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mikeszekely

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  1. mikeszekely
    I've heard that, but as a huge fan of the original trilogy (I even read all Drew Karpyshyn's ME novels), I had to play it. And in any case, I hear the PC version is better than the console version, so maybe there's that. It also helps that a friend of mine works for EA and gets me Origin keys. I try not to abuse the connection, but with ME getting lukewarm reviews and a ton of other games coming out I decided to hit him up for this one.
  2. mikeszekely
    That's because I pulled off anything that was peeling or too crooked.
  3. mikeszekely
    A little later than planned, but here's TFC's Heavy Labor, their Long Haul. As with the others, he came to me pre-Reprolabeled. Maybe Long Haul's a tougher fellow to get right, especially without partsforming. Hasbro's own version was definitely the most oddly-proportioned (we'll leave out Mixmaster due to the odd decision to totally change his alt mode). Heavy Labor has better proportions, but he's still a little shorter than the other TFC Constructicons, and he's still nearly as weide as he is tall. There are a number of other odd decisions here. The black thighs and purple shins instead of silver/green or all green, green arms instead of gray or purple, the fold down purple waist, for starters. Maybe the fact that the bed of the truck is mostly in his arms instead of his legs. Then there's the fact that the flatter truck nose, the dominance of the grill, and decidedly not-truck details under the grill to the fold-down waist don't lend to a very truckish appearance. If it weren't for the head, which is a little flat on top but otherwise very Long Haul, I'm not sure I'd recognize who he's supposed to be. Unlike other guys in the set, Heavy Labor doesn't come with any extra gestalt bits, just his purple gun and it's translucent red twin, which he holds ok. Articulation is still less than I'd like. Same head swivel with no tilt. Ball-jointed shoulders rotate and move 90 degrees laterally. Due to transformation, he's got a bit of a backwards butterfly, though, and that's nice. Bicep swivel above the elbow, which can bend well over 90 degrees before his forearm meets the kibble on his shoulders. Still no wrist articulation. Waist swivel is there, but his waist flap has to be be lifted. It needs to be similarly lifted when his hips move forward, up to 90 degrees on ratchets. His hops can move backward or to laterally, also 90 degrees and ratcheted. He's got a thigh swivel, and his knees are double-jointed with enough range to fold over on themselves. Again, not foot articulation outside of his toes being able to fold upward for transformation. His alt mode is... ok. I guess. Again, the nose it kind of flat and the grill dominates the front, and the fold up waist is more obvious robot part than garish purple bumper. He's also got visible hands in his truck bed. That said, it's still pretty obviously a dump truck, and with the extra paint detailing maybe a better dump truck than Hasbro's. Heavy Labor's instructions suggest plugging the guns in where and how I've put the red one, which just seems stupid. Why not rotate it so that the barrel is pointing forward? If all you want to do is store it, plugging it into his fists help hide them and make it look like he's just hauling something. Also sort of weird... the rear tires have different hubcaps than the front tires. And we're back to where we were with the other two... probably not the best Long Haul you can buy, skipping the $400-$600 newer 3P offerings and comparing him more directly to Hasbro's... I guess he's an OK CHUG Long Haul. If Hasbro's Long Haul wasn't so goofy-looking, though, he'd have a harder time competing.
  4. mikeszekely
    Just finished Zelda. Got Mass Effect Andromeda installed on my PC, Horizon in the shrink wrap next to my PS4, and my steelbook copy of Persona 5 arrives tomorrow. Plus I'm still thinking about picking up NieR. Dunno how I'm supposed to fit all this great gaming in... this late winter/early spring has been better than the holiday.
