Homecoming
In which loaded firearms are pointed at crippled children
A story told in both present day and flashbacks, Daisey is a Spartan trying to help evacuate a squad of Marines off-planet. Events are compared to a younger Daisey who, with a group of students, escape from the Spartan program to return to their families, obviously not liking the whole "abducted and experimented on" part of being super-soldiers. However when she get home she discovers she's been replaced by a clone, though why the clone is wheelchair-bound is never explained. Dr. Halesy, following behind in a helicopter, apparently wanted her to know this, though it seems reckless considering Daisey had a pistol and came near to killing the clone out of anger. Instead of murder (or suicide, as some of the other escapees chose), Daisey choses to go back to the program out of a sense of duty, though again her reasoning is never fully explained. The animation was off in many places, especially with the Elites, and it seemed plodding towards the end, turning this into a somewhat poor story.
The Duel
In which Samurai battle it out in Feudal Japan for honor!
You think I joke, but I kid you not when I say you could replace every single Elite with a Japanese person and the above would be more or less true. An Arbiter has a beef with an O-yoroi wearing Elite because...of...something. It has to do with killing the Arbiter's wife (and yes, Elite women have teh boobies
) and the Arbiter being an atheist, but then the pacing is so disjointed it's a wonder anything is understandable. Not helping in that regard is the animation, where characters' movements look stilted and everything is so blurry you wonder if it's an attempt to hide the poor job they did. Apparently Elite mouths have magical shapeshifting properties, becoming like normal human mouths when talking with each other. And the climatic battle is LOL worthy: the Arbiter charges across an open plan against 100+ Elites who can't aim for shit and slaughters them all with energy swords, along with a Wraith and a Hunter the size of a Rancor. The final "duel" is about as cliched as possible, with Arbiter-san and Bad Guy-san squaring off with no movement for a minute before doing an incomprehensible sword swipe with both combatants landing behind each other, with both their wounds on a time delay to start spurting blood. I'd be pissed off if I'd payed any money for this crap.Origins Pt I & II
In which nothing especially interesting happens
Cortana, having nothing better to do after the end of Halo 3 now that the Chief is on ice, recounts the history of the Halo universe starting with the Forerunners. We get a glimpse of them in armor suits, humanoid of course, and about how they ineptly handled the Flood invasion, waiting too long to do anything to stop them and by then it's too late. We also get to see some Forerunner combat units in action, including armored Forerunners, and it's underwhelming. And apparently the Forerunner ship seen in the second and third games is one of several used to repopulate after the Rings go off. After that it continues on to the Human-Covenant war and the three games, which if you know anything about Halo you probably already know. I suppose if you didn't want to read a book or website or play any of the games and wanted a quick twenty-minute breakdown of the history of Halo, this does the trick. Animation was crisp, and it sounded like they got the actual Cortana actress to do the voice-over narration, but otherwise the only thing new to report is that apparently Cortana's starting to get glitchy. Ho hum.
The Package
In which Spartans board a Covenant ship and KICK SOME FUCKING ASS!
Apparently a Covenant fleet, conveniently prevented from leaving a star system because of solar radiation, has something important the UNSC wants, so they send their shielded, invisibility-cloaked, energy-weapon touting flagship to launch a team of Spartans, consisting of MC himself, Fred, Kelly, and two mooks, to go get it. The Spartans, badass as they are, plow into the heart of the Covenant fleet riding open-top crotch-rocket, each armed with a guass cannon, twin autocannons, missile racks, plasma flares, an energy shield, and a pop-up chaingun in the rear requiring a second person to use. Riding such phallic-shaped penis compensators into battle and spouting poorly voice-acted lines, they easily blast through the fleet's defense to the target. The first mook boards the first cruiser in which they think the package is located, only to find that it's a bomb and the entire ship blows up in his face. A bit drastic, you say? As we'll see later, it's the only reliable way for the Covenant to kill Spartans.
So the team continues on to the flagship, correctly guessing it's the only logical place to put the real package, and the second mook dies to add some drama to their spanking of Covenant manhood in space before boarding the ship. Meanwhile on the flagship, the gold-armored bad guy in charge is angry at his red-armored assistant because, I don't know, he pissed in goldie's breakfast cereal or something, and so go tells him to slow the Spartans down. Which is surely a death sentence, as the three Spartans are running through the hallways at full speed, God Mode turned up to 11 as they perforate everything that gets in their way with overwhelming firepower such that you wonder how the Covenant are a threat at all. Goldie even starts detaching sections of the ship, sending them falling out into space, just to slow the Spartans down, but nothing can stop Master Chief from reaching the package, which turns out to be...Dr. Halsey. She even spouts some Cortana lines, in case you still didn't know she was Cortana's template. Finally the red-armored major shows up and the two engage in a gratuitous sword battle, where amazingly Elite doesn't get skullfucked within two seconds like everyone else. However, before the fight can be resolved, he gets grav-lifted away because goldie, now that the Plot Device is over, can do a Slipspace jump, and so just detaches the entire lower half of the ship to escape. The Spartans and their mom all escape aboard the UNSC super-ship and live happily ever after.
Prototype
In which a Battletech Elemental ruins some shit
This was a pretty decent one, all things considered. A Marine Sergeant hijacks a prototype armor suit, rather than destroying it as ordered, to cover the escape of his men as they evacuate a planet under Covenant attack. A few years earlier he was the only survivor of his entire platoon getting wiped out, including the woman he loved, but even holding her dying body in his arms he was unable to express his feelings for her, prompting her to ask him to 'be human.' Thus he tries to find some measure of redemption by sacrificing himself to save his men and everyone else by escaping the planet. Animation, voice-acting and music were all slick, and the suit itself surely ties the crotch-rockets in terms of masturbatory fantasy: jump jets, shoulder-mounted cannon and missile rack, gatling gun for a right arm, and a self-destruct easily rivaling any nuclear device.
The Babysitter
In which cocky bastards get shown up
A squad of Helljumpers, including Dutch apparently, assist a Spartan on a mission to assassinate a Prophet using a sniper rifle. There's some animosity between the two groups, though why is never explored, but this is especially the case for O'Brien, a cocky bastard pissed off that he's not the one taking the shot, hot shit that he is. Of course by the end O'Brien is shown the error of his ways as the Spartan saves his life a number of times, eventually earning his respect, and when she is fatally injured (her gender revelation supposedly a big surprise) asks him to take the shot. Good from a technical standpoint, the story is decent though predictable and does a good job of highlighting the differences in abilities between Spartans and normal people.
Odd One Out
In which 'what the fuck' is given a new meaning
A very big pile of goofy meh. Spartan 1337 falls out of a Pelican and runs into some kids riding a T-Rex. He then fights against a genetically engineered Brute who shoots laser beams from his mouth, gets some help from the kid's older brother & sister, and the monster is finally finished off by a half-buried frigate firing a rainbow beam at him, sending him into Slipspace. And the frigate is home to the kid's 'mom', an old AI program.
1337 has some funny lines and shows some potential as a comedic character if they do any later stories with him, but on the whole the thing just seems silly for silliness sake.
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- PeZook
