Karl Puschmann: Halo is still pushing the right buttons

Pablo Schreiber as Master Chiefin Halo, streaming on TVNZ OnDemand.

It's very rare for things to come along that are truly revolutionary. Sliced bread is the gold standard example when talking about things that changed the world. Shampoo and conditioner in one is close behind. I'm also going to put the 2001 Xbox videogame Halo: Combat Evolved into this rarified company.

I played the hell out of Halo back in the day. The game is a first-person shooter that puts you inside the cool-looking battle armour of the Master Chief, a cybernetically enhanced supersoldier who is part of a team known as Spartans. In the game, you travel around blasting an alien race known as The Covenant as you attempt to uncover the mysteries of Halo, the artificial ringworld you're shooting your way through.

The aliens known as The Covenant in Halo, streaming on TVNZ OnDemand.

I always found the story to be fairly opaque. But as I very much enjoyed shooting up the various aliens, I didn't worry too much about why I was shooting them. My just-follow-orders mindset would have made me an excellent Spartan, but it's also where the Master Chief of this long-awaited, big-budget TV adaptation goes wrong. He breaks his programming to question his orders. Then he goes on the lam. You cannot do either of these things in the video game.

Jen Taylor as Cortana in Halo, streaming on TVNZ OnDemand.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. The series, which has weekly episodes streaming on TVNZ OnDemand, is a live-action, military sci-fi adventure. It's satisfyingly violent, with fist-pumping action sequences, great visual effects and the story didn't leave me scratching my head once.

It opens with a fairly gruesome Covenant attack on a rebel outpost that sees them effortlessly slaughtering the people that live there, including the women and children, until a squad of Spartans thunder in to save what's left of the day.

Pablo Schreiber as Master Chief in Halo, streaming on TVNZ OnDemand.

This extended fight scene is thrilling, with attacks, tactics and sound effects all lifted straight from the original games. On more than one occasion I found myself thinking, 'f*** yeah!".

Part of what makes this action scene so satisfying is that sci-fi's big budgets tend to all get pumped into the mega franchises like Star Wars, Star Trek or Marvel these days. None of these will ever show things like someone getting obliterated by an energy weapon in a vicious manner or an alien getting its head blown apart at short-range in all its bloody red detail. Don't get me wrong, Halo doesn't enter splatter film territory by any stretch, but it does kick things up a notch or two from most of the premium sci-fi we generally get.

Pablo Schreiber as Master Chief in Halo, streaming on TVNZ OnDemand.

When the last of the Covenant's blood has been spilt in the most action-movie way possible, and the dust has settled, only one rebel survivor is left, a precocious teenager named Kwan Ha Boo. Series hero, Master Chief Petty Officer John-117 aka the Master Chief, is instructed to bring her back to base. Before leaving he investigates what the Covenant were doing in the area and discovers that they'd found some sort of device buried in a nearby cave. When he picks it up the cave begins to light up and he gets flooded with visions from a past he can't remember.

It breaks something in his enhanced genetic programming and he develops free will, which he exercises immediately to refuse the order to terminate the teenage girl. His military superiors are obviously displeased by this turn of events and attempt to subdue him but are unsuccessful and he escapes off into the galaxy.

Scene from Halo streaming on TVNZ OnDemand.

A masked, strong, silent type travelling around space while protecting a young charge is a very similar set-up to The Mandalorian, the smash Star Wars series that's streaming on Disney+, and is not particularly close to the video game that this series is supposed to be adapting. So thankfully, there's a bit more going on than just this.

Along with the mysteries of the alien device the first episode also establishes a political power struggle between the military's admiral and the chief scientist responsible for the whole Spartan project, as well as shuttling us over to the Covenant side where we get introduced to a mysterious young woman who seems to hold a revered position as some kind of prophet.

Still from Halo, streaming on TVNZ OnDemand.

The Halo franchise has been around for more than 20 years now so I have no idea if any of this features in the countless games, spin-offs or 36 novels set in its world. What I do know is that it was a gratuitous and fun watch with plenty of fan-pleasing and iconic nods to the game that I spent far too many hours playing all those decades ago.

Halo: Combat Evolved truly lived up to its name. It revolutionised the first-person shooter genre by setting trends, techniques and gameplay innovations that are still followed to this day. Is Halo TV evolved? No, not really. But it is a slick, lively, occasionally brutal, sci-fi adventure that's well worth a shot.