Halo 4 Makes The Case for Spartan Ops –The Best New Thing in the Game– in New Trailer (VIDEO)

Not for nothing, but I've been making the case that Spartan Ops will be the best thing about Halo 4 since the beginning. The hybrid DLC/secondary campaign component to the upcoming Halo 4 arrives on your Xbox 360 automatically and for free every week for ten weeks. I said free.

Is it some stripped down, not-as-fun kind of Halo game type? Hell no. A Spartan Ops episode comes with a computer generated story video and five playable missions that relate to the story you just watched. No you're not playing as Master Chief but you're still running around as a Spartan-IV shooting Covenant and Prometheans in that five-pack of new missions every week for ten weeks.

The most impressive part is that Microsoft, one of the more conservative video game publishers out there, is taking a huge gamble and betting on the creativity of the people at 343 Industries to reel in melancholy gamers who are starting to get about the future of video games. We've never seen ten weeks of free DLC that you both watch and play, let alone content based on one of the most popular game franchises. I've seen Spartan Ops and in no way is it derivative, stripped down or otherwise less-than a full Halo experience. If this works, there will be no excuses for other games to NOT have a similar approach to DLC.