Alpha OTS

The wireless is separate I believe. They already have the Halo 3 Wireless Headsets and controllers out for sale. Oh, they have a Halo 3 faceplate and SKIN stickers out as well.

Are wireless headsets any good though? I've read some reviews(on ebworld, I believe) that say they're problematic, that people on the other end sometimes get a persistent loud annoying hiss, and so on. I was considering getting one for a while some time back but the online concensus kind of scared me away. Are the Halo ones any better?

On the same Skywarp streak here so…

Nothing too fancy here. I just repainted an extra 6” Titanium War Within Starscream into a custom WW Skywarp to complete my line of War Within seeker jets. Used basic acrylic paints with a semi-gloss coat. I’m a bad modeler and painter and just tried to get this one done ASAP. Took a couple days for painting, touch-up, and drying. Will try and take pics in alt-jet mode this weekend. These Titaniums are really easy to take apart, only a few screws.

Maybe you're already aware and you want the paint to dry, but I'll point it out anyway because this seems to be a common Titanium Seeker problem(which incidentally happened much much earlier in this thread too). There's a transformation step you're missing with the arms that allows for a much more aesthetically pleasing arm placement. The arms pull outwards, then downwards and then back inwards, which lowers the arms.

Nice custom!

I was late with my MP Skywarp pre-order, so BBTS hasn't shipped it out yet. I'm still debating whether I'll apply any of the stickers. I really do think it looks great with and without them, so it's making it difficult. I'm just really happy MP Skywarp doesn't give me the "Why the hell did they color it like that?" vibe that MP Starscream did.

To be fair, it's only super confusing the first time... after that it's pretty intuitive..

The guide really does help for those first couple of transformations though. This is a good topic to keep bumped.

I'm pasting this from a different board with some edits because I'm interested in what the forum people here think.

I picked up Star Trek Legacy for the 360 over a week ago. I think I had avoided it before because I had thought that it was the Star Trek Robotron title everyone was talking about at release time. After recently watching Trek 6 I thought I'd try out the 360 demo anyway because I was in a Trek mood. Boy, how did I miss this title? It's the complete opposite of 2d Robotron(not that Robotron's bad, it's just not what I was in the mood for).

If you go in expecting Wing Commander, Colony Wars or even Ace Combat, you're going to hate every second of this. The combat's set up like pre-industrial navy warships in space, which is pretty much what the battles in the movies and most of the shows were, and what I was in the mood for playing. You get your ships to circle a target and only when your ship is at the proper angle and range can it acquire a weapons lock and fire, just as if it were an old wooden ship with cannons on each side. The strategy seems to come in where you issue commands to each of the ships in your fleet, as to what their target is and management of their energy and repair systems to compensate for damage taken. You can pilot any ship, but like I said above, the control's nothing like Colony Wars. The ships turn slow and sometimes facing a foe directly isn't always the best angle of combat for that ship. The battles play out a lot like what you would see in an episode or movie, which I really like, but isn't going to be many gamer's cup of tea. I'm over 2/3's of the way through the game, and it seems the better you are at knowing where and what each ship in your fleet is doing, the easier it is to complete the mission. The default AI left on it's own isn't too bad, but I've had times where I lost track of a ship, so I toggled to it to see what it was doing and found it was just sitting there away from the battle twiddling its thumbs.

Have I mentioned the ships look fantastic? Because they do. They're all well represented, and the way the missions play out, they give you new(later era) ones to buy/fly as you progress. The planets could look a little better, but are adequate. Sound and music effects are typical Trek. Yeah, there's some wonky physics going on with ships bouncing off of each other or off of planets instead of crashing, but after playing most of this, I think it'd be really frustrating if they did crash or take damage from impact. Especially with the scout class ships which zip around pretty quickly and require really close range for weapons lock.

The biggest surprise was going through the extras. I guess this had a proper story with cinematics at one point. The story's still here, just without the cinematics and I'm kind of glad they dropped it because the stills with dialogue don't gel very well with the graphics in the gameplay. You never see any characters , but you do hear the actual captain's voice of your Trek ship and the character that is talking always has their ship is in frame. Most missions open just like your typical Trek episode with the blue Trek font mission name in quotes. Anyway, the big surprise is that V'ger created the Borg. Yep, you heard it. I had to do a double take to make sure I heard and saw what I did. Is this canon?

It was worth the $40 to me, although I'm sure I could have found it far cheaper on ebay but wasn't in the mood for waiting after playing the demo(a fool and his money and what not). Anyway, what are everyone's thoughts on it now that we're well outside the game release and most people have either tried or finished it?

List has been updated with Axelay's name. Anyone else want to be added?

