Well, it’s Halo. Sure you play as (several) different protagonists, and Bungie remembered to turn fall damage on for the first time in 8 years, and there’s an element of exploration between missions, but it’s still Halo, and you’re still fighting the exact same enemies with the exact same weapons. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing is entirely up to you.

There is also an additional multiplayer game mode called Firefight, which is a generic “fend off waves of enemies” mode with a random difficulty-increasing modification each wave. I haven’t had a chance to properly try this mode admittedly, but it doesn’t really seem to do much different from other, similar modes in other games.

The game also comes with a special version of Halo 3 with no single player mode and all the additional multiplayer content, plus some extra maps. This is actually a pretty cool trick to bring more players into Halo multiplayer, and I’m sure the six people who didn’t already own Halo 3 appreciate it greatly.

So while the game brings nothing new to the table at all whatsoever, it’s still a decently enjoyable bout of FPS action and doesn’t really taint the series by way of it’s existence. As a result, I give it 3 embarassing spinoffs out of 5.