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mikeszekely

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  1. mikeszekely
    I gave up on Earthspark. They start by showing you an interesting premise- the war is over, and the Autobots and humans formed a joint organization to police Cybertronian activity. They open with cool characters... Optimus Prime, Elita One, Swindle, Megatron... Then immediately abandon all that to focus on a cast of original robots with personality disorders who live in secret with three of the worst human characters the franchise had seen so far (the mom is pretty cool, so she gets a pass). Every now and then they'll cameo more interesting Autobots or Decepticons, but the main baddies in the show are the director of the ostensibly good human/Autobot alliance and a mad scientist. It's ultimately frustrating because the bones of something good are there, but the writers are basically constantly saying, "who cares about your favorite Autobots and Decepticons, focus on our original fanfic characters!” as if the producers assembled their writing team from Sonic Deviantart pages.
  2. mikeszekely
    To be fair, I think it looks better than Thrilling 30 Metroplex. But 2' tall Transformers are already too unwieldy and take up too much space in my house; a robot that big is immediately out of the question no matter how cool it is. ...well, unless it also can cook.
  3. mikeszekely
    Well, Beat Saber is pretty much the VR standard bearer at the point. The simple premise (chop cubes to the bear if the music) is easily understood and quickly picked up, but still fun and even a decent workout. Pistol Whip is sometimes described as Beat Saber with guns. You auto scroll through a level while faceless baddies attack you. Shoot (or pistol whip, hence the name) the baddies before they get you, but to get the best score you're going to time your shots to the beat of the music. Superhot VR is one of the more unique experiences I've played. Like Pistol Whip you need to take out the faceless baddies before they take you out. But the catch here is that the world around only moves when you do, allowing you to do stuff like punching a guy, snatching his gun out of the air as he drops it, leaning out of the way of an incoming shot from his buddy before returning fire, then throwing the empty gun to take out a third guy. But actually my favorite game on the Quest is Walkabout Mini Golf. It's pretty much what it sounds like... you play mini golf. And while you can use the trigger to teleport to your ball, you actually can use the joystick to "walk" from hole to hole. The base game comes with 8 courses, and each course has a regular daytime version and a harder night version. The day versions have a hidden ball to find on each hole- once you've found a ball you can swap out your basic white ball for it. The night courses have foxhunts where once you find all the clues you can get a unique putter. You can buy additional courses that are added periodically- as of this post, I think there are 22 add-on courses, for a total of 30. Courses run the gamut from something that could totally be a real mini golf course somewhere to the utterly fantastic, like a course on a space station or one that runs through the island lair of the villain of '60s-style spy movie with a thing for lasers.
  4. mikeszekely
    Same. But he and Fortress Maximus are missing articulation and are a bit more stylized than the post-Siege stuff. As not sorry as I am to be getting Star Convoy, I'd open my wallet for a new more G1 Metroplex with proper ankles in a heartbeat.
  5. mikeszekely
    Surprise, one last review for 2024! I'm closing out the year with MMC's Incertus, their take on a Masterpiece-style Groove. I think by now we kind of expect that MMC isn't going to necessarily go as hard on Sunbow as some of their competitors. Realistic details, like the handlebars behind Incertus' head and the taillights visible at the bottom of his shins are still part of how MMC's designers do their work (and, as a fan of Takara's older, pre MP-35-ish stuff, I'm grateful). Even with the extra detail, though, MMC did stick impressively close to the Sunbow design, in ways that not even the made-specifically-for-Groove Combiner Wars figure managed. He's got the solid gold chest, the silver arms that still have white fists, and the pipes running over his shins and around the edges of his legs. His head even sits on a white "shelf" above his shoulders, though the edges of his "popped" collar are less a decorative lip and more functional vehicle kibble on Incertus. Now, if you've looked at the Sunbow model, you might see that his cartoon backpack is sort of an abstract version of the front of his bike mode with the shocks, fender, and wheel missing entirely. We don't have quite that level of toy engineering yet, but I think MMC did do a pretty impressive job of rotating the fender and storing most of the wheel inside Incertus' torso. This contributes to a fairly clean robot mode overall. As far as accessories go, you don't get a ton, but at the same time, you get more than enough. There's a pistol, two leg-mounted guns, two alternate faces, and what I assume is a speaker that I guess is one of those "thing from that episode" bits. To be frank, The Protectobots have been, in my mind, the least memorable of the combiner teams and as a stand-alone character Groove made almost no impression on me. Groove the character might not have made much of an impression, but Incertus the toy sure is. The articulation