Qaztab - Alpha OTS

The guy who said he'd dl Puzzle Fighter to play with me chickened out after the demo AI ate him for lunch, so I'd really like to play this with someone else and try the 3-4 player modes.

A lot of my friends who've had their units die kept their units vertical. Mine's a launch, and it's never been anything but horizontal. The only other person I know personally (sorry internet friends) who's 360 hasn't been sent back to Microsoft (not launch; maybe from six months after) also keeps his horizontal.

Quick question, for those of you who've sent some back and for those of you who are still on your first, how do you orient your unit?

I've had mine since chrimmas of last year and it's been nothing but vertical. About three months back I did buy one of those bottom clinging fans as a small bit of preventive maintenance because of all of the ring of death stories floating around. I don't know how much of a difference it makes, but I've been conscious to make sure it's well ventilated.

This movies was like a good joke told badly.

I really really like this movie, but I can't entirely disagree with the above statement. The setup's there, but the follow through just doesn't quite gel like it should. I can understand why it didn't do well in the theater.

The Shoveller lines are usually my favorites:

"God's given me a gift. I shovel well. I shovel very well."

"We've got a blind date with Destiny - and it looks like she's ordered the lobster."

" [after leaving the bar] The Shoveller is hammered!"

That said, I think it's aged well. I find I enjoy it much more on subsequent viewings. If you like this, you should probably check out "The Specials". It has the same basic premise(loser superheroes), but it has more of the follow through Mystery Men lacks. Unfortunately, it doesn't have the budget Mystery Men had. Still, you need to see Thomas Hayden Church as The Great Strobe, and hear all about Stretchy Boy.

But those designs are farting awful. They're based on PAT LEE's renditions of the two characters!

Which is why I avoided the Primes like the plague, the chest windows are hideous. The Megatron is pretty nice though.

Hasbro actually just released some wretchedly bad looking fake-Revoltech type non-transformable figures of like, Megs, BB, and Barricade.... they're supposed to be more movie accurate and articulated to make up for the non-transforming, but they look like arse....

As true as that statement is, the sad truth is that they're flying off the store pegs too just because people want deluxe sized transformers product.

When are we going to get a 6" or deluxe sized updated robot cylon figure anyway? I have no interest in the upcoming oversized one.

I have this odd impression that the wheels fold down the way they do because the designers wanted them to look like a pair of those fans that exotic dancer use.

Heh, well you can fold them so they look like a giant pair of breasts too.

I finally found her today after a long search, and she was the last of three deluxes on the pegs at an out of the way Kohl's that's in the process of becoming a Walmart. The other two deluxes were Payloads, sadly no new Bees.

She's gorgeous. They took the basics of the Energon Arcee mold, which was a decent mold on its own, and converted it into the movie aesthetic. The result simply works.

RoboCop 2 has its moments. I liked that they followed through a little with Robo literally haunting his wife. Some of the parody commercials and media bits are ok, but not near as good as the ones in the previous movie. Cain's the primary problem in human and robot mode though. There just something "cheap" about the casting and some of the set pieces, and Cain's bits dominate that feeling. Unlike ED-209, the RoboCop 2 design is just too busy, so it's difficult to focus on and appreciate the mecha scenes during initial viewings.

RoboCop 3 has a good idea at summing up the whole OCP storyline. That's the only nice thing I can say about it because it does it in such a longwinded way that it's painful to sit through especially when the title character is not the main character. Everything that was wrong with the previous movie is in full force here: poor casting with the budget being obviously low to non-existent. They even managed to make ED-209 look like the giant piece of plastic he is in real life.

I can still watch RoboCop 2 after RoboCop 1 and be entertained. It's not the classic that 1 is, but I find it watchable. In fact, I kind of caught on to what the ideas were for Robocop 2 that are difficult to understand due to bad storytelling. The thing that always bugged me about the movie was the wreckless motivation they gave for RoboCop 2 who was designed to completely eliminate the nuke drug problem in Old Detroit. This is why the leniency in it being "fueled" by nuke, which the corporate big wigs assumed was an energy convertor, but the developing scientists did because they knew that it was just a junkie's craving. RoboCop 3, OTOH, is pure cheap crap. Maybe a fan editor could remove an hour's worth of film from it and have something watchable.

Anyone have any comments on the Prime Directive series that was on sci-fi quite a whiles back? I remember it looked somewhat decent for a tv production and seemed to go back to RoboCop 1's roots.

Behold my Iron.....Giant? Not quite. Someone threw this in as a freebie on some transformer auction I won quite a whiles back. I *think* it was a Burger King toy. It's not that bad.

Is it just me or does everything in these pictures look way too bright?

