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mikeszekely

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  1. mikeszekely
    I'm pretty pumped for Age of the Primes, but before they start hitting shelves Hasbro decided to do one final, bonus wave of Legacy United. So it's review time... not for a single figure, though. For the whole entire wave. Up first, we have G2 Breakdown. He's sporting a new-to-me head, though if you bought the toy-colored Menasor giftset you'll be familiar with it already. Otherwise, for better or worse, it's the same mold with the same issues... only one gun when his mates all got two, and a spoiler as an accessory that won't really be an accessory once I cut it in half and it can stay on his calves, like I did with the regular version. He also has the same reused not even close to a Lamborghini nose from Wildrider, which is the thing I hate the most about him. Both versions. So... yeah, I guess get him if you've bought the other two G2 Stunticons and cross your fingers for a G2 Wildrider and Motormaster (which they almost certainly will). Or, maybe get him so your Menasor has some kind of leg bot if you were buying the Legacy Stunticons at retail and missed out on G1 Breakdown (which seems to be a thing people did). Otherwise Breakdown isn't the G2 Stunticon you want to start with. Next up is a guy that wasn't much of a surprise... it's Armada Wheeljack. We've already seen this Sideswipe retool in the form of Shattered Glass Sideswipe, who himself was originally a repaint of Armada Wheeljack. While Wheeljack has no mold differences from SG Sideswipe, SG Sideswipe already had a new head, chest, and doors compared to the Siege/Earthrise versions. Wheeljack also has the clubs that were created for SG Sideswipe, which were Wheeljack's weapons in both his original toy and the Armada cartoon, and the shoulder rocket launcher that has nothing to do with Wheeljack but gets packed in with every version of this mold, no matter how retooled. Oh, and speaking of the cartoon, the deco Hasbro went with is cartoon accurate, not the yellow stripes on the toy, but with a number of "we ran out of budget for paint" issues like a black hands instead of silver, no silver on his thighs or feet, and no gold on his biceps. Wheeljack, like the other retail Armada characters, does NOT have the minicon that Sideswipe came with. While Wheeljack's bot mode is, more or less, close enough, his alt mode suffers the most for being a Sideswipe retool. The clubs stick out weirdly from the sides, and he's a little too flat. Plus he's missing his spoiler. Ultimately, I think Wheeljack is fine. Despite being a major part of Hot Shot's story arc he was a very late edition to the Armada cast; I would personally prefer the "new mold" budget go to a more worthy character. And, despite getting a little long in the tooth, the Sideswipe mold is still a solid one. If you're collecting Armada I say pick him up; I'm definitely happy to have him rounding out my collection. On the other hand, if you're not into Armada and you've passed on guys like Optimus, Megatron, and Starscream I can't imagine why you'd suddenly want Wheeljack on your shelf. And... well, that's it for the Deluxes, as the rest of the wave were package refreshes of Cosmos and and Origin Bumblebee. If you missed out on them, Cosmos is pretty great and you should definitely grab him this time. Origin Bumblebee is the weakest of the Origin figures, but ultimately OK enough. I'm happy that people are getting another crack at them; Cosmos was previously a notoriously shortpacked Walmart-exclusive, and I think there are probably a number of people who passed on Origin Bumblebee as not entirely necessary when he was the only one, but maybe regret skipping him after Jazz and Wheeljack became a thing. Both were already in my collection, though, so we can move on to the Voyagers... ...which are just more package refreshes. In this case, Ramjet and Tarn. Ramjet I kind of get; he was previously part of a store-exclusive two-pack with Dirge, and Dirge himself was part of a package refresh not so long ago in Legacy Evolution. I think that begs the question, though, what about Thrust? I recall him being the most difficult of the Coneheads to acquire by far. Perhaps he could have replaced Tarn in this very wave, because his inclusion is a real head-scratcher for me. He wasn't some kind of store-exclusive before, he already had a retail release less than two years ago in Legacy Evolution. I've heard some people complain that he was hard to find at retail... was it really that bad though? I recall him shelfwarming at my local Walmart and