here is pretty great! His head is on a ball joint that swivels, tilts up, and tilts sideways (though looking down is kind of limited due to his massive chin). His shoulders swivel and move laterally 90 degrees, plus he's got a tiny bit of a forward/backward butterfly going on. His biceps swivel. His actual elbow joint bends around 130 degrees on a single hinge, but by opening a flap and using a transformation joint in his forearm you can actually bend his elbows a full 180 degrees. His wrists swivel. Each of his fingers are individual digits, molded into curves but hinged at the base knuckles for the fingers and a ball joint for the thumb. His waist swivels, plus he's got nearly 90 degrees of ab crunch. His hips can go 90 degrees laterally, plus they 90 degrees backward and around 120 degrees forward on a soft ratchet. His thighs swivel, and his knees bend about 120 degrees on a single hinge. HIs entire foot has a little up/down tilt, plus his black does have their own up/down tilt, and his ankles pivot 90 degrees. Just like other recent MMC figures, Groove's pistol has a tab on the back of the handle that plugs into his palms. I don't know if he was actually animated with them or not, but Groove's control art has guns on the sides of his legs near his feet. This is a gimmick lifted straight from the G1 toy, and if it's a look you like Incertus has you covered. Above his ankles, just above the tampoed "POLICE", you can fold out a small tab. This tab plugs into squarish plugs on the inner edge of the guns. Likewise, if you don't really like the neck shelf, no matter how cartoon accurate it is, you can use a few hinges to sink part of it into his chest, lowering his head to a more natural position at the expense of some of that shelf sticking around as kibble along the sides of his head As far as the faces go, it looks like they just slide forward and off, but I prefer the stoic face and don't want to accidentally scratch the paint, so I didn't feel like actually pulling it off. Oh, yeah, and the speaker-thing. Turns out his hands are actually pegged into his wrists, so all you have to do is yank his whole hand off. Then the speaker, which has a peg on the back, simply plugs into the hole on his wrist vacated by his hand. I guess it's nice that they included it, but if I'm being real it's going in a baggie, and that baggie is going into a box in my closest where I will promptly forget about it forever. Groove's transformation is surprisingly interesting. His head, chest, and upper arms mostly wind up inside his torso, with the kibble that was flanking his head closing up over the top of his torso to form the fuel tank. His calves fold out and bend around to lift his feet up and form the seat, but his shins and thighs remain flat and form the bottom of the bike with his forearms filling in the gap between. It's a transformation that seems both clever and surprisingly straightforward once you've done it once or twice, but it can be a bit tricky to make sure his head and the flaps they're attached to are actually in the right spots for his chest to fold inward all the way. Groove's original toy was kind of chunky and missing details, and the sunbow model replaced the pair of headlights with a weird-looking grill, but they were both kind of recognizable as an early '80s Honda Gold Wing motorcycle (GL1200, I think). To better match the Sunbow art some of the faring is missing, leaving the engine a bit exposed, but there's a good amount of realistic detail mixed in the with simple Sunbow deco. The details include painted tachometer and speedometers, painted handbrakes, and painted switches on the handles, plus turning the handlebars turn with the front wheel. Due to the way the G1 toy transformed, the guns that were on his ankles wound up behind the seat. However, the bot mode tabs are, as I mentioned, just behind the "POLICE" tampoes. I think a lesser company might have left the connection there, and figured it's close enough. Not for MMC, though. There's a second set of tabs that fold out near the top of the back of the bike, allowing you to mount the guns there. As for his pistol, it kind of tucks into a notch on the back of the bike. From bike mode, it doesn't take much to get into leg mode. As you'd expect, the entire front of the bike comes up and swivels over. The fuel tank splits open into it's bot-mode position to give the front of the bike some room, and the seat splits in half and slides open to leave a gap for the wheel to tuck into. It's not nothing, but I think we have to concede that it's not really as clever as the way their Streetwise expanded into leg mode, and their Hotspot is doing a lot of the heavy lifting by storing the feet instead of having the leg bots do it. I'm not complaining, though! I think it'd be kind of petty to complain that the leg mode is kind of simple when it's A.) still effective, and B.) coming in addition to what is already a fantastic robot and fantastic motorcycle. I mean, a running theme with MMC's Protectobots has been that they're already a step up in engineering from their still-impressive Combaticons, and Incertus might just been the best one yet. I think Incertus is about as close to a perfect MP Groove as you could hope for, and ultimately I think edging out Fugu's God of Flame, the Mecha Invasion Constructicons, and fellow MMC Protectobot Ignis (Hot Spot) as my favorite 3P figure in 2024*, so I'm giving him my highest recommendation. *I actually have one other 2024 release coming, but it won't be here in time for me to review.