  5. mikeszekely
    Moving things along, tonight it's TFC's Mad Blender, their version of Mixmaster. Note that not only did the copy I received has Reprolabels, but it came with the default green panels on the mixing drum replaced with purple ones by Crazy Devy. Aside from the color change (which I prefer), that won't affect this review. Up front and aesthetically, I'm a lot less enthused with Mad Blender. Due to his transformation you can't really have his mixing drum on his back. You can either have it dangling from his butt or you can remove it entirely. Coupled with the the lack of Mixmaster's hood and a nondescript, not particularly Mixmastery head the result comes off as a little generic. I get that Mad Blender is meant to have that updated, not-quite-G1 look that Hasbro's CHUGs often do, but I really wish that TFC had done something with him to make him a bit more obviously Mixmaster. Mad Blender comes with a handful of accessories. There's a purple chunk that clearly goes with Structor's wings to make the combined mode chest shield, a pair of black bits that will form handles for the combined mode gun, and a pair of funky-looking guns. As with Structor, one is purple and the other a translucent red twin of the first. Mad Blender's articulation is in line with Structor's, which is to say decidedly CHUG-ish and poor by modern 3P standards. His head's on a swivel with no tilt, shoulders hinged in the chest for 90 degrees of lateral motion and pegged for rotation. His biceps rotate, and he can bend his elbows 90 degrees. No hand or wrist articulation. He has a waist swivel below his proper waist, and like Structor he can lean to either side. His hips ratchet 90 degrees forward and a little less than that backward, and friction laterally 90 degrees. He has two thigh swivels due to a fairly unnecessary step in his transformation (one I forgot to do for these pictures). When transformed properly, he has two joints that could be used for knees. Neither is ratcheted, and either is capable of greater than 90 degrees on it's own. His little flip-out toes can flip back up, but otherwise he has no foot or ankle articulation. He can hold his weapons just fine. If you look for them, there are enough places on his body or even on his guns to plug in his combined-mode parts as well. While I'd have preferred to just leave it on his back, TFC clearly didn't want for you to have any leftover bits lying around and came up with an alternative to having the mixing drum hanging off his butt. Basically, you pull the drum apart and you're left with an inner stem that look sort of like a rifle, and eight segments with pegs and holes and molded details to look like little cannons all over his body. It's a nice thought, but these sort of ludicrous full-burst modes don't really work for me (at least not in Transformers... I'm totally cool with them in Gundam). Say what you will about his robot mode (I certainly did), his alt mode is a lot closer to what you'd expect Mixmaster to look like than the Combiner Wars version. Not sure how I feel about the extra wheels in the middle, though. It's not a detail that's traditionally on Mixmaster, and they kind of get in the way in bot mode, but his tires would probably look too small if the extra set wasn't in the middle. In any case, he's got some nice details picked out in paint. Mad Blender has plenty of places to plug in his accessories. One thing that's kind of cool is that without accessories Mad Blender has a really obvious combiner port chilling out in the back. However, the combined mode chest piece fits over the back and it doesn't just cover the port, it actually looks like it belongs there. Unfortunately, as you can see the tips at the bottom don't overhang the combiner port, otherwise the chest piece might have given Mad Blender that Mixmaster hood. I don't think Mad Blender is as good a figure as Structor, so if Structor isn't the best Scrapper than Mad Blender certainly isn't the best Mixmaster. However, I'm still forced to make the same conclusion I did about Structor; at the current aftermarket prices Mad Blender is arguably a better CHUG Mixmaster than the actual CHUG CW Mixmaster.
  6. mikeszekely
    Been awhile since I got a new toy and shared my thoughts... without going into a lot of details, I had some expenses, planned and unplanned, that diverted funds from collecting. There's also the small fact that when I started 3P collecting my goal was to get representations of all the combiners, and quite frankly I'm at a point where I'm either looking at Japanese-only teams or I'm double-dipping. Speaking of double-dipping, while I was pretty set on the Devastator for my collection, another has found it's way into my hands, so I thought it'd be fun to talk about it and then later on we'll do a big showdown. So I'm starting off tonight with TFC's Structor, their version of Scrapper. BTW, this arrived to me with Reprolabels already applied. At first glance, Structor's a pretty reasonable Scrapper. He could have done with silver lats and thighs, a purple pelvis, and ditched the purple and black on his arms, and his head would have worked better with a visored face instead of those diamond eyes. It's not too far off the mark, though. An important thing to remember is that when TFC was releasing these guys the MP line hadn't really taken off yet, and 3P's were just starting to move from making upgrades to CHUG figures to entire CHUG figures. While TFC's designs continue to be pretty stylized today, back then it was pretty much a given because that's what HasTak was doing. And, aesthetically-speaking, Structor's a good fit for the CHUGs of the day. Actually, if anything, he feels more to me