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As a huge Halo fanboy, I’m happy to take any non-Master Chief content the good brand managers at Microsoft are willing to toss out there. After getting fairly hooked on the Halo novels, and finding that the universe created to support a space marine shooter was actually pretty interesting, I’ve often pined for actual games that use this setting in completely new ways. Halo 3: ODST was a fantastic side-step and Halo Wars reportedly made a great effort at a console RTS, but the latest attempt to get Halo characters not wearing green body armor on your Xbox, Halo: Spartan Assault, smacks of an easy cash grab.

Originally released on smart phones, tablets, and PCs running the beleaguered Windows 8 operating system, Spartan Assault screams out that it is an “app” through and through. The app vibe doesn’t necessarily mean that the game will be bad, but it sure makes it feel like it was made on the cheap. There’s a glowing blue frame around your screen at all times, and between each round you have the capability to spend actual American dollars to upgrade your weapons. The graphics look like they have been upscaled from a four inch phone screen to however many feet your TV might be. Affordably-made games can be just fine, but when you’re being asked to spend fifteen bucks to even have the opportunity to buy more upgrades later, it chafes.

All of those financial blunders aside, there is still a game here. It’s a top-down, twin-stick shooter that lets you control a couple of Spartans that aren’t Master Chief. To someone like me, pining for some different Halo content, this sounds cool until you realize these Spartans are just as super capable as ol’ Chief himself. Looking past that fact, though, getting to control Spartans in a different way still has potential, and Spartan Assault doesn’t completely blow it.

Steering your soldier with one stick and aiming with the other works how you would expect, except  aiming with the right stick slows your soldier down so they can get a better shot – a neat, unexpected touch that has to be considered in all of your strategies. Outside of that little quirk, the twin-stickery is pretty standard. You charge through a few landscapes, blasting away until the baddies fall over and you pilfer their remains for ammo and weapons. If you should happen to take a few too many hits, you head back behind cover until your shield regenerates, just like you would expect from Halo.

Sadly, this running and blasting and exploding and hiding misses the actual magic of Halo.

Since the basic idea of Spartan Assault revolves around shooting up aliens, it’s overwhelmingly obvious that the encounters with infinite solutions that make the mainline games special are completely MIA. The only real tactics for you to employ here are to charge in blasting and then hide for a while – a technique that will only get you through a few of the battles in a regular Halo entry. This means that things get fairly boring at times as you’re just doing the same stuff in different environments without any real difference between enemy types or situations. OK, sometimes there are Brutes with jetpacks who can’t be hit while they are in midair, but that’s just more confusing since the always-flying Yanme'e can be hit at all times.

There are also several missions where you drive a human or covenant tank, and I had the most fun with those in the single player. Even though it’s even harder to die in a tank than when you’re on foot, it’s pretty satisfying to drive around, blasting away at everything. The entire game is pretty easy until about the final 20% when things can get pretty tough. Sometimes for silly reasons too, like being required to destroy all targets before a timer runs out and you can’t find the one little Grunt running around as far away from you as possible. There is also a particularly ridiculous boss encounter that is frustrating enough on its own, but then ends with a completely pointless and out of character quick time event.

If you’re looking for a challenge out of the game that isn’t off-the-charts frustrating, you’re better off trying out the co-op. These missions are similar to Horde mode with seemingly endless waves of Flood coming your way as you and a buddy fend them off for a set amount of time or try to accomplish some two-person goals. If you should complete the mission, there is a small period when you can try to increase your score further by destroying even more incoming aliens. It’s pretty fun, but after you’ve played the five maps a few times, getting a higher score with a hard time limit set is going to become tough. Why there is no endless-wave mode is beyond me, since that seems like the obvious, most replay-friendly thing that could be thrown into co-op.

But that seems to be status quo for this title: not doing things that make sense. Why is there a border around the screen? Why are the only available upgrades things I would never want to pay for? Why can I not pick up an energy sword? Why did this game made by a Microsoft studio hard lock my 360 two different times? It’s a generally frustrating title for a self-admitted Halo nutcase like me, but I realize I’m a little different than the average gamer. The actual game is not bad, but it definitely does not live up to the Halo name.