You can melee, lob grenades, pilot vehicles, and even activate armor abilities. On paper, all of Halo’s celebrated gameplay pillars are here as well, just played from a new overhead angle.

The warbly hum of a Ghost, the guttural orders barked by Elites, iconic weapon sounds like the Needler or sniper rifle. Playing Spartan Assault with a good pair of headphones was my first true realization of just how important sound is to the Halo experience. This head-turning presentation and attention to detail extends to the in-game maps as well, and sound design is absolutely great. The animated cutscenes are gorgeous and impressive, and the voice acting is likewise high quality. While the story might be low-stakes, it’s at least well-told. Halo: Reach at first glance appeared to employ a similar structure, but there, even though the outcome was known, you at least controlled Noble Team directly. When I was clinging to life as Spartan Davis on an alien moon overrun with Covenant, I didn’t really care, since it’s only a simulation of past events.

But it also considerably lowers the stakes. This is a smart framing device that offers an in-game explanation for why you’re playing with your thumbs on a touch screen, and also makes it easy for developer Vanguard Games to release fresh stand-alone episodes covering unseen pockets of Halo lore. All of Spartan Assault’s 25 bite-sized missions are actually historical recreations of those events, played out by cadets aboard the UNSC Infinity on tablet computers. Spartan Assault fits into Halo lore in between the events of Halo 3 and Halo 4, played through the eyes of two super-soldier Spartans.

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