Superman was probably the first, and he's set the mold in many ways. I'd figure the bigger reason for the lack of detail was back then they really didn't want to spend that much time drawning Batman if they didn't have to. His costume should be rationally stealthy, meaning features should be hidden not embellished.

In the Dark Knight Returns, the reasoning for the yellow bat symbol on the chest was so that if anyone were to shoot at him, they'd aim and shoot there: the only place on the bat suit with bulletproofing. Or so I remember....

I like owning physical media.

So do I. I don't think that factor's going to change much for me any time soon either. This will sound nerdy, but my dvd shelf is an expression of my personality.

As always I'm late to the party. I DL'ed Bioshock over the weekend and played through the demo. Is it just me or did the demo kind of end right in the middle of something?

It wasn't just you. That was my only complaint about the demo. They kick you out of it just when it's getting good. Then they go and show you these cool things that you can't do in the demo. The evil bastards.

Well, since MICHAEL BAY's Transformers is A MICHAEL BAY FILM PRESENTED by MICHAEL BAY, but Spielburg is exec producer---where does that fall in the Paramount decision? Because honestly, I want to have a HDTV by the time and for Transformers to come out---and the format it comes out on will GREATLY affect whether I try to snag a PS3 by the end of the year.

PS-- http://www.lilformers.com/comic0051.php

Word on the allspark is that it's an HD-DVD exclusive. For how long? Who knows. But it's steered me towards an HD-DVD attachment for the 360 for now.

Edit: Found the link at tformers.com click here to go there.

Ok, that 360 HD-DVD special.

I just noticed that if you buy an 360 HD-DVD player from bestbuy.com, they'll give you 300 the HD movie for free. This is just a bestbuy offer, right? And it won't make someone ineligible for that 5 free HD movies offer, will it? Anyone try this or have found a better deal?

"No! Not the bore worms!!"

Going through the extras right now. Alex Ross talks about the film and pretty much states word for word how I feel about the film, only eloquently. I agree. It should probably be reclassified as a rock opera. There's another interview with the screenwriter which is interesting, but he doesn't capture how I feel about the movie as well as Ross does.

Watching the original Buster Crabbe episode now which has much of the same intro storyline as the movie. It's kind of erie how much Sam Jones looks like Buster Crabbe. I remember watching PBS as a kid because it was the only way I could get more "Flash Gordon". Yeah, you had to use your imagination, much like Dr. Who of the time only more-so, but I remember it being fun. Actually it's still fun seeing the dinosaurs of mongol which are live iguanas with glued on horns. It's a good extra because you really appreciate how much the 1980 film references the serial costume and ship designs among other things.

The worst extra? The trailer for the new tv series. If you could call it a trailer. All it is is the "Flash Gordon" logo rotating into view. That's it. Nothing else. I had thought part of the reason for the 1980 re-release was to promote the new tv series. Unless it's that bad that the camp doesn't save it.

This was a really good purchase. I'm very happy with the dvd.

I agree, Wreckage is the best of the TF Movie Deluxe molds I have so far.

I dislike him heavily, and most of that has to do with the colors, especially the red. And I had enough of that translucent weapon nonsense from the Energon line. Having it in the chest only makes it worse. The weapons always look so much better when they're solid and metal colored. Even the Target Energon repaints' weapons look better with the translucency diminished.

Hopefully they'll repaint it into something that fits a little better with the movie line's aesthetic. If he was put out as he was originally concieved, that'd be right up my alley.

My walmart did get a few new things in like the Ultimate BB, but, Frakking Spiderman 3 is STILL taking up a good portion of the isle

Chris

On the upside, it's pretty easy to take the Doctor Octopus claws from the figure in that Spidey line and carve them down a bit so they'll give your Voyager Starscream or FAB Megatron actual hands.

Yeowzer. Watching it now upscaled on my 1080p 42" lcd, and I have to say, this is one nice transfer for a standard dvd. I'm surprised at how crisp it looks. The packaging is surprisingly nice too. Someone actually cared about putting a quality product out to market.

The only thing I don't like is that I can clearly see all the imperfections of the special effects. When Zarkov's ship flies into Ming's world, you can clearly see the "box" surrounding the ship for that effect like most space ship sequences from that era.

Boy, is this thing full of one-liners. It's better than I remembered.

"Klytus, are your men on the right pills? Maybe you should execute their trainer."

Where did you get that real nice display case and about how much did it cost?

The collection is awesome, btw, but that goes without saying.

I have downloaded it and played thru it. Nice Demo.

I only have one negative thing to say about it.

When the demo is at its best is when it ends. And then they go and add insult to injury by showing you things you want to do in the demo but can't unless you have the full game. It's evil! Evil, I say!