Never let it be said that I don’t love you guys. I genuinely wasn’t planning on purchasing the Square-Enix Halo 4 Play Arts Kai Master Chief figure, but after getting countless E-Mails and messages from readers asking for a review of the Halo 4 Master Chief for the past month, I finally succumbed to the idea (though the fact that I was able to find him for $55 shipped on sale certainly helped weaken my resolve). I want to spend some significant time posing and photographing the Halo 4 Master Chief Play Arts figure before I write my official review, but in the meantime, I thought you all might enjoy some early unboxing photos and my impressions of the Chief…

In northern Massachusetts, we’ve got this shipping service called LaserShip. They’re pretty annoying because they just throw your package outside your apartment building unprotected and drive away with no warning, but it makes my day that they usually make their deliveries before 9AM. So knowing that the Halo 4 Play Arts Kai Master Chief figure was set to be delivered this morning, I was up bright and early. And he arrived right on time…

The box art for this Halo Square-Enix line is pretty blah. I’m getting really tired, really fast, of seeing that Forerunner artifact on all the Halo 4 packaging. I hope Microsoft lets companies freshen things up later this year with the packaging.

I typically love book-style packaging, although in the case of the Halo Play Arts Kai line, I feel like it obscures the figure a little bit too much. I love the excessive amount of detail the box flap goes into, describing the Master Chief, the SPARTAN-II program, and both of the Chief’s included weapons.

As you pull the Master Chief out from the top of the box, he’s protected by a sheet of transparent plastic that sits over the Master Chief figure’s tray. It also ruins all photos, but que sera.

Finally free of his packaging, the Halo 4 Master Chief Play Arts Kai figure is quite a sight to behold. The paint on the Chief is a lot more silver and much less green than what I’m used to. I’ll have to see if I warm up to it, as at the moment it’s more jarring to me than anything else.

The photos of this Master Chief inside his plastic tray don’t really do justice to the amount of insane detail and paint apps on this figure. I’ll take better pictures for the full review so you can get an idea of how detailed he actually is.

Like pretty much every other Master Chief figure in the universe, Square-Enix gave the Play Arts Master Chief the Assault Rifle as his primary weapon. It looks nice, but a newly-introduced Halo 4 gun would have been more fun.

Of the Halo 4 Play Arts Kai figures announced thus far, the Master Chief is the only figure that comes with a Covenant weapon: the Plasma Pistol. Help me out here, readers: Is the Halo 4 Plasma Pistol really supposed to be blue like this? I always thought of the Plasma Pistol as being a purple/indigo color, but this one is really blue…

Just like the Play Arts Kai Spartan Warrior figure, the Master Chief comes with an enormous plastic display stand. And just like the Spartan Warrior’s, this display stand is going to sit in the box unassembled for all eternity, as I hate figure stands.

So far the Master Chief Play Arts figure seems pretty promising, but the true test will of course be once I take him all the way out of his packaging and start moving him around! I’ll be spending a few days testing out this Master Chief figure before I post the full review, so if anyone has any questions or photo requests, leave a reply and let me know!