Halo Legends 'The Package' review.

Spoiler:

We open to a cloaked ship, and a briefing by a UNSC captain to five Spartans. He tells them the Covenant has acquired a high priority ‘package’ and their mission is to enter enemy space and retrieve it. They have a window of ten minutes to complete their mission, the package has a location signal, but it is pretty weak so they’d have to get very close to read it. They pan around to look at the Spartans; all show their faces except one, who has ‘117’ on his chest plate.

Master Chief is leading this operation and ask what will happen if they fail to do it in time. The captain responds that they will have no choice but to fire on the ships and destroy the Covenant fleet and them along with them. And then………we see the EBA booster frames. These are the notorious ‘X-wing Motorcycles we saw in the previous previews. And yes they are as retarded as we thought they are. They are armed with what appears to be chain guns, and a rear warthog style gun on the rear, which comes out of the back of the ship and is fired by a rear gunner if their frame is destroyed. They also appear to have archer missiles and Gaus cannons. They also have energy shields on them.

They then deploy and fly directly at a Covenant fleet, which quickly readies its weapons. I’ll give them credit they do a damn good job at showing us plasma torpedoes and the lasers of the Covenant ship, and it looks pretty similar to what I imagined them to look like. The Spartans then dodge the plasma rounds using some sort of flare, and fire missiles on the ship, as well as deploying a scanning device.

They quickly get a reading on one of the ships, and two of them go in towards the ship, saying there isn’t time to wait for the others. The shields of the ship are down around the hangar and they quickly dart into the ship through them. Solomon, followed by female Spartan enters the ship. Solomon exits his frame to search the ship, while the female Spartan remains on hers to provide fire support.

Chief realise something is wrong that the first scan gives a positive reading, and moves to investigate. Solomon makes it to the signals location and discovers a Covenant bomb. Chief quickly arrives and yells, ‘Kelly it’s a TRAP!’ (Ackbar would be proud.) The bomb explodes killing Solomon and Kelly and Chief barely make it out of there.

We cut to the Covenant flagship where the fleet master is chuckling at the Spartans taking the bait. Beside him a red armoured elite is less enthralled. Warning the Fleet master not to show weakness as they will exploit it. The Fleet master mocks the Elite reminding him of when he fought these creatures in battle while his battalion died, and he will not die with honour.

The Spartans regroup and discover every ship in the fleet has a signal. Chief quickly deducts that they are decoys and the real package is on the flagship. They then fight their way to the ship, fighting seraph squadrons and weaving in between the superstructure of one of the ships. They continue to dodge seraphs, which hit Kelly’s EBA frame. Another of the Spartans hangs back to hold them back and gets crushed by the moving ships. Apparently named Arthur, they quickly continue on, dodging more seraphs and finishing them off. Kelly ejects from her frame and lands on the other remaining Spartan’s frame, taking control of the rear turret, while he charges the Gaus cannon to pierce the hull. When it is charged they fire everything they have at the same point, blowing a hole in the ship.

They land in the hangar and are confronted by a legion of Covenant troops, after using a bubble shield to protect themselves. Chief then says they have three minutes to do this, and they have to sprint the whole way and not to all behind. And then the ‘To be continued….’ sign appears.

Spoiler:

We catch up with the action right where we left off. The Spartans charge forward in a V formation, killing everything that gets in their way. Fred fires his laser and blows a hole in the door in front of them and they move up. We then get a cut away to John’s HUD. It’s a Halo 3 HUD, with a Shield bar. Did not one tell them that they didn’t have shields then?

The Chief runs out of bullets in his assault rifle and switches to two SMG’s leaping over a Brute and killing more Covenant as they go. The ships commander orders all the hatches to be sealed and more Covenant pour out from the sides of the corridor. Fred pulls out his own SMG and fires one hand as he charges the laser, while Kelly clears out the rest with her grenades.