Target. But, even if you did miss his retail release, there was the Target pack with the moderately-redecoed Cyberverse Tarn, along with Tarnatulas, and Squeezeplay, fighting Prime Cliffjumper. A set that, despite many people buying it just for Squeezeplay, appears to be shelfwarming because I've been to two different Targets since the weekend and both still had stock. So, yeah, I guess I'd recommend Ramjet and Tarn if you don't have them yet, but in the back of my mind I'm pretty sure if you wanted Tarn you already got him. And that brings us to the Leaders. So we've got Overcharge, a redeco of Blitzwing with a barely-retooled head that's based on the Diaclone version of the G1 toy. His accessories are the same; a sword, two rifles, and those stupid Hulk hands. As was the case with Blitzwing, the tank mode is passable if you can ignore the cartoon-accurate cockpit sticking out the front. But the jet mode is still absolute trash, and the Hulk hands are a waste of plastic. I sincerely hope that if the team ever takes another crack at Blitzwing, maybe in Studio Series, that they spend the money on his abundance of accessories on better engineering. You should pass on Overcharge; I only bought him because I've bought all the Diaclone repaints so far, and Overcharge is the first one that's making me question my life's decisions. But hey, at least Overcharge looks passably good in two out of three modes! Because the second Leader and final figure in the wave is one more package refresh, Galaxy Shuttle. Galaxy Shuttle, you may recall, was a repaint of Astrotrain as the Autobot from Victory, ostensibly as part of the same Walmart-exclusive line Comsos was in, but with an even spottier release that made him even harder to get. So I should be saying again that I'm glad for the people who missed him the first time, except that I strongly feel those people are better off missing him again. Galaxy Shuttle sucks. Even if I thought Astrotrain was a great figure he'd be a poor fit for Galaxy Shuttle. He's missing the engine bells in the heels, the gun that's his vertical stabilizer, and the shuttle nose that's supposed to be his more prominent torso feature. But maybe those are acceptable sacrifices in your book to bring a more obscure Japanese character to retail. Well, the Astrotrain figure he's repainted from is NOT a great figure. The bot mode was ok, but BOTH alt modes sucked. The shuttle mode had a gappy, unfinished look to the rear, while the train mode looks like it's giving birth to a smaller train; the wheels don't even line up! When Legacy began with figures like G2 Laser Prime, Kickback, and Dragstrip I was pretty excited for what was to come. In hindsight, though, I think Legacy got worse as it went on, burying us with repaints and retools, some of which were head-scratchers in the first place (Chromia), others that were poorly planned in ways that caused both versions to suffer (Sideburn and Shadowstriker), and wasting new-mold cash on characters like Rescue Bots Chase and Detritus while delivering disappointingly lazy remolds for characters like Breakdown and straight up ignoring season 1 characters like Windcharger. Right now, I'm excited for Age of the Primes, but I sincerely hope it doesn't fizzle out the way Legacy did. This last wave of United isn't Legacy ending on a bang... it's more like ending on a wet fart.
  2. mikeszekely
    I think TFA Omega is a good choice for a figure to be made one way or the other, but I don't think I'm in for him. I swore Tidal Wave is the only Titan they could get me to buy after Nemesis, and I'd have stuck with that if they hadn't made smaller, cheaper Titans like Star Convoy.
  3. mikeszekely
    I feel like the safe bet is RiD Megatron to go with Omega Prime, but at the same time I'm not sure why you couldn't do him with a retail Commander-class. Maybe a box set with Slapper, Gas Skunk, and Dark Scream? I dunno, I have enough stuff to be excited for, I'm half hoping it's something I don't want, so I don't have to worry about scraping together a bunch of money for a toy I won't see for another year+ anyway.
  4. mikeszekely
    Dunno if this got lost along the way, but Hasbro says they're announcing the next Transformers HasLab at Megacon, which runs from February 6-9th.
  5. mikeszekely
    I preordered everything but Jazz and Shockwave, since they're package refreshes, and Trypticon, because despite the recolor being more animation accurate I can't justify $200 on him when I'm pretty happy with the original release. That said, the original one was super cheap at Burlington at one point... maybe I'll get lucky and the repaint will, too.
