, each mission that has been unlocked once, lets you play it again at any time. This allows you to collect a lot of XP and start a difficult mission directly with a bazooka, for example.

If farming the experience takes too long, you can add up to two so-called "skulls". This allows you to adjust the difficulty level of the upcoming mission and, among other things, hide the radar including all mission-relevant information for example. If you like it really hard, you can also set it here that only melee attacks replenish the hero's energy. The extra effort provides you additional experience. Once the game has been successfully completed, there are still some achivements and "assault ops" waiting to be solved. Here you are given special, mission-specific tasks that cannot be completed by a single playtrough of this mission.

Technically, there is nothing wrong with Halo: Spartan Assault. On the mission to save Dreatheus-V, the player roams through a wide variety of landscapes. From a jungle to ice-covered areas on which a breaking planet is reflected, there is a lot of visual variety. The soundtrack is, as you would expect from a Halo game, excellent and conveys a really epic atmosphere with its orchestral music pieces. The in-game sounds and weapon effects are also in no way inferior. Unfortunately, there is still no way to feel right in the middle of the action, which is caused more by the bird's eye view than any bad sound effects.