Wake Me When You Need Me

With the cinematic cutscenes and the fame of Machinima, it was inevitable that there was going to be a Halo animated movie and lookie here, it's Halo Legends

Except it's not one long big live action or cinematic movie.  It's several shorts in almost all anime format and style and was sanctioned by the Bungie studios.  So you know at least they had a hand in it somehow and it's similar to the Animatrix that came out acouple of  years ago and it even begins in a similiar way where both movies have an introduction to the entire back story of their respective universes with disgusting amounts of detail that fanboys and scholars love (and there is a correlation between the two).  And just like the Animatrix, it has several different stories of various characters that don't really have much to do with the main story.  So here's the first.

Origins

It begins after the ending of Halo 3 where if you're a cool gamer and not a lame PS3 player, you know that Master Chief and Cortana are floating out there in space as half of their ship has been cut in half by a slip space jump and are left floating out there with nothing to do except narrate about the entire history of the past thousand years and the entire story from Halo to Halo 3.  Also she waxes poetic about the nature of man and existence but you know women...blah blah blah.  So it brings you up to full speed on everything.  Again, if you really love Halo, it's awesome.  If you're not really into it and just into shooting people, then it's boring.  I personally was looking at digital ghost boobs of Cortana.  It's great because it sounds like they used the original actress from the game for Cortana's voice or a voice actress of equal sound and skill.  At first seems Pee Wee Herman weird to break up the stories but it makes sense when you think about how it's two different stories and such should be bookended by their respective eras even though I think it's kinda insulting to the audience.  Then again they do know the American education system and Japan DOES love to drag things on (stupid Dragon Ball Z with it's eighty episodes of powering up).  The animation is cool and anime.  I mean it's nothing spectacularly great but it does the job quite well.


The Duel

Eirian

So who liked playing as the Arbiter??  If you raised your hand or perked up at the mention of playing as the Elite then you my friend are a....

But Patty, it's not my fault I got a PS3

No one wants to be the Arbiter.  Everyone wants to be a Spartan or an ODST.  Being the Arbiter is like dating a hot girls less hotter sister so that you can get to the hot sister in time.  But this story is an interesting samurai story take on how the position of Arbiter came to being and how it was once regarded as a holy position before the Prophets came into power and the Elites in this even wear a Japanese type robe when they're not in armor.  It's so a tragic samurai epic anime complete with the killing of a milllion enemies that can't shoot for shit (the fucking tank can't even touch him) while the Arbiter slices and dices everyone with his swords.  His fucking motherfucking cock slicing swords against a ton of guns and tanks.  Then his wife is killed and he faces agianst another elite with a sword and guess what?  Classic slicing and the wait for it moment where blood splotches out like a hydrant since every character in anime, has at least a gallon of blood in them.  Seriously, it's an interesting take on the Covenant and I like learning  about the other side but the problem is that it falls into cliche.  The story isn't strong enough to carry it through nor are the characters deep enough to make it interesting enough but the visuals are quite stunning.  However, not stunning enough to make you care.

The Prototype

I believe I can fllllyyyy

Want more Japanese emo-ism?  Well wait till you get a load of The Prototype.  It stars an emo soldier nicknamed Ghost who's the only survivor of his platoon which he commanded and lead into slaughter.  How?  We don't know.  Why?  Not important.  How'd he survive without injury?  Super naturalism.  So we cut between flashbacks of the dying soldier in his arms asking him to feel and be human because he's considered a Ghost because he has no feelings about anything, which means he's a guy, and the current battle over a testing ground for a Spartan heavy assault armor with big fucking guns and a ton of missles.  Hey, one thing the Japanese can do it's big robots.  The art is typical anime fair again much like the Origin short but this does have a ton of more action with lots and lots of explosions.  I mean alot.  It even has some gory alien guys exploding which is always cool.  Prototype is probably best viewed with the sound off or the dialogue gone or on another language since you can put your own words to the story, just like I do whenever my old boss would talk to me.  And of course he stays to fight when it would've been easier to run. 