  6. mikeszekely
    I'm thinking probably not. For one, when you change up too much stuff just for the sake of being different you run the risk of the end result being unrecognizable. Two, I think the shape of their alt modes don't lend themselves to switching places as much. That's definitely the sort of engineering challenge that can be overcome with enough transformational origami, but that would come with the more complex engineering of someone like DreamStar Toys, which seems to run counter to Mecha Invasion's style. And third, Devastator's traditional purple chest shield covers up a lot of what goes on in his torso anyway, so even if they did flip them there's a chance it might not have made much visual impact anyway unless you ditched the chest, but that would bring me to back to the first point. Frankly, I think even switching the limbs was less about originality and more about the ease of doing an all-in-one design. Traditionally Devastator has needed not just hands but whole forearms to be partsformed. Scrapper and Mixmaster's longer alt modes and room for hand storage lend themselves better to being arms. Meanwhile, I've seen what MI is doing with Bonecrusher and Scavenger (near as I can tell the final prototypes we done in early December, and should be ready to ship soon after CNY). They're sharing a lot of engineering, and doing a thing where their treads are folding into pretty symmetrical feet.
  7. mikeszekely
    Eh, I was going to save it for tomorrow or Monday (though I guess it technically is tomorrow now, since it's nearly 2:00am here), but I'll be busy and this guy comes in the same box as Craner, so... here's Tipper, Mecha Invasion's Long Haul. At a glance, you're probably thinking, "yeah, that's Long Haul all right." Really, the first thing that I noticed that was less-than-G1 were his colors. Rather than being almost entirely green with a silver head and black arms, the green is broken up with a black pelvis, silver thighs, green forearms, and silver hands (kind of ironic, given that the other three have black hands instead of their usual green, then the first guy that should have black hands is the first guy that doesn't). There's also some painted details like the silver trim around his feet... I dig it, it looks like treads on boots. Tipper is more jacked than G1 Long Haul, but without the dumpy proportions of Combiner Wars Long Haul or even his GT counterpart here. Anyway... I'm embarrassed to say that I didn't really notice it until I had him in hand, but Tipper's chest isn't the usual truck grill you'd find on a more G1 Long Haul. You know who else didn't have a truck grill for a chest? Bayverse Long Haul. Bayverse Long Haul also had his wheels on the backs of his shoulders or shoulder blades (kind of both, they're big tires). Which is exactly what we find on Tipper. While we're at it, on Bayverse Long Haul part of the bed flap that stick out over the cab sat behind his head in bot mode. And yep, we're doing that on Tipper, too. So I feel like we're getting back to the mix of G1 and Bayverse that was missing from Craner. While we're focused on his back, you'll note that the hollowed-out plastic on his fists. Guess Hasbro's the not the only ones cutting costs by cutting plastic. Tipper gets this gun, which is decidedly less phallic than Craner's. No real complaints here. Tipper's head is on a ball joint with good upward and sideways tilt, but downward tilt's a little limited. Of course it swivels, too, but he's got a bit less clearance so he only gets about 45 degrees in either direction comfortably, and maybe 90 if his head is tilted up as much as it goes and you don't mind his chin scraping the raised bits near his shoulders. Speaking of shoulders, just like the other three he's got rotation and 90 degrees of lateral movement, but the lateral movement comes from a transformation joint on the wrong side of the swivel, giving him "Hot Rod Shoulders." His biceps swivel, his elbows bend over 90 degrees, and his wrists swivel. His waist swivels, and like Craner he's got no ab crunch. His hips go forward 90 degrees, backward a little less than that due to some kibble getting in the way, and over 90 degrees laterally, all on strong ratchets. His thighs swivel. His knees bend 90 degrees on ratchets. His feet can tilt down, but not up, and he's got nearly 90 degrees of ankle pivot. And just like the previous three, the peg handle of his gun fits into the hole of his non-articulated fist. It's cute how tiny his gun looks in his hand, given that it's not actually that much different in size than the others. Also like the other three he's got light-up eyes that are turned on/off via a magnet in his gun. Tipper's transformation, at least between bot and truck, is a return to the simple, satisfying engineering experienced with Loader and Mixer. I've heard some complaints that, like Craner, bits of the alt mode are prone to coming untabbed, but that hasn't been my experience at all. Tipper's a solid dump truck that could be used to bludgeon someone. Much like Craner, I can't find a specific make and model for Tipper's alt mode, though I think it's mostly me Liebherr vibes. That said, with it's tall, flat face and the ladder/stairs it's clearly meant to be a larger mining-type hauler rather