Halo Legends Review

Halo Legends is a new episodic collection of animated films taking place in the Halo Universe. Even though I’m way more of a Halo fan than an Anime fan, I was still excited to hear about this release, and especially looked forward to the Blu-ray. Halo is a game franchise with a deep mythology, and these seven animated films expand the universe and make that mythology even deeper.

The Episodes

Any of the problems I had with Halo Legends can probably be tied to my lack of experience with Anime. I enjoy Hayao Miyazaki films, but other than that I am not much of an Anime fan (That’s why I’m bringing on an Anime specialist to the site soon). That said, the variety of stories and styles within the seven films was very cool. I expected the whole Blu-ray to be about Master Chief, but that definitely not the case.

Each episode has it’s own style, some are strictly 2D, some mix 2D and CGI. The seven episodes include:

Origins
The Duel
Homecoming
Odd One Out
Prototype
The Babysitter
The Package

Special Features

On the Halo Legends Blu-ray, each episode comes with it’s own making-of featurette, but there are also two 25 minute featurettes about the Halo Universe.

Halo: Gaming Evolved takes you behind the scenes of the entire Halo phenomenon, and Halo: The Story so Far explains the story-line of the Halo Universe. As much as I thought I was a Halo fan, it filled in a lot of information that I didn’t know and was pretty interesting.

And if you’re a gamer, you’ll enjoy the trailer for the upcoming Halo Reach game.

The Verdict

I wouldn’t watch every episode of Halo Legends again, but the ones I liked are definitely worth owning, as well as the bonus features. While I’d love to see a longer series focusing on campaigns from the Halo wars (kind of like Roughnecks).

I would recommend Halo Legends on Blu-ray if you’re a big fan of the universe like I am, but if you’re not, it probably won’t be your cup of tea.