The Babysitter

Fear the ODST.  The Covenant know of the fighting prowess of the special forces known as the Helljumpers.  See there perfect foofy hair and big eyes which make them either decesnded from Lupin the 3rd or Cowboy Bebop.  Aside from the whole femmy hair popstar boy band look, this is actually a descent story just with anime to it.  It's of course about the ODST special forces marines on a secret mission to kill a Prophet but with a Spartan as the sniper.  And it goes so beautifully and delightfully according to plan where the heroes kill the bad guys, quip funny and no one dies or gets hurt cause every war film and combat situation seems to dictate this logic.  Pssshhhhh....yea right.  So it basically all goes to shit in a handbasket full of grenades near a fan.  However you get to see the rivalry between the ODST's and the Spartans and how the relationship in this story leads to a budding respect of the abilities of the other.  I'd say the style of the story telling is much like Shinichio Watanabe (geshuntite!).  Yes I know I misspelled it all but you are Canadian if you care about such a thing.  So is it emo?  No.  Well kinda is but not in the whiney way.  More like the casualties of war way.  But a plus is that you get to see Dutch from the ODST game in here.

Odd One Out

Damn.  Cookie Monster got big since he went to prison

Look!!  POKEMON!!!!

Don't be fooled by the cover of this.  I mean it looks seriously cool but it's actually a non-canon tale of Spartan 1337, an arrogant, self promoting bumbler who constantly falls off the back of Pelicans (and for a change he crashes instead of the Pelican).  Sounds like my kind of guy since he is quite adapt at being a soldier and fighting a big ass Grunt that's dumber then shit and powers up to Goku levels.  Seriously, he does power up in such a way and destroys half the land around him.  If that's not weird enough, then you have 3 little kids dressed up as cavemen, a giant T-Rex that chews on 1337 then has two super powered teenagers with mad ass Kung Fu skills and strength help battle the special giant Grunt.  Then 1337 is carried off by a Pterodactyl.  After carefully reading what I just wrote, I'd have to retract the word adapt and say, competent.  With loads of terrible luck.   Yea.  It's not meant to be taken seriously but seriously you can't really watch this thing without wondering what drugs they have in Japan.  Hmmm....maybe I should go back to Japan....

Homecoming

You two share....or else...

It's a bit really weird to watch.  Let me tell you, it's hard to watch a tough and gritty war drama when all the soldiers look like this:

"Don't look behind you now but I think Jake is fucking that tree"

There is a ton of guns and action and alien splattering with the typical war bravado but again, the Japanese emo-ism runs rampant in this.  I like the story and it's similar to the short story Pariah in the Halo novels about the kids who want to go home in the Spartan program but again it's a ton of eye zooms, near tears and sing songy flowy language.  Terrible?  No.  Watchable?  For the most part.  So apparently the other half of the Spartan II project is to guilt the covenant into surrender with puppy dog eyes. 

The Package

EVERYBODY!!  I HAVE TO PEE AND THEY DIDN'T
BUILD A ZIPPER INTO THE SUIT!!

Outside of the pornographic title, this story is just like the Animatrix where the best story is the one that's computerized.  If you just watch one story from this DVD, watch this.  It's really fantastically amazing although it does have the Japanese look to the characters, especially in Dr. Halsey.  It can be overlooked for the most part but the part that's hardest to overlook, Master Chief's voice is changed to a much gruffer one.  Not the smooth gruffess that makes you want to croon in his arms like a drink of warm brandy but the type of battle grizzled vet that makes your grandaddy's war stories seem like fairy tales.  Ahh...I miss pappy and his stories before bed time :)  So the story is you watch Master Chief and the other Spartans fly around in cool X-Wing type space bikes and try to rescue Dr. Halsey from Covenant hands.  Again the computer animation is amazingly breathtaking and made with amazing attention to detail while the other cool thing: You get to see the Spartans faces.  Not the big guys but you can see every other Spartan from Fred to Kelly and even see the Spartan III armor in action.  It's a big plus if you read the books and has really awesomely great action in it.  Cartoony action?  Yes.  I demand realistic action to my fictional giant cybord stories!!!  Seriously, it's good though.  The action is fun, fast paced and plays out alot like the magic that made the first Halo game so much fun in the crazy, skin of your teeth kind of way. 

So final verdict? 

Overall 3/5

It's a mixed bag.  Some of the stories work.  Some don't.  It's just too weird of a hybrid in the styles but there is some hope to it.  Honestly I'd like to see Bungie make another DVD of animated shorts but with less anime.  A lot less anime.  It wasn't too bad in Batman: Gotham Knight and much better in the stylized world of the Animatrix but the Haloverse doens't really need much anime.  It works for one or two stories but not the entire span of the DVD.  Still it is an interesting experiment so a must view for Halo fans and a passing fancy for the casual fan and a must for anime fans.  So not everything should be anime because you get something like this:

Remember, Remember the 14th of September

*Warning Spoilers

With Halo: Reach out, we're now full circle on the kick ass Halo saga which has pretty much defined an entire generation of gamers and a new way of changing the way video games are viewed.  Now I haven't played the game and have missed playing Halo: ODST as well and Halo Wars. It's something that would bother me alot more if I didn't have the ability to watch the cutscenes and clips from the game which is what I love most about the Halo series.  Firefight mode is great and multiplayer-deathmatch-skullbomb-capture-the-flag are all great little options to play in the game but as always, it would be empty without the core of the characters and the story. 