than the G1 Long Haul's much smaller Hitatchi truck, which is certainly in line with Bayverse Long Haul's Caterpillar 773B mode. From the front and sides I think it mostly looks pretty good, though why they didn't paint the ladder on the side of the grill to match the stairs going across it is a bit of a head-scratcher. Things are a little messier at the back, specifically in the bed. To be fair, though, I think it's a better than GT's Long Haul. Tipper at least has some room in his bed, whereas GT's couldn't even contain all of his own kibble. And while Tipper rolls great on his big rubber tires his bed isn't articulated. No tipping for Tipper. Tipper does have storage for his weapon, though. On the underside, between his silver thighs, you'll find a black flap. Open it, and you can see a slot on the underside of Tipper's crotch. A tab on the back of his gun plugs it into that slot, then you can close the flap back over it. Tipper will form the waist, pelvis, and thighs of the combined mode, no fun surprises there. So, as with Craner, I'll cover it in a review of the entire combined mode later. This second set has turned out to be interesting, because if Craner is the weakest MI release so far, then Tipper is probably my favorite. It's not that he does anything particularly different or better than Loader or Mixer, I just think his bot mode looks the best (versus Loader, who I think is too skinny and loses something for having his bucket form his feet instead of a more traditional backpack). In any case, while not everyone has room in their heart or on their shelf for a set of stylized Constructions, I can't help but point out that Mecha Invasion's set of Hook and Long Haul run about the same as Hasbro's own Commander-class two-pack of same. And, sure, the Hasbro set comes with an additional trailer of combiner kibble for Long Haul to pull, Mecha Invasion's Constructicons are significantly bigger. That isn't to say that one is necessarily better than the other (I'll be getting Hasbro's, too), just that for a 3rd party product where normally just one of the two would cost even more, MI's Constructions are still a great value for sturdy, solid, extremely playable figures. Tipper, like Craner, Loader, and Mixer, is an easy recommend, and I can't wait for the third set (which will very likely be out by spring).
  8. mikeszekely
    As much as I enjoyed checking out a design that looks as cool as Dream Star Toys' Shovel Fighter, I'd be lying if I told you I wasn't more excited to check out the second set of Mecha Invasion's boys... which I'm going to do now, starting with Craner, their version of Hook. Compared to Loader and Mixer (aka Scrapper and Mixmaster), Craner's design is pretty conventional. He's got the flat head, purple torso, (mostly) green arms with wheels on the elbows, purple torso, silver thighs, and silver toes of Sunbow Hook. His shins are green, like the toy, and he's got a big-ol crane boom on his back like both. The biggest divergence from G1 are his shins, though. Rather than the silver lumps with a cab on his left foot of the cartoon, or the green slabs which also had a cab on the left one, Craner's shins are kind of backward; they're the underside of his alt mode (with guards and stabilizers folded over his knees). Meanwhile, the cab that's usually on the front of his left leg is actually on the back of his right leg. There are some other, minor differences... he doesn't have that shelf over his shoulders that G1 Hook does, and the wheels on the sides of his shoulders are on the back. On the whole, though, it's probably even less stylized than the Generation Toy version. When I reviewed Loader and Mixer, I noted that they had several Bayverse influences, almost like they were G1/Bayverse hybrids. So it stands to reason that Craner would have to be more traditionally G1- there really isn't a Bayverse Hook to drawn on. Craner's weapon is this... unfortunate-looking gun. Seriously, is this review going to need a NSFW tag? It's even worse when I point out that the silver barrel can collapse into the black stock. Craner's articulation is pretty much on par for the set. His head's on a ball joint with decent up/down/sideways tilt. His shoulders rotate and you can tell that the designer had the same "use the hinge in the chest" mentality that gave the Loader and Mixer 90 degrees of "Hot Rod Shoulders," but due to his transformation he does have maybe 45 degrees of proper lateral shoulder movement. His biceps swivel, and his elbows bend a little over 90 degrees. His wrists swivel; there's an additional hinge mid-forearm that swings inward, to help his fists clear the gas tanks on the outsides of his arms. His waist swivels. No ab crunch this time. His hips can go a little over 90 degrees forward with his hip skirts on swivels to get out of the way, and a little under 90 degrees backward due to his backpack. They ratchet laterally a little over 90 degrees. His thigs swivel, and his knees bend 90 degrees on ratchets. His toes can tilt down due to how they transform, but not up. He's got about 60 degrees of ankle pivot. Craner can hold his sex toy gun in either hand by simply plugging the 5mm port handle into either fist. And just like the previous two, his eyes have a light up gimmick. This time