Jump to content

mikeszekely

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    12709

  • Joined

  • Last visited

 Content Type 

Everything posted by mikeszekely

  1. mikeszekely
    Well, I finished Destiny. It probably wasn't the best kit to do right after the Mk-II. I mean, everything about the Mk-II was perfect... everything fit perfectly, and the final model was solid, well-balanced, and gorgeous. It was a joy to build, and a joy to display. Destiny, on the other hand, was a pain. For starters, don't even think about building him without a hobby knife! Several of the parts come off the runners with chunks of gate still attached to the underside that you can't get with a clipper. Worse, some of those parts are tiny, like the yellow beam shield emitters on the backs of his hands (oh, and they included 7 hands). I wound up poking myself in the finger a few times. Then there were other issues with the build. For one, I don't know if it was just a bad part or what, but I couldn't get the cuff armor over the inner frame's wrist on the right arm. I'm positive I built the arm right, and I had no trouble at all with the left arm, but I wound up having to take my hobby knife and trim a tad off the inner frame's wrist. If that weren't aggravating enough, before you peg a hand on there's a tiny square flat gray piece that goes inside the cuff. The directions make it seem like the hand is supposed to hold that piece in place. Nope. Not long after I put the arms on and peg the hand in and it looks like Destiny's wearing a bracelet. I wound up gluing them down. After I got the arms done, things started to go a little more smoothly, save a for a very small gap between the pieces that make up the left and right halves of his head, just under the antenna. I stickered him up, and this is more of an observation than a complaint, but still, Destiny comes with a lot of stickers, but most of them are on his wings. Without his backpack, he actually looks a little barren compared to the UC Gundams, but with his backpack I guess his wings make him look busy enough. But, here's another thing... he's back heavy. Much more so than Strike Freedom. I was actually having trouble posing him for a picture without him falling over. Speaking of falling, he can be a little fiddly. The weapons that store on his back like to fall out, as do the beam weapons in his shoulders. Like Zeta, you have to be very careful posing him, then you have to be careful to balance him so he won't fall over. Still, the result is worth it, I think. I know that Strike Freedom was supposed to be the most overpowered MS, but I think Destiny looks much cooler. The wings look cooler, the beam saber/knives look cooler, and the way they're stored looks cooler. The design of his face and the way the red dips down his cheeks looks cool. The beam guns in his palms are cooler. The fact that he's got a real shield and a beam shield is cooler. He was a pain to build and a pain to pose, but at the end of the day, I think I like him better than RG Strike Freedom.
  2. mikeszekely
    That was fast! Man, are you in for a treat. I really hope you enjoy building it as much as I did!
  3. mikeszekely
    I guess I'm lucky I ordered one when I did for $30. Let me know what you think. I think Exia's the first one I want to build when they get here. Until they get here, all I have to work on is finishing Destiny (I just have to do the backpack/wings and apply the stickers) and building an HGUC Gouf Custom that should be here tomorrow.
  4. mikeszekely
    Get a Mk-II.
  5. mikeszekely
    Been trying to help out my parents by going over their place when I have time and doing their yard work for them. My dad decided to thank me today with a $200 Amazon gift card. So I went home and ordered RG Exia, Strike, Justice, GP01, green Zaku, Char's Zaku, and the Titans Mk-II. That just leaves Freedom, GP-01fb, Char's Z'Gok, and the Skygrasper. Actually, I would have ordered Char's Z'Gok instead of Char's Zaku, but it's still a pre-order item on Amazon. Oh, and I've started building Destiny. Pics and impressions to follow, but spoilers, I'm not loving him.
  6. mikeszekely
    I'd imagine that, with a darker frame, it'd look like regular Freedom, just with a gun in it's belly, different wings, and modified railguns. But don't let that stop you. I'm probably going to wind up building regular Freedom.
  7. mikeszekely
    Well, there was Swindler, but he was just a Micromaster. Didn't stop me from pretending he was the Back to the Future Delorean...
  8. mikeszekely
    Suppose I wanted to build all 16 RG kits, line them up in the order they were released, then photograph them. Does that sound like an art project to you? Specifically, does that sound like an art project that I could use Kickstarter to fund the models for? I didn't think they were as bad in person as in some of the pictures, Especially the Super Dragoons, which have a mirrored gold finish. Granted the frame doesn't have a shiny metallic look like you might expect in a real robot, but is actually a pretty good match in color to the duller gold used in the show. The biggest strike against Strike Freedom's gold frame isn't the color, but the fact that the gold plastic seems a bit more brittle than the gray they usually use. The index finger on the left fixed-posed, fingers-splayed hand was broken at the middle knuckle, (not a huge problem, because there are three other left hands for the kit). Also, part of the inner frame chest near the shoulder (where a human clavicle would be) was broke out of the box. This too turned out to be a minor problem: I glued the edges of the broken piece back together, which held it together long enough to put the armor on. Once the outer armor was in place, the broken pieces are sandwiched tightly in the space where they belong.