Now I loved ODST because we finally got some characters behind the people we played as.  Nothing wrong with Master Chief but the problem was that he didn't really have any personality.  Strong, silent type are guys you can respect but the problem is that you don't really get to know them.  I'm not saying Chief is a bland character but he's like a white envelope against a snow storm (HI OH!)   Roast time...gotcha Chief.  But seriously John-117 did have some great moment of dry humor and wit and a stoic confidence that made you stand up straighter if you looked at your reflection in that gold visor of his.  However most of the Chief's personality shined through his actions, such as jumping out of high places and through the supporting characters like Sgt. Johnson. 

But ODST gave us something new: distinct personalities.  Now Halo felt like something out of the dirty dozen or Predator (don't laugh...that movie had some great personalities and kicked ass).  Not only did every element of the game play and story improve but also also the story telling and cinematics, which as the story progressed, became even more dramatic and more advanced that most of the time they could easily place most of the Hollywood blockbusters.  But it wasn't until Halo Wars did you really get a sense of distinct personalities.  Again, Chief had some personality but nothing that shined through and all the other Halo games did have distinct voices for the supporting marines with actors and actresses such as Michelle Rodriguez and Nathan Fillion but they were very briefly seen and most of the time killed.  Halo Wars gave us Sgt. Forge, Capt. Cutter and Scientist Anders as well as the sarcastic and dry witted A.I. Serena.  All were welcome edition to the franchise and us a sense of connection to characters outside of the stoic Spartan and the gruff Avery Johnson.  But it wasn't until ODST where we got a real array of fleshed out characters that were completely distinct from each other and gave the game a real human touch that seemed to come out of war movies.  But although it was awesome to play kick ass sci-fi special forces Marines, we still wanted to be Spartans. 

But we never saw what Spartans looked like under their lids?  Were they freaks?  Did they have hair?  Are they just robots?  Is it really George Clooney in his dreamy charm hiding under that helmet?  A hint of the answer came to us during Halo: Legends where we got to see the Spartans without helmets on and well...they looked like us.  Just bigger grant it from all the human growth hormones pumped into the crap we eat.  Damn you Foster Farms.  No artificial my ass!  But we couldn't really take into account if this was official cannon or if it was something that Hollywood anime people came up with. 

Finally we got our answer in Halo: Reach where not only did we get to play as a Spartan but a Spartan that's not Master Chief.  We got Noble 6 who is far from the strong silent type.  But we also have Jorge, Jun, Kat, Carter and Emile and we all saw that they had distinct faces, personalities and even armor specialties.  True we did have hints of Spartan III's and Spartan II's in the Halo novels but those again were novels.  Not exactly cannon.  So it was nice to get the news straight from the XBOX's mouth that yes, everything that we've read, seen and experienced outside of the games is official.  So now we had Spartans each with distinct personalities, looks, specialities, armor, accents and psychological traumas.  Some may argue that playing as the quiet Chief or the Rookie from ODST are probably the best examples to give us the full experience in gaming which allows us to imagine ourselves as the character in the game, but we lose the personal touch in that we get to respawn as many times as we want to.  Sure it's frustrating but we know we're going to come out on top since we hold the power of the controller in hand.  ODST gave us a sense of some danger since we were not sure if the character we were playing was going to actually die in the game so we would experience a sense of loss and again, personality gave us a connection to the characters. 

Halo: Reach was a story in which we all knew the ending to.  Every Spartan was going to die. Now technically not ALL Spartans were killed so that gave Reach a sense of the opposite of what we experienced in ODST which was a sense of hope, hope that one of our favorite Spartans from Noble Team may actually live.  Now some cynical types may just say that we can already just expect everyone to die but with each Spartan having a distinct look, speciality and personality, it gave us an attachment that we couldn't avoid because being a jack of all trades isn't a bad thing, it does leave us at a loss for identity.  Here we could identify ourselves with the job of being the big gun heavy weapons specialist or the lone wolf killer or the stalwart leader.  We could as well connect with certain characters as the game progressed since we do have the experience of fighting alongside Noble Squad since it allowed us to It was brilliant of Bungie to leave Noble 6 faceless yet not without personality since well giving us another silent Spartan to play as would a redundant as hell.  But it also made sense to have each Spartan able to talk with each other since there really is a sense of bond and brother(sister)hood between these soldiers who grew up, trained and bleed with each other.  I swear that when I watched each Spartan die on screen that I felt a level of sadness.  I even got a bit choked up and in awe of the last scene involving Noble Six's last stand. 

