Halo Legends is a series of short movies based upon the Halo universe. Most of them sport an individual artistic style, some of which are very cool. Thats about all Halo Legends has to offer.
It is to my great sadness to inform the lot of you the Halo Legends fails in almost every capacity to entertain or remain faithful to it's source material.
The first two stories aren't bad. The animation is of standard anime fare and do much to explain the backstory between the Forerunners and The Flood. But they are long and drawn out to a point where your almost bored. The third is pretty bad too. The art style here is interesting, but after the first few moment you find yourself wishing you weren't watching it. It's like some kind of hazy weird water color mixed with CGI. The story is interesting, telling that of what appears to be the first Arbiter and shows off the Elite's culture just before they joined the Covenant (which is surprisingly and dully samurai-like). The action here is decent where it is but the art style is so dominant that it keeps you from enjoying it.
Later stories don't do much either. A couple of runaways during the Spartan project tell a part of what Spartans go thru. Except for some reason here the Spartans are skinny standard anime kids, lacking any sort of musculature or power in which the Spartans are known. Even in the later years during actual Warfare, the main Spartan here is skinny and small. Really weird. And kind of boring too.
Another puts just some guy called Ghost who is not a Spartan, into armor that looks Spartan-y. This story is kind of lame but at least it has a bit of action to it. But by the time you get to this portion of the release, your already yawning. The order in which these stories are shown do not help the pacing.
Another story tells that of Spartan 1337. We finally get to see a glimpse of Master Chief (not in cryo) but what initially appears to be an interesting adventure quickly turns to garbage. 1337 is so campy and carefree, and clearly unskilled in comparison to other Spartans. Other gross oversights were unforgivable. Humans galaxy-wide know about the Spartans. They are the symbol of human strength, and yet no one on the planet in which this adventure takes place seems to know what one is. And why are two teenagers just as strong as a Spartan for no reason? And why is a Prophet keeping experimental (what appears to be) Brutes under his command center? I felt like I was watching a bad episode of Power Rangers and Dragonball Z combined. The angrier the stupid Brute got the more powerful he became or something. It was just ridiculous. Needless to say, I'm not a fan.
The final two stories are the best. One features the Helljumpers (who appear to not have military haircuts but crazy outlandish spikey anime hair) who must go with a Spartan to assassinate a Prophet. This story was pretty cool. The Spartan was the strong silent type who was an expert fighter. The twist likewise was cool but again, an oversight brought this story down for me. Namely that Spartans never die in combat, only go MIA. In the end when a grunt just talks about a Spartan dying, it clashes with the original fiction. Secondly, a fully cgi non-stop action roller coaster feature Master Chief and a whole squad of Spartans taking on a Covenant flagship was awesome. This is the releases only truly awesome moment and still was not worth the price.
All in all, this mix-match fails to deliver what Halo fans come to expect from the series: action. For every one minute of action theres about 20 minutes of boring parts. If I want to watch characters contemplate for ten minutes I'll watch every episode of Naruto thank you. About the only thing really worth seeing on this release is the tiny, very small teaser trailer for Halo Reach.
If you want my opinion (which is why your reading this), Halo Legends is junk. Your better off watching the individual stories on Youtube (where they'll surely end up) but even then, why bother? As a fan of the Halo series, it pains me to give this thing a 1 out of 5.
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