  9. mikeszekely
    I don't hate Spacebrick, and I don't think I've ever said that I do. What I have said, is that I don't care about Spacebrick, because unlike Optimus and the gang Spacebrick had nothing to do with my childhood, so I have zero interested in an MP version of him. And for what it's worth, I never liked the Core Booster. There's only one place a Core Fighter belongs, and that's in Gundam's abdomen.
  10. mikeszekely
    I think I'm just done with Transformers. When it was $10 for a decent-sized Classics deluxe of some of my favorite characters, it was cool. But these days, it's like $18 for a "Deluxe" that would have been a Scout a few years ago, For CHUGs they're either mining obscure characters (Scoop) or releasing characters that were already in the CHUGs line (Bumblebee), they're clogging the shelves with really bad movie toys, and every time they come out with a line for a cartoon it's really just filler that's going to get canceled when the next movie comes (Prime). The only really nice toys are the Masterpieces, which you can either import ("shipping isn't bad, as long as you order way more stuff than you actually wanted!"), or try to find domestically as a TRU exclusive (you have a better chance of winning the lottery). Transformers just aren't fun anymore. Meanwhile, discovering a PSP emulator made me rediscover my love of the Gundam Battle series, which made me rediscover my love of Gundam, which led me to watch Gundam Build Fighters, which rekindled my interest in Gundam models, which led me to discover the Real Grade series, which it turns out are reasonably priced, incredibly detailed, and where all my disposable income is going.
  11. mikeszekely
    I love the way mine looks. I haven't had Hikuro's problems with the hips, either. But, either the way his hips join or the way his skirt armor is hung seems to restrict his range of motion. I liked it enough that I might try to get and built the Zeta 3.He's not wrong about the transformation, though. As I said previously, there's a peg near the bottom of his torso that is supposed to lock down the cockpit, but a light breeze will cause the cockpit to come off. His waist armor is on swivels that can leave gaps, or pinch in when his chest is unpegged and get in the way. There also doesn't seem to be anything but friction keeping his head from retracting into his chest. I think the result is a fantastic-looking display piece, but an extremely fiddly one that requires care to pose (and always ends with pinning the chest back down and pulling his head back out). It's also one that doesn't need to be so fiddly, if they'd used a more standard inner frame and skipped the transformation gimmick, especially because the fiddly nature pretty much ensures that you'll never bother to transform it. I think I honestly like the RX-78 less. There's no way I'm buying the RX-78/CA repaint, nor would I buy the Prototype repaint. I'm a sucker for G3's colors, though, so I might buy it... If it were released in the main line, not as an expensive exclusive. Do you have a MK-II? I've always like the Mk-II, the way you can see the linear evolution from the RX-78 to it, without all the gimmicks that would come on later Gundams, so maybe I'm a little biased, but I think the Mk-II isn't just the best RG kit I've built, but that none of the other kits are even close. Not only was it so good that I'll get the Titans version, a RG Alex based on the same frame is now the kit I most wish Bandai would do next.
  12. mikeszekely
    I'm not familiar enough with Spacebrick to know what's going on there... he's like Jetfire? There's a robot that turns into a pointy space brick, and he wears armor that that makes him a blockier space brick in alt mode? Or something else?
  13. mikeszekely
    Are you getting AEUG or Titans? Either way you won't regret it. The Titans Mk II just made my list, although I think the regular Green Zaku and Exia will be next for me.
  14. mikeszekely
    Ok, I finished my Mk II! After completing it, I'll say that the Mk II is hands-down the best RG kit I've done, by a very wide margin. Like I said before, the other RG kits looked great but there was always something fiddly with them, in some cases it was minor (Strike Freedom's shoulder armor coming off, being back-heavy) in others more serious (if you look at Zeta the wrong way his head is going into his chest like a turtle). Well, there really isn't any of that with the Mk II. He moves the way you want, with nothing popping off or anything. Even his skirt armor and backpack thrusters have stayed put for me. He's very solid, plus he was a the most fun to build. Plus, stuff that wasn't really a problem on other kits actually works better here, like the cockpit door or the clip to carry the bazooka on his butt-skirt. My only complaints would be that his feet have less articulation than the RX-78's, so the bent-on-one-knee pose is a little more work to balance, and that the vulcan pod on his head doesn't leave his head with a lot of room to move. Personally, I'm cool leaving the vulcan pod off. Seriously, if you only buy one RG kit in your life, make sure it's the Mk II. This kit is so good I'm rethinking my decision to just to do the AEUG version.