  6. mikeszekely
    Took my wife an daughter to see in this afternoon. We liked it, in the same way that we liked the first two... it's a kids movie about a video game, but it's still entertaining enough for adults. I might be "that guy" and say I still think Sonic 2 was the best of the three, but I'll qualify that by saying that they're all pretty similar. Of all the movies I watched this year I'd say it's better than Alien: Romulus, Venom: The Last Dance, or Beetlejuice Beetlejuice and not as good as Deadpool & Wolverine, Transformers One, or Dune Part 2.
  7. mikeszekely
    Missed opportunity to do Gigastorm. More cartoon accurate or not, the original raise looks better to my eye.
  8. mikeszekely
    Yeah. On the flip side, though, I could replace it with a hypothetical similar-priced refresh in a year or two and still pay the same or less than I would for a 10th-gen iPad, Pixel Tab, or Galaxy Tab S9FE. It's a tricky balancing act, trying to find a level of performance adequate to what I want to do (I dumped a Galaxy Tab A9 Lite because it struggled to open Chrome), but not going overboard on what's ultimately a tertiary device... especially when almost every other Android tablet on the market is using a 16:10 aspect ratio. It's one of those things that seems like it's not a huge difference in landscape, but 4:3 looks so much better for a lot of the content I'll be consuming on it the minute you rotate it to portrait.
  9. mikeszekely
    Haven't made it to Best Buy yet, but I took my kid to Walmart so she could spend some of her Christmas money to get a Roblox card and a case for her new iPad. I went over to what I thought was an iPad and started looking around it for cases... imagine my surprise when I saw that it wasn't an iPad, it was a Android tablet from Walmart's Onn brand. And, it terms of hardware, it's pretty much exactly what I was looking for... same aluminum chassis as the iPad, same 4:3 aspect ratio. In fact, the height, width, and thickness appear to be nigh-on identical to the 10th-gen iPad. My concerns, though, are the specs. Snapdragon 685, 4GB of RAM, and 64GB of storage isn't much these days. But it does have a 90hz 1850x1280 display, Widevine L1 support, and a microSD card slot, and it's only $130. Considering I'm not interested in gaming on it, just couch surfing, reading comic books, and maybe some light streaming video it might be adequate.
  10. mikeszekely
    It's kind of ironic that NA matched the Studio Series purchasing so faithfully, only for Hasbro to change their packaging for 2025.😆
  11. mikeszekely
    Speaking as someone who was aspiring to draw comic books at one point, yes, his head's a little small... so was CW's, and it's a consequence of trying to fit it on Hook. But no, his arms aren't too short, they're about right where they should be. I have to say, I'm pretty stoked for 2025. No, they're not perfect, but I'm pretty jazzed for Studio Series Devastator and AotP Superion, and Star Convoy having all the gimmicks of the G1 toy (including the little truck and Micromaster Hot Rod) but actually having articulation is a dream come true.