Now I have to say that JUST from what I've seen and read, Halo: Reach looks to be the best of the bunch.  It's got a ton of new features with firefight mode and unlockable but it finally allows you to stab people for close quarters combat and the armor lock option looks to be another fun option in battle that one could do some gleeful violence with.  It also gives you another feature which allows you to play in your favorite armor type and color so it's really come a long way from the 5 color choices you had in the original game in multiplayer (and it is pink....not lightish red).  And I really do have to say it's nice to see the Spartan side of the games expanded so that now it's much more based on actual military forces since military forces have specialties and armor for such specialties.  It is something which the main series seemed to lack a bit since all we got was Arbiter and Master Chief and they were the jack of all trades. 

Halo also brought about an interesting outlet and parallel which may have foreshadowed the current military crisis in today's climate.  If we look at the factions in Halo we have the UNSC, a military branch made up of people of all nations who are fighting the Covenant, an alien religious hegemony who are on a quest to wipe out humanity since they believe us to be a blight on the universe.  Sound sorta familiar? 
It should since the current war on terror involves the allied nations of behind the US, in game are represented by the UNSC and Al Queda, a group of religious extremists, in game are represented by the Covenant.  It even has the element of a horror movie in the Flood, a group of parasitic spores that turn the infect into zombies.  Again, this is part is revving up for another post...hopefully I can get to since I am lagging a bit on the other posts I plan to do.  I'd love to go into it more but it's really for an in depth review that I'm sure you few believers will read. 

But while touching upon the topic of the Flood, Halo gave us that interesting twist which was a complete surprise element.  And added a sense of terror to the game.  It lended a horror element to the game much like Doom or Dead Space without it being the primary focus of the game.  The Flood added an interesting slant to the story so Halo truly became a focal point, taking from many elements of science fiction.  It borrowed story and style elements from Ringwold, Enders Game, Aliens, Event Horizon, Alien Mind, Starship Troopers and Man-Kzin Wars and even Avatar to name a few (yes I have slept with a girl...and seens some naked even.  Why do you ask?  I CHOOSE to be home alone on Friday nights reading.  Really I do?  Really.....I'm so lonely...).  Halo also incorporates from war movies with elements from the Dirty Dozen, Serenity, Predator, and Platoon.

Reach does suffer from a brief stint of the Star Wars Syndrome as I call it, meaning that as the series jumped back in time, it became technologically cooler and more advanced.  But this is a minor quibble considering how good the game elements are.  Halo I may even say has changed the way game advertising is done.  Look at every Halo game and you receive a live action trailer.  It really isn't the typical way to market a game at all and feels much like a movie advertisement or viral marketing.  It even implements a documentary and employs the use of real soldiers and veterans as actors.  You can see the recent wave of advertisements over the past few years and how they attempt to copy Halo's advertising strategy in the recent advertisements of another cyborg armor suit game, Metroid: The Other M. 

Of course we know this is all building up to a Halo live action movie but I say why even bother.  I'd just as soon as show the clips from the game all tied together intercut with some actual gameplay.  It'd turn out a hell of alot better then most Hollywood movies.  I'd even go all out and do a full CGI Final Fantasy style Halo movie since the in game cinematics are so well done and contains genuine moments of drama, action and comedy all rolled into a large sandwich of actual substance, which annihilates movies such as Resident Evil: Afterlife, Doom and even some other action or video game movies. 

Hopefully Bungie's creative staff will be on hand for the Halo movie.  I unfortunately have doubts about it being so true to the original source material or even resembling the live actions commercials.  I do know that Peter Jackson is the big director producing it and even names like Steven Spielberg have been rumored to direct it but I still have to wait and see since Hollywood's track records with videogame movies have been damn spotty at best.  So go out and get Halo: Reach and see how it all started.  If not, then I really really recommend getting on YouTube or the net and watching the quality cutscenes as a movie.  I know I haven't played the recent games but hell..I don't need to tell you that it's good.