  15. mikeszekely
    I don't have the skirt and waist armor done yet, but it looks like his ankles can touch. There's a great comparison of the different scale Gundam kits with the RX-78 as an example at Gundam Planet.
  16. mikeszekely
    What about the hips did you want to know? The actual joint, which I have done, or how it is when the waist armor and skirts are attached? All I can say so far is that the frame seems nice. You can't see it once the front of the frame is attached, but there's a red round panoramic cockpit. And like I said, I was a little put off at first when I opened the box and there's a plastic bag with a length of wire and a similar length of a woven cloth sleeve. At various points in the instructions, there's a guide that shows you to measure off that much of each, cut them, feed the wire through the sleeve, then stick one end in one area of a part then the other end in another area. I thought it'd be difficult to get the right length, or that they'd pop out, but it turns out that it's pretty easy to use the guide in the instructions, and the way other parts will stack lock the hoses in place. They give you maybe a cm more material than you need, too, so it's ok if you're not perfectly precise. The end result looks simply fantastic (although, since they're on the back of the legs, you can't see it in this picture...) Since I haven't built a GP01 yet, I can't really compare. Does it look like the same frame? I didn't think that the GP01 has hoses?
  17. mikeszekely
    While I love the detail that goes into the RG line, I don't think I've built a kit yet that isn't fiddly. The question is usually "how much"? In trying to re-pose the RX-78 with the bazooka instead of the beam rifle both arms popped off, causing the shoulder armor to fall and explode into their component pieces, both thrusters came off, and one of the hip skirts came off. Move Strike Freedom and his shoulder armor comes off. After putting it back, he falls over because the weight of the wings/Super Dragoons means he has to be positioned just so. And Zeta, well, you can pose him how you like, as long as you accept that when you're done you'll have to peg his chest back into place and pull his head back out. I think I said it before about the RX-78, but I'm starting to think it might be true for the whole line... RG makes for some gorgeous display pieces. I think they look better than than PG kits, to be honest. But posing them seems to require careful, deliberate manipulation. Unlike the HGs, you can't really play with the finished model. We'll see if my opinion changes. I have the inner frame done on the Mk II, so I'll probably wrap him up today. I thought I'd hate it when I saw the cloth sheathe and wire you have to cut to make the little hoses/cables in the legs and backpack, but I wound up really loving them. The results look fantastic. We'll see if applying the armor changes things, but so far the Mk II might be my favorite RG kit.
  18. mikeszekely
    I've heard the comparisons to Uncharted, and frankly, I don't get them. I mean, yes, the gunplay is copy/pasted from Uncharted, but that's about it. There is melee combat, but it's much worse (perhaps by design?) than Uncharted's. Managing your melee weapons is a pain. And the parkour elements from Uncharted have been entirely replaced with a focus on stealth, although I found that The Last of Us didn't seem to offer enough useful feedback to make the stealth elements fun. And it's not that I don't like stealth games (as a friend of mine accused me of)... I played Human Revolution stealthy, I played Dishonored stealthy... heck, I even played the new Wolfenstein stealthy (which amused one of my other friends, who played strictly run-and-gun until he got stuck near the end... I took over for him, and immediately started throwing knives at everyone). Somehow, someway, the mechanics behind TLoU just never clicked for me, so I had a miserable time of it.
  19. mikeszekely
    Well, if you're like the majority, you're probably in for a treat. Personally, I hated it. Couldn't even finish it. But I seem to be an anomaly.
  20. mikeszekely
    So, the other day my buddy texts me to tell me I can get Call of Duty: Ghosts for the Xbox One for $6 from Rakuten. Now, I prefer my shooters on the PC, but I figure for $6 it's something people can do when they come over. Meanwhile, my buddy has a birthday. He wasn't really into Gundam, but he likes the Dynasty Warriors games, and he likes games where you have to unlock a bunch of stuff, so I loaned him Dynasty Warriors Gundam 3. Without actually watching much more than Wing back when it was on Cartoon Network and the 08th MS Team, he starts getting into Gundam. So, for his birthday, his wife decides to get him some of his favorite mobile suits. She ordered and built for him a 1/100 HG Gundam Epyon, and a MSiA Infinite Justice. She also got him an MSiA Gouf Custom, because ever since he saw Norris Packard wreck a bunch of Federation mobile suits with it it's been his favorite non-Gundam mobile suit. The other day, I get an email from Rakuten thanking me for my order and giving me a promo code for $10 off of a $20 purchase. I figure I'd look to see if they have any RG kits. No dice. So I look to see if they have any HG kits, which they did. I see lots of SEED, 00, and AGE kits; nothing I'm too interested in. But eventually I found a kit worth ordering. An HGUC Gouf Custom.