  12. mikeszekely
    You guys know that Animated Optimus Prime's a fire truck and should have a trailer, right? So it's kind of weird that we've gotten how many toys of Animated Op over the years but the closest we've got to a trailer is an axe that folds up to look like part of the truck on the original Voyager. Luckily, for the Legacy version, DNA has stepped in to give us a trailer. This is DK-54, and there's a couple parts in this package. It's a bit spoilery, but I'm going to say that there's two guns, two arms, two feet, a ladder, a hammer, an extra handle, a mask, a visor, and a backpack. But all those pieces becomes a trailer, I promise! We're going to start by opening up the hammer. It happens to be hollow on the inside, and that hollow space is big enough to store the mask and visor parts. Once the hammer's all closed up, you'll notice that there's a 5mm port on either side of the handle. We're going to take the extra handle and plug it into one of those ports. Get the backpack part, and it'll wrap around the hammer so that tabs on the sides of the hammer will plug into slots on the red parts. At this point, the extra handle should be below the original one; if it's not you can pull it out and plug it into the other hole. We need that top hole because that's what the ladder is going to plug into. Don't worry if it doesn't seem very secure yet. We'll lock it down when we add... ...the feet parts! They'll come out of the box attached to each other already, but if you don't have them together yet (or are taking them apart) be aware that DNA used an unusual method of connecting them to each other. Rather than normal tabs and slots, they have hooked tabs with slots under and in them, so you have to slide the left side up before pulling them apart, or down to lock them together when you're connecting them. Anyway, they go under the edges of backpack/hammer handles/ladder, such that the slots I've marked in green fit on tabs on the red plastic edges, and the slots marked in orange fit onto tabs on the bottom of the ladder. If you've done everything correctly so far, you'll have the ladder pointing toward the front, tires and boosters on the back, and a flap on the backpack flips open to reveal some mechanical fire truck details. We're going to finish the top of the trailer by installing the arms. Take the fists and turn them sideways, so the fins point up and the fingers are curled in toward the edges of the trailer. Get the fists under the tabs (marked in green) and slot them into the slots on the armor the fists are attached to. We can finish it off by attaching the guns (or water nozzles?) to the end of the ladder. Now that the trailer is fully assembled, you'll notice a pair of red pegs under the front of the trailer. You attach the trailer by plugging those pegs into the peg holes on Prime's feet. Oh yeah, that's much better! No, it's not totally cartoon accurate, what with the dual nozzles and the rocket boosters, but it's close enough for me and it definitely goes a long way toward selling the idea that Prime's supposed to be a fire truck. Heck, there's even 5mm ports on the sides, so you can store the axe Prime came with on it. Which is good, since the trailer is attached to the spot Hasbro intended for axe storage. Now, I might buy an upgrade kit that gives Prime a trailer and does nothing else, but you guys might not. Also, if it was just a trailer, it wouldn't need to come in so many pieces. So, yeah, the gun nozzle things have fold-out 5mm pegs, and Prime can hold them like guns. The rocket boosters on the sides of the trailer come off, and you can plug them into Prime's shoulders. The bottom of the hammer's handle comes off, allowing you to slide it into one of Prime's fists. And if you prefer Prime to have the battle mask on look, the one in this kit just clips onto his face. In fact, if you really prefer the masked look, the mask can stay on during transformation to alt mode. Fans of Animated may recall that Prime had Ratchet build him a jetpack in the two-part series finale. What fans may or may not be aware of is that the jetpack was a simplification of a design to create a whole God Ginrai sort of upgrade for the canceled fourth season. While you can use the parts from the trailer to recreate the jetpack from the show, DNA went the whole nine yards to recreate the concept art for season 4 Prime. And we'll begin by folding Prime's hands in, and attaching the arm parts by simply plugging them into the 5mm ports on Prime's forearms. For the leg parts, flip the toes and heels out from the underside, and lift the white part up to reveal a 5mm peg. Take note of which way the built-in ankle hinges bend, then attach them to the correct feet by plugging those revealed 5mm pegs into the peg holes under Prime's feet, then closing the white part over Prime's own knee pads. Open Prime's back flap, then take the main trailer part and fold the sides back to make a pair of v-shaped wings. Plug them into the inside of Prime's back, and turn the boosters so they're pointing their exhausts down at the ground. The ladder has a 5mm peg that folds out from the top; plug that peg into the 5mm port between the wings. Prime's new backpack wings have a pair of 5mm ports on top, just behind Prime's head. You can use 5mm pegs on the guns to plug them in there and give Prime shoulder cannons. Then slide the visor over Prime's