the batteries were included, but it works exactly the same- insert the battery into the LED module, stuff the module into his head, put the cover over it, and turn it on/off using a magnet in his gun. Craner has a little trick up his sleeve. Where other Hooks simply have the boom dangling from his back, Craner's can flip over his shoulder. There's a scope that folds out from the side of his boom, and a cannon folds out from the underside and plugs into the front, giving him a massive shoulder cannon. That'll teach you to make fun of his gun! From the waist up, Craner's transformation is just as simple as Loader and Mixer's. From the waist down it feels like there's a bit more origami going on with the panels in his legs, but it's nothing too difficult. That said, going from truck to robot is going to be a bit more frustrating, and his toes seem very difficult to flip out on my copy. G1 Hook's Nissan UNIC crane truck mode has never been particularly exciting, and G1 Hook's particular version of it loses at lot of what details the actual truck does have. So I appreciate some touches like the silver skid plate between the cab and the crane controls, the metal fuel tanks, and the stabilizers. And I don't even mind that Craner's cab and crane controls are on the opposite side as G1 Hook's (but, it kind of makes sense, Hook being based on a Japanese crane would have the cab on right, because Japanese drive on the left, but a Chinese company like Mecha Invasion would put the cab on the left because Chinese (like Americans) drive on the right). But I have to be honest and say that in some ways his crane mode is a bit unrefined. Like, sure, there's a molded and painted grill, and painted headlights, but the lights molded onto hinges that stuck out from the front of the cab, and there's gaps under the front. And there rear sort of has painted taillights and even a spot that could be a license plate... on what's very obviously Craner's purple chest. Plus, while the other members of this team have been rock solid in alt mode, Craner feels just a bit less so. He's mostly fine, but if you squeeze him in certain spots things start to come undone. You can play with him, though. He rolls just fine on his rubber tires. The crane can swivel, and it moves up/down on ratchet. The boom can extend, and although there's no string or chain that can lower the hook, the hook is hinged at both ends of the black part for posing. What's more, the cannon in the boom can still be deployed while in crane mode. As for his other handheld, er, "weapon," there are tabs on either side. Retract the shaft, and there's some vacant space between his arms on the underside of the vehicle. You'll find a slot there that you can plug the gun into. With Loader and Mixer I talked about their combined modes when I did their reviews... I'm not going to do that with Craner. Mainly because, by himself, his combined mode is kind of a floppy mess. He needs a friend to latch on to. But also because, unlike Loader and Mixer shattering your expectations by becoming arms instead of legs, Craner isn't really doing anything unusual here. He's forming the upper torso and and head of the gestalt. So, after the third set is released, I'll do a review just for the whole combiner, and we'll talk more about it then. For now, all I'll say is that the there's no partsforming. The combined head is inside Craner... actually, the black details on Craner's abs are actually the top of the head! So far, Craner is probably my least favorite of the set. That's not to say he's bad! He's just less good, I guess. His alt mode is just a little less refined, his transformation isn't quite as smooth (though, again, that's relative to the rest of this set... it's still a breeze compared to most 3P toys!), and there's just a few more little annoyances like his toes being hard to get out and his chest not staying tabbed in when you handle him. But also, we're talking about a fun, solid toy that comes with another figure (who we'll be looking at very soon) for just $90... that's two guys for less than one of Dream Star Toys' or X-Transbots' Constructicons, or all four released so far for less than just Fans Toys' Scrapper. Craner's very much worth the prices of admission, so he gets a recommend from me.
  9. mikeszekely
    Yes. But we should be able to confidently say that it's some upgrade in raw performance without DLSS and Frame Gen over a 3070. Because, even if it's native performance is only on par with a 4070, the 4070 was already on par with the 3080.
  10. mikeszekely
    I'm happy for the Beast Wars fans that are one step closer to completing their Season 1 cast, but I'm personally not doing MP Beast Wars. I'm curious about Predaking, but it's going to depend on a couple of factors... just how big is it? How do the individual bots look? What kind of price are we talking? And Basara Prime... yeesh. Jet or truck? It's got a head that's a hybrid of Prime and the Fire Valk, with the Fire' Valk's hips for shoulder pads? But the usual Prime truck-window boobs? And I can't shake the notion that I've seen that chest, with those shapes for the windows and that corkscrew between them, somewhere before...
  11. mikeszekely
    It's a newer Micro SD standard. Basically means faster read/write.
