I’m not great when it comes to situational awareness. I’m the first to admit it. The outing to Halo Legends started well – a civilized glass of wine at a bar whilst I smugly and self-importantly waited for my oh-so-fancy first London film premiere. This is, in fact, the only film premiere that would be taking place for the upcoming straight-to-DVD film Halo Legends.

I wandered through London’s drizzl-y drizzle to Wardour street, assuming that such an auspicious event would be signed, and clearly visible, what with all the fanboys, cosplayers and overall aura of cinematic excitement bound to be taking place for, if not a brilliant piece of cinema, at least for the prestige of being the only silver screen viewing of it. I walked three blocks south and ended up in Chinatown. Hym. Back to where I started and a few blocks north to Oxford street. Not a single Spartan. Maybe I dismissed Chinatown too soon? After all, back home in Brisbane, Chinatown/The Valley is the home of alternative culture and gaming. Back to Chinatown, and beyond. No. Now I was in Leicester Square, which would have been great if I were keen for a stage show of “Legally Blonde: The Musical.” Not tonight.

There was only one thing to do. Ring Yug at 4:30am, because I’m a total sunnovabitch. Yug, as you may or may not know, has been raised with a heightened and very socially responsible awareness of stranger danger and doesn’t answer the phone to strangers. He doesn’t know my UK number. Dial tone from a no doubt irritated Yug hanging up the call. Boo, but fair call. I walked back up Wardour street, gave in to having my wallet reamed by an internet café to look up the venue, only to find it was directly across the road from the café and I had, in fact, passed it no less than four times. Then Yug messaged me the address whilst he enjoyed the sunrise in Brisbane at 5am.

I’m a moron. But I made it in the nick of time.

A much smaller and more understated event than I anticipated, it was a triumph of plastic cups generously filled with booze, and platters of egg sandwiches. Not exactly fancy nor schmancy, but endearingly geeky. I’m new to these parts and I’m happy to report that gamer geeks like me, you, and the AG crew are, in fact, very much the same the world over. The sweetly earnest efforts of the PR team and fans made me really, really want to like the movie.

Alas. I did not :)

Halo Legends felt like it very much wanted to be the Animatrix, but for Halo. Where the Animatrix showcased a variety of strong artistic styles and storytelling styles; Halo Legends fell dramatically short. But dammit, I really wanted to be openminded about it. I love the idea of games IP successfully spanning cross-media. To date, I don’t think anyone has really nailed the transition and Halo Legends is no exception. For the most part, despite distinctly different art styles, each of the episodes felt like bad Machinima.

The film begins with an AI telling the history of the Halo universe. I’m actually not hugely familiar with Halo backstory, so this was a treat for me. From what I gather, a group of Aliens called the Flood were hellbent on making everyone’s cities look as though Titans had picked their nose and wiped boogers all over their monuments. No-one was prepared to stand for this, and so the Forerunners wiped out their nasty habits, by obliterating all life in the galaxy using the Halo super-weapon. Whilst they had the forethought to preserve samples of all life, they regrettably did not also create some Forerunner-shaped receptacles in their little space-ark, and naturally selected themselves out of existence. This was nobly oversold in the episode, and this covering of gaping story holes with overblown sentiment was somewhat of a running theme and made me feel a little awkward. The same kind of awkward you feel when George Lucas writes a ‘romance’ scene in Star Wars. You get what they’re trying to do, but it’s so clumsily executed you feel like you’d prefer to pretend it never happened.

The second tale is a precursor to the war between the Covenant and humankind, told from the point of view of a member of the covenant (a General/Arbiter), who resists going to war with humankind because the war is not ‘honorable.’ The art style felt a lot like concept art, not necessarily bad, but it lacked fluidity and felt somewhat like a pre-vis of what the episode could have been. The Arbiters wife giggled like a vacuous Japanese schoolgirl about things that weren’t funny and I started to see the caliber of scriptwriting I was in for. Still, an attempt to add colour and dimension to an otherwise very flatly characterized ingame NPC, and I give it credit for trying to alter the good/bad dichotomy that prevails in the game world.

The next episode featured Spartans-in-Training “Ralph” and “Daisy.” I did an internal double-take. Daisy the Spartan? Really? The episode endeavoured to bring some emotional depth to the life journey of a Spartan, but once again, this heartfelt intention was executed with something of a ham-fist. There was no real sympathetic response when characters alluded to ‘horrible medical procedures’ and ‘strenuous training.’ A combination of bad script, the absence of context, and average voice acting at best.

I don’t like to be a spoiler, nor overstate my case, so I’ll leave alone the remaining story points and give my main gripes, in quick summary:

Art quality wasn’t consistently that great. One episode “The Babysitter” delivered some of the better art and animation fluidity, but the rest left a lot to be desired. Particularly “The Package,” a sometimes-toon-shaded/sometimes semi-real-shaded episode, which art-wise left a lot to be desired. The texturing style was visibly different from character to character and all characters sat squarely in the ‘uncanny valley,’ like a botoxed Hollywood starlet trying desperately to emote. Injudicious use of mid-battle slow-mo also threw things a little off-pace.

Relationships were awkward and juvenile when women were introduced. I felt in most cases when a female character was introduced there was a brief ‘omfg it’s a chick’ moment, some kind of awkward hint of romance that went no-where, whereupon she’d do something vapid, gaze with a small anime half-smile, or giggle. The treatment of female roles really eliminated the ability for them to bring any gravitas to the war going on around them.

In-jokes. One of the Characters is named 1337. I’m not even going to elaborate as to why that’s lame.

Whilst I’m critical, I actually really don’t want to discourage the cross-pollination of the Halo universe (or any other games IP universe) into other media. I think this kind of thing, when done well, can add richness and depth and interest, much in the way that Games Workshop and tabletop gaming have created entire worlds via games, books, graphic novels etc.

Fans will particularly appreciate the little extra bit of info that comes through about the Halo Universe, but don’t expect all your questions to be answered. There are several plot points that are incomplete, non plausible, or delivered unconvincingly. But, like so many things in life, if you’re willing to not think too hard about it, you can still have a good time.