head and mask. And here we have Prime's armored up super mode, and it looks pretty great if you ask me. The new parts all fit securely, due to most of them simply using existing 5mm ports on Prime's body to connect. Articulation is more or less the same; the new feet have their own ankle pivots, and though they don't have the extreme range of the toy's original feet I think the 45 degrees they give you is enough. The new wrists swivel, and unlike the base figure the fingers are hinged at the base and can open, allowing you to pop the hammer into his hand without pulling the bottom off. Actually, you can plug the second handle into the bottom of the original one to give the hammer an extra long handle that Prime can hold with both hands. If that's not enough, you can remove the ladder from Prime's back, and fold a gun barrel out from the end. The 5mm port can then plug into his hand, giving Prime a BFG. My only complaints here are that DNA didn't make the barrel compatible with the usual blast effect parts, and that there's no paint that could have helped distinguish it from being just part of the ladder. Overall, though, I think my complaints are very minor about what's turned out to be one of the very best kits DNA has made. I mean, it gives Prime a decent fire truck trailer in alt mode, it gives Prime an optional battle mask and guns, it gives you the backpack, shoulder guns, and hammer to recreate his look in the series finale (something only Takara tried to do before), and then goes one further by giving you all the parts you need to recreate the God Ginrai-esque concept art for Prime's season 4 upgrade. There's no loose parts in trailer mode, and there's no loose parts in his fully upgraded robot mode. Everything fits together snugly in both modes. There's a lot of upside and very little downside in this kit, which elevates an OK figure to pretty darn good one. If you bought Legacy Animated Prime you should consider this kit to be an essential upgrade. If you don't have Legacy Animated Prime, then this kit might be worth picking him up for. Highly recommended.
  13. mikeszekely
    I don't think I'm getting any more official Transformers stuff this year, but I think we can squeak a few upgrades for official products in under the wire. I'm going to start with the DNA DK-47 kit for Legacy Core-class Volcanicus. In this kit we get new forearms and hands, new feet, a new pelivs, new wings/dino chest for Grimlock, six small guns, six small swords, and two large swords. Among the six Dinobots, Sludge is the one who gets the most individual stuff as all the filler bits go on him. There's a part the covers the mushroom peg near his dino foot, and one that covers the empty gap behind the dino hip. Turn him around to the back, adn there's a filler that covers the mushroom peg in the waist swivel, and one the covers the the dino hip swivels. Gap covers in place, Sludge also gets two of the included guns, which is good since he's the only guy in the set that didn't get a weapon. He can hold them in either hand, store them on his back, and wear them on his shoulders in dino mode. For Grimlock, you have to pop his dino chest parts off at the ball joints and pop on the replacements. They're so similar to the originals that it took me a hot minute to even realize why DNA thought they were necessary, so I'll spell it out for you guys. The dino arms and chest parts were single pieces on the original, but the arms are separate and pegged into the DNA ones. That allows them to swivel at the shoulders. Grimlock gets two of the swords. Does he need two? I'd say no, since he can only hold one and his tail gun. But both can store on his back/tail in dino mode. Slag also gets two swords. Unlike Grimlock, Slag as a port on his back, so you can store either one of the swords or his tail back there, whichever he's not carrying in his hand at the time. The swords can plug into his hips in dino mode. The last two swords are Swoop's. They go on the backs of his wings in dino mode. Snarl already has a sword, so he doesn't need one. Instead, he gets two of the guns. Like Slag, Snarl can store either his sword or one of his guns on his back, whichever he's not using. The guns can plug into his rear legs in dino mode. Last up we have Skarr, who gets the last two guns. For those of you keeping score, this setup means that everyone has a gun (since Grimlock and Slag have their tail guns, and Swoop has the half-hands on his wings), but Skarr and Sludge are swordless unless they take one of Grimlock/Slag/Swoop's. What's more, Skarr already had his tail-hand-gun, bringing his personal gun count to three, and the only place he can store an extra is to plug one of the DNA guns into the dino hips on his lower legs. That's where they go in dino mode, too, but the tabs and slots are oriented such that Skarr is forever aiming at birds flying directly overhead. Of course, I don't think anyone was looking to buy upgrades for the mid-to-bad individual Core Dinobots. If you're like me, especially after seeing how something simple like actual feet and better hands improved Dinoking over Volcanicus, you wanted an upgrade for the combined mode. So we'll start buy putting Snarl and Grimlock into their regular leg modes, but adding the new DNA feet. They work pretty much the same as Dinoking's, which I-shaped pegs that jam up into Grimlock and Snarl's gooches. Grimlock's