  12. mikeszekely
    Plus their PR team mentioned "potential" layoffs. When PR says "potential" you should read that as "definite." I can't help but be curious how they got to this state. Usually an engine switch mid-development (which, like I said, results in cancellations more than anything else) is brought on by scope creep, publisher interference, licensor interference, or the game turning out so bad that they go back to the drawing board. I know it's kind of morbid (and I do feel for the dev team), but I sincerely hope Matt McMuscles eventually does a "What Happened?" about Reactivate. Also, I still want a toy of the Megatron they designed for the game.
  13. mikeszekely
    Based on the reference card, a 5070ti should fit in your case and you probably won't need a PSU upgrade, though you'll be bumping up against the limit. Anything more than that and you'll have to check the measurements for the specific vendor's card, and you'll definitely have to upgrade the PSU along with it.
  14. mikeszekely
    A few months ago, when I reviewed the first set of Mecha Invasion Constructions (set 2 is on the way, BTW), I said that I was like 75% sure that Mecha Invasion was Generation Toy. But apparently they're not the only ones! And you want to know the weird part? After doing the Constructicons (well, technically after their Protectobots) GT split apart, and both of their offshoots are doing more Constructicons. Given that I've already decided that I'm in for Mecha Invasion, MMC, and Hasbro's own Constructicons on top of already owning a bunch of other Devastators, do I really need another one? Maybe not, but Scrapper's my favorite Constructicon, so I figured I'd at least take a look at Shovel Fighter, Dream Star Toys take on him. Yeah, apparently Dream Star Toys is also a GT spinoff. I didn't pay attention to them before because, frankly, the Aerialbots are one of my least favorite combiner teams and I wasn't interested in owning a set of super-stylized versions of them. Ironically, with MMC's pending Constructicons filling my MP Sunbow niche the fact that DST's Scrapper is so stylized is exactly what attracted me to him. With the shovel on his back, large shoulder wheels, and largely purple torso with green limbs, he's arguably more G1 than Mecha Invasion's "what if Bayverse was more G1-ish?" take, but the boxy nature of the actual G1 design has been given the more organic shapes of Don Figueroa's IDW-era work (though I should point out that this is NOT Scrapper's IDW design). His size, heft, and gorgeous metallic paint give him more of a "premium" look and shelf presence than his GT and MI cousins. I'm not without complaints, though. One of my bigger gripes is the kibble on his back. I mean, yeah, there's the shovel... that's part of Scrapper's design and I'm content giving it a pass. But there's a second set of hinged up bits coming off his butt (it's actually the combiner joint). I'm also not keen on his eyes. There's no clear plastic on the back of his head so I assume that he has an LED and not light piping. However, the instructions make no mention of it, so I don't know what battery or batteries it takes, and I don't know if there's a physical switch I can't find or some kind of magnetic one like the Mecha Invasion guys. My other complaints are, somewhat interestingly, complaints I've had with GT's designs going all the way back to their original Devastator. There are some bits of alt mode that simply do not lock into place in bot mode. The most obvious one that's probably jumping out at you right away is the railing just sticking out of the sides of his feet, but another example are the ball-jointed calves that are just draped over the wheels. While I've compared Shovel Fighter with his relatives, I know for a lot of people Constructor has been their Devastator for the last several years as the only "MP-scale" option. Just thought I'd point out that Shovel Fighter is even bigger than ToyWorld's Scrapper. He's closer in size to MP-44 (or your 3P MP Optimus of choice). Shovel Fighter's sole accessory is this gun. The sculpt is interesting, and it's got some nice copper highlights, but the bare black plastic is decidedly less premium than the figure holding it. Shovel Fighter's head is on a hinged ball joint. He's got excellent up/down tilt, some sideways tilt, and the requisite swivel, but he can also do things like crane his neck forward or recoil in disgust. His shoulders are another one of those GT carryovers... see, they rotate on ratchets, no issue there. And they move laterally, about 90 degrees if you move the shovel on his back out of the way. But, just like GT's Scrapper, and just like MI's scrapper, the hinge for the lateral movement is in the torso, on the wrong side of the rotation, so he can't move his shoulders laterally while they're rotated. It's irritating enough on cheaper figures, but with a price range between $120-$150 I'd expect better. But I digress. His biceps swivel, and his elbows are double-jointed and bend nearly 180 degrees. His wrists swivel. His thumb is on a ball joint at the base with two addition hinged knuckles. His index finger is separate from the other three, which are molded as one piece, and the fingers all have three hinged knuckles. His waist swivels, and he's got an about 45 degrees of ab crunch. His hip skirts are on ball joints and move so his hips can go just about 90 