like the original Classics toys like Optimus than the Generations stuff that was actually in stores at the time. Of course, there are some ways he was like the CHUGs of the day. Check out the hollow insides of the forearms and the backs of his legs. While I'm griping about the design. he's got a ton of junk on his back. He's also an odd size, taller than a Deluxe but a little shorter than a Voyager like CW Scrapper here. For accessories, he comes with a pair of wings and a pair of guns. Oddly, one is the same purple plastic as the wings, the other is identical but cast in translucent red. I don't know what the thinking was there. Maybe TFC intended the translucent guns as a bonus with the early batches (AFAIK they never didn't come with them). Either way, I'd have preferred two purple guns. Structor's articulation is pretty poor by modern standards... maybe it was more acceptable in 2011? In any case, his head is on a swivel so he can turn but not tilt his head. His shoulders rotate on pegs with a hinge that gets him 90 degrees of lateral movement. He has bicep swivels, and hinged elbows that bend 180 degrees but no wrist swivels. He has a soft-ratcheted waist swivel below his actual waist that's a little hindered by all the kibble on his back. His hips move forward 90 degrees and backward until they start bumping that kibble on soft ratchets, and 90 degrees laterally on friction hinges. His has thigh swivels, and his knee can bend well over 90 degrees as it folds over the thigh for transformation. He has no ankle articulation at all. Due to a joint intended for combined mode, he can also lean his torso to the side. Now, if I buy a new 3P toy I demand ankle tilts and wrist and waist swivels. The lack of them here really makes Structor feel like something Hasbro could have done. Heck, even their Scrapper has ankles! Of course, there's doesn't have elbows or a waist, so I guess Structor still wins. He holds his guns ok, not super tight. The pegs are a little shallow. His instructions indicate that you should peg the wings onto his lower legs. That said, there are also peg holes on his arms and gun you can use. I think Structor's alt mode comes across pretty well. The arms maybe don't hide as well as CW Scrapper's, but the additional painted details make it pop, as does the working piston on the shovel. Speaking of the shovel, it's hinged at the where the arms connect to the shovel and where the arms connect to the front of the vehicle, so about the same as CW Scrapper. In a very G1 nod, the wings can peg onto the back of Structor for that flying front loader look. The cab can swivel, and his gun can peg into the hole in front, or the hole on the gun can fit the peg on the cab. Speaking of the cab, one thing I found kind of odd is that the cab is just pegged in place. There's no need to remove it for any of his modes. It also has a peg hole on the back that doesn't serve much purpose. I'm going to say it one more time, because I think this is really the core of the whole review, but Structor simply does not live up to 3P engineering standards in 2017. I think he originally retailed for close to $100, and if you have a $100 and you're looking to buy a Scrapper there are versions that do have the sort of engineering you'd expect at that price. On the other hand, while I don't know about Structor himself the prices for the entire set of TFC Constructicons have really come down. At current market prices that makes him a pretty good option for a CHUG Scrapper, perhaps better than the actual CHUG Scrapper. In that sense, I think you can still make a case for this guy.
  7. mikeszekely
    No problem! The Wii U is actually pretty solid for Zelda. You can get basically all of them except for Four Swords Adventures, the three Gameboy ones, and the newer 3DS ones.
  8. mikeszekely
    Not for the Switch. For the Wii U, yes. Alternatively, you could get a 3DS/2DS and get the remakes.
  9. mikeszekely
    As a primarily PC gamer I feel embarrassed that I didn't know that, but as someone who shuns multiplayer gaming that doesn't involve having extra people in my living room Destiny never seemed like my cup of tea.
  10. mikeszekely
    Yeah, I finished all the side quests already, and hunting for more koroks seeds just seems like tedious busy work (especially when the ultimate reward for finding all 900 is, literally, poop). Gotta say, after hunting silver Lynels for weapons and upgrade parts Ganon and the bosses of the Divine beasts were stupid easy.
  11. mikeszekely
    I finished tonight. Didn't 200%... I think I found less than 150 koroks, and there's probably named places on the map I didn't discover, but after 150 hours I climbed all the towers, I got and fully upgraded all the armors except earrings and circlets, found all Link's memories, did all 120 shrines, all side quests, all four divine beasts, and killed Ganon. It was a fantastic game, but with Persona 5 on Tuesday I'm ready to move on. In case I want something else to play on the Switch, since Persona is on PS4, I'll probably pick up Lego City Undercover and hope it lasts until Mario Kart.
  12. mikeszekely
    The first one wasn't on PC? Huh.
  13. mikeszekely
    It's not though. I know some people were suggesting to look for him by the Eldin Leviathan, but it's WAY easier to go to the Shae Loya shrine by the Tabantha Bridge Stable. Sit at the fire until night, then run out onto the bridge. There's a gap on the left (North) side of the bridge. Hang out there; Dinraal will come from the north and fly right under the bridge. You'll have your drop by midnight. Did not know you could hunt more than one a night, though. Never seemed to work for me. Guys go update that FAQ...