tail gun can plug into the heel of the DNA feet rather than to Grimlock himself. Slag and Sludge combine with no changes, except now there's an extra pelvis part that plugs into the mushroom peg's cutout on the front of Sludge's waist swivel. Swoop is where things start to get a bit different. Rather than folding his legs down to make the forearm, we're going to leave them folded up in his alt mode. However, before we smush and lock everything together you'll notice lightning bolt-shaped hollows inside his knees, just below the mushroom swivels in his thighs. The new DNA forearm has tabs that were designed to fit into those hollows and will be sandwiched in place when you lock his legs together. For the other arm, Skarr is also folding his right leg up into his alt mod position. But, his left leg is going to fold down into his robot position, except we're going to swivel that leg at the ball-jointed knee so that the hollow back of the leg is facing outward. The other new DNA forearm will plug into the hollow side, filling it and bringing with it a new hand. Speaking of hands, there's the small question of what to do with the stock ones. I mean, maybe we don't strictly need Swoop's anymore, but Skarr's forms his tail, so we have to keep it around. Well, DNA thought of it, and it turns out we'll need Swoop's after all. First, we combine the halves into their fist mode, then we wedge that fist into the void between Sludge's dino head and Slag's rear legs. It doesn't lock in place, it's just wedged in. But doing so puts a 5mm port on Volcanicus' back, which is just what we need to plug Skarr's tail in. Speaking of storage, Snarl's sword plugs onto Volcanicus' shin, as it did before, and Grimlock's swords plug onto Volcanicus' calf. Skarr's guns plug into holes where his dino head his connected to a hinge. Swoop's working the hardest. Snarl's guns plug into his fists, while Sludge's plug into pegs on the back of Volcanicus' forearm. Swoop's own swords plug into their alt mode spots on his wings. Slag's swords can be stored by plugging them into the 5mm ports on Skarr's tail-gun-hand, now on Volcanicus' back. While we're back there, tabs on the large swords plug into Slag's dino hips, allowing them to be stored on Volcanicus' back as well. I've stalled long enough- here's your money shot. The DNA feet have ball joints in the ankles, giving Volcanicus ankle pivots like Dinoking but also up/down tilt and ankle swivels. The new forearms add a new ball joint on Swoop's side and take advantage of an existing one on Skaar's side to give Volcanicus bicep swivels and elbow bends, plus the new hands have wrist swivels and individual fingers with ball joints where they connect the hands. The new hands hold the two larger swords MP-style, by plugging tabs on the handles into slots on his palms. Suppose you do actually want your Dinobots stomping around in their dino modes. What can you do with all this new combiner kibble? Is there someplace better to store the new weapons than on the Dinobots themselves? I'm happy to say that DNA did think of this. First, we'll take the Swoop arm and turn it so the tabs that go into Swoop's knees and the back of the forearm are facing up and the closed fist has the fingers on the ground. Plug Snarl's guns into ports on the elbow piece. Plug Sludge's guns onto the forearm as you would for combined mode, then plug Skarr's guns into Sludge's. Get the other forearm, orient it so the front of the forearm is facing up and the hand is making a fist with the fingers on the down side. The two arms should clip together so that the fists are side-by-side, and the pelvis part will fit onto the elbow-side edge of the Skaar arm. Then the backs of the feet will use tabs to grab onto slots on the arms. With your base assembled, you'll now be able to store the swords on it. The feet each have four holes around the top. The instructions suggest Grimlock's swords near the toes on the "front" of the base, Slag's swords near the heels on the front, and Swoop's swords near the toes on the "back" of the base. I stuck Snarl's non-DNA sword into one of the remaining small holes. There are bigger ports near the heel, behind the ankle pegs. Volcanicus' large swords plug into those. I'm not going to blow smoke up your rears... Core Volcanicus was a pretty bad figure to begin with, and adding an upgrade kit brings him up to a little better than Dinoking, so not awful but still not great. I didn't recommend buying the Core Dinos before, and this kit doesn't change that. The individual Dinobots still suffer from pour articulation, Grimlock still has wonky proportions, and Sludge is still a hot mess; this kit doesn't do anything to address that. I'd have liked to seen new wing missiles for Swoop and a new tail for Skaar that didn't have fists attached (and could be stowed without wedging Swoop's old gun-fist into Volcanicus' back). However, while far from perfect, if you didn't listen to me and you already bought the Core Dinobots you should probably consider buying this kit. Like I said, it doesn't suddenly make Volcanicus an amazing figure, but for display purposes it's hard to overstate just how much some added articulation, cool weapons, and actual feet improve the base figure. I think DNA did a good enough job here that I might buy the Dinoking version of this kit despite Dinoking already having better hands and feet.