degrees forward and backward on a soft ratchet, and over 90 degrees laterally on a stronger ratchet. His thighs swivel, and his ratcheted knees bend 90 degrees. Despite the hinged flaps over his feet, they don't tilt up or down. He's got about 45 degrees of ankle pivot. The handle on Shovel Fighter's gun has a small slot on it. That slot matches a little tab on his palm just in front of his thumb, then you can wrap his fingers around the handle. The connection seems nicely secure. Shovel Fighter's transformation is fairly interesting in the way his arms end up underneath, the way his torso kind of turns inside out to form the cab, and the way his legs and feet also turn inside out to wrap around his body and form the back of the vehicle. Interesting, but also kind of annoying. The instructions aren't always super clear, and a lot of the transformation is splaying him out in a bunch of dangling bits, rearranging those bits, and not tabbing things together again until near the end. That said, once everything is tabbed together the resulting vehicle is fairly solid. I'm not an expert on wheel loaders and I don't know if Dream Star Toys had a specific model in mind for Shovel Fighter. I've seen loaders from Volvo, Komatsu, and Hyundai that are similar but not the same as this guy. It's believable as a real vehicle, though, with only a few seems and no obvious robot parts. He's compacted in this mode; while still the biggest loader on my review table, he doesn't really dwarf ToyWorld's Scrapper in this mode the way he did in bot mode. He may be too realistic, as the black railings are more annoying than helpful and I think we could have lived without them. Shovel Fighter rolls just fine on big rubber tires, and there's four hinges between the truck and the bucket of his shovel. There's a gap between his legs on the underside of the vehicle, and in that gap you can see a small tab in what was his chest. That the bottom of his gun's handle fits into that tab, with the barrel pointing toward the rear. It locks pretty solidly in place. Interestingly enough, the instructions indicate that the gun should be removed for leg mode. Yeah, DST's Scrapper isn't doing anything crazy like turning into an arm the way MI's does. The leg mode isn't quite as solid as the loader mode; some of the tabs that locked things in place are deliberately undone, I assume to give the combined mode ankle articulation. Note that this is the official transformation, but I'd imagine that you could probably find a way to position that kibble near the knee joint so that it's not just split open like a banana peel. I do kind of like how the shovel folds up into something more like a robot toe. And again, as big as Shovel Fighter's bot mode is, in leg mode it's the same size as ToyWorld's so I don't expect the combined Devastator will be much bigger than Constructor. I think DST is facing a tough sell. Most collectors are laser focused on cartoon accuracy these days, and chances are some of you are (like me) planning on buying XTransbots', Fans Toys', or MMC's Constructicons. If you're in for one of those, do you really need another Devastator? At least going with a more unique take on the Constructicons doesn't force them to compete directly... you could do one of the big three for your G1 Devastator and grab another one just because it looks cool. But then, Mecha Invasion are arguably doing more creative things with their Constructions, all well selling them in packs of two for less than one of DST's. And if you're like me and enjoy transforming and playing with your toys, the MI figures are definitely more fun. That said, I bought Shovel Fighter because he looks cool. No, he's not the most fun Scrapper to transform and play with, and no, he's not the most G1-accurate Scrapper, but he just looks really good. If you just want cool robots to pose and look good on a shelf there's a lot to like here, I think. Oh, and the next release from DST is their Hook, whose crane boom turns into a scythe. I mean, I was going to just do Scrapper as a one-off, but now I'm thinking I might be in on the whole set after all.
  15. mikeszekely
    A bit over a year ago I said that the developers announced they were starting over on a new engine and tossing out six years of development, and I'd told you then that historically that those sorts of announcements lead to cancelations, not finished product. I predicted then than Reactivate would never see the light of day. I really wish I could have been wrong this time.
  16. mikeszekely
    Hmm... no G14 with a 5070, and the one with the 5070ti is $2200. So do I go $200 over budget when I'm already also planning on doing a new desktop, or do I wait for another $1650 sale on the 2024 model with the 4070?
  17. mikeszekely
    Sometimes I hate being right.
  18. mikeszekely
    Tons of stuff leaking about the Switch 2, which is apparently the actual name. Nintendo's official announcement is supposed to be by March 31st, but some are speculating that it could be announced this month (I've heard once leaker claiming as soon as today, but we'll see), with an April release date. I'm guessing I'm in, especially if it's backwards compatible as most leaks claim. I don't play with my Switch OLED super often anymore, as I'm largely a PC gamer an my ROG Ally X handles most of my portable needs, but Nintendo still has the best first party games.