We get another cut away to the Chief’s visor where he has over 800 rounds of SMG ammo (they must be the ones with extra clips or something) and sees a plasma turret on the second floor above them. He leaps up and slow-mo kills them with his SMG’s. Kelly also leaps up and grabs two plasma rifles. Then three elites drop down, one of them is the red Major we saw before. He lunges at chief he dodges the blow. A second minor domo attacks Fred with a sword, and he blocks it with his laser somehow… Fred loses and drops his laser but pulls out his combat knife and stabs the elite in the eye. Two problems with this. Firstly, the Elite had no shield protecting him, and the blood that spurts from the wound is GREEN. Even that asswipe the duel got that right.

Fred helps Chief and tells him to keep going drawing a second knife and says, ‘All right, the Great Journey ends here,’ (And I thought John got all the good one liners eh?) Kelly is a little bit ahead of the Chief, finally showing that she is faster, she sounds worried about their comrade but the chief just tells her to focus on the mission.

The ship commander knows how close they are getting to the package and starts ejecting parts of the ship to stop them. Kelly seems to make it through just fine, Chief a few steps behind. They then reach a massive gap which Kelly meets chief hallway and propels him across leave her behind. Chief yells ‘KELLY!…..Kelly’ Showing a bit of emotion about his childhood friend.

We now find out what the ‘Package’ was and are you ready for the big surprise? In front of Chief is a cryo pod, with the name ‘CATHERINE. E. HALSEY’ on it and yes she’s inside fully clothed of course, we couldn’t have her naked now could we? Chief activates the pod and she steps out. She seems a bit too young in my opinion, with long blond hair, not a wrinkle on her face, she looks around her mid-twenties, which is not how I envisioned her at that point. Sure she did stay in stasis a lot, but I’m pretty sure she did show signs of her age in the books, please correct me if I’m wrong.

She then refers to him as John and he asks if she slept well , to which she replies ‘no thanks to your driving yes.’ (Direct quote from the Chief in Halo CE) He then says that she seems to be in one piece, which she replies that maybe his luck his rubbed off one her. John replies ‘We make our own luck’ (multiple times in the books) but he always be ther- and Halsey says ‘Don’t make a girl a promise, if you know you can’t keep it (Cortana Halo 2). Ah it’s so nice when you rip off other people’s dialogue to make yours look better.

After exchanging more dialogue they decide they got to get moving, and they run in the Major again. Chief just shoots him with his assault rifle which the Elites BLOCKS WITH HIS SWORD! Seriously, what the hell, you have shields for Christ’s sake. He throws a energy sword hilt to John, and they duke it out for a while, until John loses. They then run out of time. The Covenant fleet has cleared the magnetic disturbance and are preparing to jump. The Commander orders all of that section to be jettisoned the minute they are ready to jump. The Elite at the helm asks about the Red Elite and his team , to which the commander replies ‘ He has already been shamed, he will die or Arbiter.’ Thanks for telling me the obvious there chuck.

The Arbiter gets sucked up into the leaving ship, leaving John and Halsey in the detached part of the ship, and he says ‘Commander you fool! I had him! A THOUSAND HELLS AWAIT YOU!!!!!!’ (Not quite ‘And so you must be silenced’ is it?)

Halsey and Chief run and use an escape pod to get away, when they get ambushed by Seraphs. With no weapons on the pod and nothing John can do they look doomed, until Fred and Kelly arrive in a captured Seraph and give them cover. They make it to the UNSC ship which decloaks and the ship fires LASERS. LASERS!!!!!!!!

We then close with a classic John/Halsey conversation. She says he really is lucky, to which he replies that he wasn’t lucky enough. Two Spartans died today and that Elite was strong. He says he needs to be stronger. Halsey replies that they all have to be stronger as she thinks this is only the beginning( Shall I award it? Ah what the hell. ‘No. I think we’re just getting started.’)

PiEdude wrote:But, how can be black Spartan?

Would he not just steel space bike?

"THAT NIGGA STOLE MY SPACE BIKE!"