  14. mikeszekely
    Right? I sub LTT, but I was thinking that this was pretty timely. I actually have an iPlay 60 Mini Pro. As near as I can tell, it's the same CPU/RAM/storage/display, but they ditched the headphone jack for a second speaker, added face unlock, and updated the OS to Android 14. I got it recently to replace a Samsung Galaxy A7 Lite. Both of those are not what I'm looking for in a tablet, they're what I'm looking for in an e-reader (yeah, I know, but I'm that guy that uses Google Play Books and not Amazon so the Kindle's a non-starter for me). I'd still be using the A7 Lite if it didn't take a good 30 seconds to open a browser window when I want to look something up while reading. I think they're too small for the kind of consumption I'd actually want to do on a tablet, which brings me back around to the iPad. The hardware is darn near perfect. The aluminum and glass feels like quality, the screen is big enough for consumption yet overall it's light and very thin, and the 4:3 aspect ratio might leave some black bands on a lot of video content, but it's seems ideal for web pages and comic books. I think my question is less "what's a good Android tablet" and more "what Android tablet is the closest in form to an iPad?" Like Az said, I think I'll have to go to a store and see if they have some on display. I think Google's Pixel Tab might be a good choice; it's $279 right now and my last two phones are Pixels. Of course, the iPad I bought for my kid is still on sale for $250; I could just suck it up and use iOS... I can still download a lot of the Google stuff I'd use on it anyway (but can you drag and drop files from PC to iPads yet? It's been so long since I used an iPad you still had to manage them through iTunes). I'd like to look at Samsung's lineup, but like Linus says, it's a bit of a mess. Like the S6 Lite he mentioned as being refreshed just this year doesn't come up on the "compare" section of the tablets page and isn't listed when you click to shop "all tablets." To find Samsung's page for it I had to Google it. It looks to have about the size and form factor I want, and it's priced around the same as the Pixel Tab and iPad. But then again, the S9 FE is only a little more right now, and it's a bit bigger and faster.
  15. mikeszekely
    Yeah, going to best buy after the holiday is probably a good idea. ...I wish there was a Microcenter around here. Closest ones for me are Columbus Ohio and Fairfax Virginia. I've been to the one in Fairfax, it struck me as kind of like Best Buy, if Best Buy catered less average people and more toward enthusiasts. I dug it a lot.
  16. mikeszekely
    It does look like a gap on the prototype, but that's definitely where Hook's head should be. Maybe Hook didn't have a head in the prototype yet?
  17. mikeszekely
    Isn't that just the top of Hook's head? Best guess? Just to keep Scrapper and Mixmaster from banging together when Devy's standing stock straight. Yeah, I think it's a tad odd myself (and opinions seem sharply divided on him in general), but I think he mostly looks better than Combiner Wars, I like that he scales better when other Combiners (need a new Predaking now, too, Hasbro), and I expect he'll be more stable and use better than Combiner Wars. Plus Long Haul's not a massive chonker. That's really all I expected from Hasbro.
  18. mikeszekely
    Purely supplemental. Some light couch surfing, streaming video when my wife is using the TV for Chinese dramas, and reading comic books and other stuff that that does better on a larger screen than my phone. If I'm doing anything that's going to start requiring multitasking or a keyboard I have more laptops than one person technically needs (a Windows laptop for gaming, a Surface Pro for taking to DnD because it's smaller and lighter and fits in the bag with my TTRPG stuff, a 15” Vivobook so I can stay current on Linux, and an M1 MacBook so I can stay current on MacOS), or I'll go upstairs and use my desktop with my surprisingly useful 32:9 monitor.