  19. mikeszekely
    Well there we go. I found Asus' Zephyrus CES announcement. Sounds like the 2025 G14 will have a Ryzen AI HX 370 and "up to an RTX 5080", with a 3K OLED display. All I need is a price and release date, but if Asus can keep a 32GB 5070 version the same price as the 2024 32GB 4070 I'm in.
  20. mikeszekely
    I get the feeling that we're starting to get to the limits of what can be done with raw rasterization... in a home setting, you can only draw so much power from the wall and dissipate so much waste heat. So no, I don't expect huge bumps in rasterization performance on the 50-series over the 40-series. Nvidia's "double the performance" and "a 5070 is equal to a 4090" claims definitely come down more to improvements in DLSS and Frame Generation than raw rasterization. That said... DLSS 3 was already pretty good, so I'm feeling pretty optimistic for DLSS 4. I'm at a point where, unless I'm really looking for issues, I don't notice the difference when I'm into the game. I'm a bit more skeptical of Frame Generation, though. For me, at least, it's definitely caused more weird graphical artifacts than DLSS alone, and those artifacts are more noticeable the lower your frame rate is. If you're only getting 30-40fps and you're trying to hit 60 you're definitely going to notice issues and will be better off turning down other settings. At higher frame rates the inserted frames are on the screen for a shorter time so issues are less noticeable, and can be used more comfortably going from, say, 90fps to 120fps. But if you're already getting 90fps that extra boost is more "nice to have" than absolute necessity. Regardless, where I stand right now I'm leaning toward paring an RTX 5070ti with one of AMD's Ryzen X3D CPUs in a desktop sometime later this year. I also want to replace my original Zephyrus G14 (Ryzen 9 4900HS with an RTX 2060 Max-Q), ideally with a newer model G14. I very nearly almost bought the 2024 version with Ryzen 9 8945HS and the RTX 4070, especially since the new OLED display would be a huge upgrade in and of itself, but I've dragged my feet for so long on that now I might as well wait a few more months and see if they stuff an RTX 5000-series GPU into one.
  21. mikeszekely
    Where I live it's hilly with lots of back roads and my wife's daily commute is 75 miles, so we jumped on the EV bandwagon- first with a Hyundai Ioniq 5, then a Kia EV9 after some clown in a pickup decided stop signs didn't apply to him. Looking at the specs it does look like the Afeela has decent specs, but the price tag (whole arguably comparable to similarly-specced EVs) is squarely in the, "no thanks, I'm still going to go with a Taycan" territory.
  22. mikeszekely
    I forgot about Sony's car. I'd like to see some actual specs, but it's a very bland-looking car with a lot of serious competition at that price range.
  23. mikeszekely
    Either way, I don't feel bad about crap upgrading from the Ally to the Ally X for features that benefitted me now instead of waiting for the Z2 Extreme for what's looking to be a pretty modest spec boost. Maybe when Z3 hits.
  24. mikeszekely
    So Nvidia's basically claiming that their 50-series cards should be around double the performance over the 40-series. It's a pretty bold claim... especially when that boost in performance seems less about raw power and more about DLSS 4 and Multi Frame Generation. Still, with an MSRP of $550 if there's any truth to Nvidia's claims I'm probably going to grab an RTX 5070. Depending on how the prices shake out on the rest of my build (time for a totally new PC, my 9th-gen i7 is turning into a bottleneck), I might even splurge the extra $200 for the 5070 Ti. But the 5080 ($1000) and 5090 ($2000) are too rich for my blood (and that's coming from a guy saving to buy a Porsche). AMD's announcements were less exciting, at least to me. A metric boatload of CPU skus with model numbers that seem purposefully designed to confuse consumers. The gist of it seems to be that there's a Zen 5 CPU for everyone, and I'm sure one of them will go into my next PC. I just need to puzzle out which one. They did announce the expected Z2 series for handheld PCs, and... it's kind of underwhelming. Like, yeah, it's definitely better than the Z1, but in a very evolutionary not revolutionary way; it sounds like the non-extreme Z2 is roughly on par with the Z1 Extreme.
  25. mikeszekely
    I love CES. It's my favorite holiday.😁
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