  14. mikeszekely
    So about those dragons in Zelda... I wrote a guide on how to easily hunt them for their drops. It's up at Gamefaqs (same username as here) if you guys care to check it out. First time I ever wrote something for them.
  15. mikeszekely
    The room I have the Switch dock in is on the opposite side of my house from my router. My first thought was to trade speed for range, so I connected the Switch to my 2.4GHz network. At first it seemed fine, but later kept saying it couldn't connect to the internet. I switched it over to my 5GHz network and haven't had any problems since.
  16. mikeszekely
    Oddly enough, I'm not signed up to any deals sites or anything like that. I'm just doing the stay at home dad thing, and my girl's at just the right age where I have to keep an eye on her to make sure she's not getting into trouble, wants the TV to watch YouTube videos of kids songs, wants my attention for something every five minutes so most other hobbies are out, but I can refresh different blogs I read every couple of minutes. Turns out I'd happened to catch Kotaku posting about Amazon having it in stock about 4 minutes after it went up. Well, I guess if I do see another one I'll buy it. Worst case scenario is you already bought one, no one else I know needs one, and I offload it on ebay.
  17. mikeszekely
    Autobot Spike, and yes.
  18. mikeszekely
    They don't show up often in remains. The crawly big guardians will sometimes drop them, same with the flying ones. Honestly, though, I recommend going to Hyrule Castle. The turret guardians with the ears drop them pretty reliably. I bought Blaster Master, and in non-Switch gaming i fit the new ME, but I've been too enthralled with Zelda to play anything else. Y'know, I saw the alert that Amazon had then and clicked on the link out of curiosity and it was in stock. Should have bought it, then I could have sold it to you.
  19. mikeszekely
    The nicest thing I can say about MP-36 is that it's a big improvement from MP-05. I'm really not a fan of Takara's slavish devotion to the Sunbow character models, though, so I still think there are three better options that are all cheaper to boot.
  20. mikeszekely
    Worth it, at least to get and upgrade the ancient set. It's tied with just two other sets for the highest defense (excluding amiibo gear), and the set bonus madness you deal extra damage if you're using ancient weapons. Assuming you have the money and materials you can get them after lighting the furnace at the Akkala lab. I stocked up on wood and flint, climbed to the top of the Dueling Peaks, called until night, then stared at the sky over Central Hyrule. It's boring and monotonous, but it didn't take too long to get enough to upgrade the Ancient gear. Those dragons, though...
  21. mikeszekely
    The Master Sword doesn't break at all, but it runs out of energy regardless of what you're fighting with it which is effectively the same thing. Then you have a 10-minute recharge. It does double damage to calamity crap. That doesn't include guardians in shrines, but it does include all the overworld ones. When I was farming for ancient cores I didn't bother to go all over the place or save scum. I just went to Hyrule Castle town. There's at least 8 crawlers in the immediate area. Didn't take nearly as long as trying to find enough Swift Violets to max the climbing gear. As for farming I really hope this comes to the States...
  22. mikeszekely
    But Jim Sterling brought it down to a 97 average! It was a 98! Now the world will never truly appreciate the brilliance of this game and the Internet is ruined FOREVER!!! Ok seriously now... I think the game is really good. Early frontrunner for GotY (although I've still got high hopes for Persona 5). But I think perfect is stretching it.
  23. mikeszekely
    The Soldier's Helm/Armor/Greaves that you can buy in Hateno Village use Lynel parts, too... I'm just not sure how necessary they are, because they have the same defense rating as the Ancient Helm/Armor/Greaves but unlike the Ancient Gear don't offer a set bonus. (Plus, Guardians are easier to hunt than Lynels so the Ancient Gear is easier to level up all the way.) Also, dang, Duymon! My Switch says I've got more than 90 hours on Breath of the Wild but it looks like you're quite a bit more accomplished than I.
  24. mikeszekely
    I also saw that live. Honestly, in the 90s I was a HUGE Venom fan. I was super ticked when Mac Gargan became Venom. Never liked that version. Super ticked when Flash became Venom. But I wound up really liking that version (at least until the while Space Knight thing...)
  25. mikeszekely
    Somehow I really doubt it'll happen, but I really hope it'll be Flash Thompson/Agent Venom and not Eddie Brock.
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