With a little over a month to go before the release of Halo 5: Guardians, what’s a Spartan fan to do to pass the time? I have an idea. Don’t worry, it doesn’t involve playing the Master Chief Collection.
Instead, let’s play with some toys—building toys, courtesy of the fine folks at Mega Bloks (unofficial motto: “Just one time could we not bring up LEGO?”). They’ve been doing great things with the Halo line for ages now, and they aren’t stopping now.
In the video above I check out four new-ish sets, perfect for helping maintain the fervent belief that MCC only has so many issues because all the good developers were working on Halo 5.
Let’s go through them right quick for the video impaired (or GoPro averse).
Covenant Commander
On the plus side this $9.99 set comes with leader of the Covenant alliance, Jul ‘Mdama. Also, it is $9.99. The downside is that Ghost, though a fairly cool build, ultimately lacks detail. Compared to the other three sets, it is the small purple one.
Moving right along...
UNSC Attack Gausshog
I love Mega Bloks’ Warthog models, and this one is super nice. It’s a good year for making iconic vehicles black and yellow/orange. Really makes those familiar lines pop.
For $24.99 this set not only includes a vehicle with real working suspension and black and grey parts that are impossible to tell apart on the instruction sheet, it also features Master Chief and his best pal, the Arbiter.
The little figures are starting to grow on me. I enjoy the modular armor, and they’re quite pose-able once you figure out how to manipulate them without clumsily ripping out their limbs like some Space Lennie.
Phaeton Gunship
Oh man. Just...oh man.
I love this ship. I want to ride in this ship. I want to polish its grey and blue and orange accents with a moistened towelette.
The two-part angled build is pretty genius—hell, the entire thing is engineered incredibly well. Even the little figure guys with their bright orange joints—it’s $44.99 worth of love.
Scorpion’s Sting
Third time’s a charm for the UNSC Scorpion. This is the third version of the tank produced by Mega Bloks, and we’ve come so far. There’s not a sticker to be found in this build—indeed none of these sets come with stickers. All the details are printed—logos, stripes, everything. The camo effect is swirled into the plastic.
With the proliferation of green pieces it isn’t the most entertaining build, which makes the fact that I decided to create a timelapse video of it downright silly. Feel free to skip around.
The most expensive of the sets at $54.99, Scorpion’s Sting makes up for it by including tiny Buck. He’s so tiny.
Nothing like spending ten hours putting together models to get you hungry for the real thing. That’s why I prefer building kits, be they LEGO or Mega Bloks or Kre-O—okay, maybe not Kre-O—to action figures and pre-assembled vehicles. They help deepen the connection between fans and the properties they love in a way opening a box does not.
*checks watch* Still a month and change to go. Gonna need more Halo kits.
Contact the author by activating the holoemitter on your wrist, fahey@kotaku.com or follow him on Twitter at @bunnyspatial