  19. mikeszekely
    So, uh... kind of a dumb question. While my wife has been solidly in the iPhone camp, the last iOS device I personally used was so long ago that I can't remember if it was a 3rd-gen iPad or the original iPad Air (I think it was the Air). That being said, my daughter wanted an iPad for Christmas, and I got her the 10th-gen iPad. Like a responsible parent, I'm taking the time to set up parental controls from my wife's Apple ID and make sure it's charged and updated and all that. Now, here's my dilemma... I think I'm in love with this hardware. My post-iPad experience with tablets has been Surface devices, currently a Surface Pro 8+ with a keyboard cover that I really use more as very portable laptop at my TTRPG table. The 10th-gen iPad is wonderfully thin and light compared to my Surface, but the aluminum chassis feels suitably high quality. I'd love to have a tablet like it for myself, except for one major paint point... I loathe iOS. Now, I'm NOT trying to start an iOS vs Android vs whatever debate here. If you use an iOS device or devices and you like it that's great, but Apple's walled garden isn't for me personally. And on that note... does anyone hear have much experience with Android tablets? What I want out of life would be as close to the 10th-gen iPad as possible in terms of dimensions and materials, just running Android instead of iOS. Seems like a lot of what's out there that has the nicer builds like the OnePlus Pad and the Galaxy Tab S10 are larger, like the iPad Pro, or else they're made out of cheaper materials. Maybe a Pixel Tab? I'm open to suggestions.
  20. mikeszekely
    Not the clearest look, but Long Haul is definitely looking a lot better than his Combiner Wars counterpart.
  21. mikeszekely
    My copy of Incertus should be arriving next week.😉
  22. mikeszekely
    Got my notice from ShowZ to pay off the next set of Mecha Invasion Constructicons. Seems doubtful they'll ship before the end of the year, but it's looking like they'll be here before the Chinese New Year shut down. I'm pretty stoked; the first set, while not perfect, were simple, fun, and relatively inexpensive; it's easy to overlook some minor flaws when four MI Constructicons cost less than one of Fans Toys. Speaking of, while I'd thus far bought most of the Devastators, I can't bring myself to do another Devastator war and buy them all. I've heard good things about XTB's Long Haul, but their track record for QC issues is keeping me away. I think Fans Toys' Scrapper just doesn't look all that hot. And 01 Studio's looks like the old ToyWorld one, but more stylized and without partsforming. I expect I'm passing on all of those. Given how their Combaticons and Protectobots came out, I think MMC's Constructicons will be my final G1 MP-style ones. I'm thinking about giving Dream Star's Constructicons a go, though, or at least their Scrapper. Like Mecha Invasion, Dream Star seems to be an offshoot of Generation Toy that's doing a more stylized take on Devastator, and I dig how their Scrapper looks. Plus it looks like Hook is next, and he has both a torso mode and a leg mode, because Dream Star might also be doing a Prowl that can combine with the Constructicons IDW-style. What's more, it looks like some of the combiner kibble will form a Megatron.
  23. mikeszekely
    Yeah, I'm not opposed to Missing Link. I just personally feel like once you start improving the original toys then they're very clearly NOT the original toys, so you might as well keep making improvements until you get to the modern toys. I'll say this much, though... adding articulation makes a lot more sense to me than keeping the limits of the original toys but changing the deco line Walmart's retro line. It's equally NOT the original toys but lacking any meaningful improvement.
  24. mikeszekely
    Sure, but if you're going to start making improvements to articulation, why not make more improvements? Replace stickers with paint. Fix the wonky proportions. Tweak the decos to make them more cartoon accurate. ...whoops, I've made Generations. Or Masterpiece. And that's kind of where I've landed. I love the G1 toys because they're what I played with as a kid, warts and all. And if I want improved versions, I've got lots of options for truly improved versions and not simply G1 toys with better articulation. Maybe age is a factor here? I was four when I got Sideswipe, my first TF. I was too young to be bothered with the limitations of the toys back then, my little mind was simply blown by the fact that I could have a cool car that turned into a cool robot.
  25. mikeszekely
    Because it is the toy I had as a kid. Don't get me wrong, I love Missing Link, I think it's neat how Takara added so much articulation to the original toy, but once they did that it's not really the original toy anymore.
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