  21. mikeszekely
    Well, scale is a kind of a problem. Aside from the fact that I want to keep all my models in the same scale (and I guess I've settled on 1/144), I don't have room for the kits I have, let alone bigger ones. Right now, I have an RG Gundam, RG Strike Freedom, RG Zeta, HG Wing Zero, HG Nu Gundam, HG Gundam (that I repainted to look like the Prototype Gundam), and a HG Zaku I Black Tri-Stars sitting on my kitchen table (plus an RG Destiny and RG Mk II AEUG in boxes waiting to be built). Thankfully my wife and I usually eat in the living room. Then there's the the basic painting skills... I don't have any. I'm not sure that there's anything I have less aptitude for. I see you're a bit better with the stickers than I am! How's the GP01? I'm not sure if I want to do it, the Zaku II, or Exia next (after the Mk II and Destiny).
  22. mikeszekely
    Finished my RX-78. On the plus side, he looks fantastic. You can even take that little Core Fighter, fold it up, and jam it inside (although they include, and the instructions have you use, a Core Fighter-shaped piece for building it). On the minus side, I think this was my least favorite RG kit of the three I've built. He's got four main issues: 1. The bronze-colored stickers on his elbows and the backs of his knees do not want to stick. I could lick a sheet of copy paper and it would stick better to this model. 2. Maybe this is just because it's the first in the series, but the engineering of the "advanced joints" don't seem to match the rest of the kit. Moving his elbows or his knees will, at best, create gaps in the seems between parts. At worst, parts will come off. 3. His shoulder armor isn't connected to anything. The pegs coming out of the torso are threaded through holes in the armor before pegging into the shoulder joints. This makes them sort of floppy. 4. Stuff pops off when you handle it. Take your pick... the thruster nozzles on his backpack, his skirt armor, heck, even his arms. The pieces of his shoulder armor come apart so easily that I'm thinking about breaking out the glue. As a display piece, the RG RX-78 is probably the best-looking RX-78 you can buy. I even think it looks better than the PG (although I'm going by pictures). I think the HG version is more fun to play with, though.
  23. mikeszekely
    Pink Zeta?...you're not talking about the Zeta 3, are you? Amuro's mostly white Zeta from Green Divers? It was a web exclusive or something, and one of the few repaints I actually really want (although it's tough to find for less than $70). If I did ever get my hands on one, I'd want Bandai to do an RG RX-78-3, too. Nice MK II, BTW. I'm building one after I finish my RX-78-2.
  24. mikeszekely
    Yeah, I went from "I'll try one or two" to "I'll get all the UC kits" to "if it says RG on the box, I'm buying it!" I know that "realistic" is relative. And it's not that I don't like unrealistic mecha, but they have to be appropriate to the setting. The Gundams in G Gundam are ridiculous, for example, but it's a pretty ridiculous setting. I hate on SEED because it was a lousy remake of the original Gundam that ended with ridiculous mecha being ostensibly fielded as regular military units shooting rainbows at each other. Put another way, I like Deathscythe Hell, especially the Endless Waltz version. It fits the Gundam Wing setting, as a one-off machine built by a colony as a symbol of resistance. If the Federation built it and fielded it against the AEUG during the Gryps War, though, I'd hate it. But, like I said, I have a feeling I'll wind up with most of the RG kits. I definitely want the GP-01 and GP-01fb, and the green Zaku II. I'm iffy on Char's Zaku II, and while I do want a Z'Gok, same deal, I'm waiting to see if they release the blue one, because I'm not sold on a Char's. Aile Strike and Exia are making my list. I think I'm passing on the Skygrasper and the Titans Mk II. I'm not sure if Freedom is different enough from Strike Freedom to warrant a purchase. Likewise, I'm not sure if I want to get Justice if they might release Infinite Justice later. As for HG kits, I'm still going to try to track down a D-Hell (EW) to go with the Wing Zero I found. Beyond that... there's a couple of mobile suits I want in my collection no matter what. Whether I go HG or not depends on how much I want them, how likely they are to be released in RG kits, and how much I think they'll benefit from RG's extra details. I think, for example, that I might get a HGUC Unicorn Gundam (Destroy Mode), but I won't get a ZZ Gundam until/unless it turns up in the RG series.
  25. mikeszekely
    He looks like DC's Cyborg.
×
×
  • Create New...