Chronocidal

I want a no paint kit version, and I can be happy, because I can buy twice as many if I put them together myself.

I want to say no, but I haven't tested that myself. The toe and heel have two stable positions that they click into, but I don't think the hinges have any sort of tension to them that would support the weight of any poses that use intermediate positions.

I'll repost this here for an illustration. I was really careful not to spread the ankle joint when I did this, and this is about as far as the ankle will go. I moved the ankle only to the point where it looked like the ankle shaft was starting to press on the rim of the ball joint, and this is how far it moved. Compared with every other ankle Yamato has made, it has almost no range of motion at all. I'm hoping they can improve this somewhat on the VF-19, but I don't have my hopes up. And I really hope they don't make this same mistake on the VF-17. Good thing I like fighter mode more anyway.

It's not like there isn't a precedent set for this.. I don't remember Hikaru ever getting an instruction manual. As far as the VF-17T is concerned, the changes would be a little more drastic than the VF-19s. Unless they somehow can elongate the cockpit backwards (which I don't think is accurate, because I remember the nose being longer), the entire chest area will need to be reworked to cover the bigger canopy. The nose length itself

I'd rather the developers quit trying to figure out every single way they can to squeeze more money out of the people buying the games. Remember when games came complete when you bought them? The hilarious thing was when hawx tried to do DLC.. and then made a PC release. Modders figured out how to unlock the extra content within a few days, and the developers quickly banned anyone who mentioned this from the developer forums on Ubisoft's website. Officially, the PC version never even got the extra content released. Once the mod was spread, they gave up. Yeahh... that dev team had some serious issues with understanding the differences between consoles and PCs. It's why I generally prefer PC games.. the fans will ALWAYS find ways to improve on what the developers have done. Even hawx got a lot better after the players got past all the WTF from when they tried to play it. I just want DLC to freaking die already. Expansions, I can understand. Charging me $5 just so I can fly a plane that's been in all the previous games? Not a chance in hell.

Here's an idea. Let's redub the entire movie so the only thing anyone ever says is, "NOOOOOOOOO!" It'll be a hit!

Glad I actually got a preorder in.. but I have to point out one thing about those pictures... Is Bandai just completely inept at making plastic FLAT? Why the hell are the wings curled up AGAIN????? They're not as bad as the first run obviously, but it's very clear those wings are anything but level. Someone at Bandai needs to be slapped upside the head with a book on how plastic behaves when it cools, because it seems like they don't have a clue.

Oh of course not, but it's rather entertaining to try and explain away all the inconsistencies. We all know GL lost it somewhere along the way, but we can still delude ourselves into thinking it all makes sense somehow. It helps the workday go faster, in any case. Anyhow, regardless of it being worthwhile to do, I just have no trouble imagining that Palpy would have wiped the Lars family off the map for the lulz, just because they were connected.

Exactly.. in fact, that's what surprised me. Whether the Lars family posed a direct threat to Vader or not, I'm surprised Palpatine didn't see them as a loose end to be tied up. Plus, given their relation to Anakin, I'd think they'd be on the list of places to check for potential force sensitive children to corrupt. While they never said whether Anakin's relatives had potential or not, I'd think they'd at least be on the radar when the great jedi hunt began, and they probably would've taken Luke. Maybe part of the reason Obi-wan hung around was to act as a force jammer? I mean, it's certainly possible to mask force power/sensitivity, considering how long Palpatine did it right under the noses of the jedi council.

That option is still there in the Xbox demo, but they borked it up something awful. In exterior view, the camera does track your target, but it also zooms in so close to your own aircraft that it fills the screen, and you can't even see your target. It's slightly better in the cockpit view, but honestly, the padlock view is much better in aircraft with some sort of canopy frame to use as a reference point. The F-22's huge bubble dome canopy has no reference point to keep you aware of which way you're facing, and it's pretty disorienting. And since they tend to severely restrict how far you can move your head in cockpit view (can't have you looking down into the cockpit and see they were too lazy to actually model it), your view tends to get stuck at the limits of how far it can move.

Seconded. Hell, I've been waiting for things to come full circle, and give us a new X-Wing game series based on the books. Likely won't happen, but if we ever get a new X-Wing game, I'd settle for a well written fan campaign. In terms of the EU, it's definitely been hit or miss, and there have been some real oddballs (the Luke/Callista thing never should have happened, those books were an overdose of WTF), but in general, I think anything Zahn/Stackpole/Allston up to the NJO books is stuff I've thoroughly enjoyed. As for Vader not thinking to look for Luke and Leia, it is true, he shouldn't have really had any reason to look for them, since he wouldn't know they'd survived. But that still doesn't explain how they managed to raise Luke for 18 some odd years there, and never come under Vader's eye. Unless Anakin truly gave up looking for Obi-wan, or was content to just let him live out his life in exile, I don't see how the Lars homestead wasn't blown off the map years earlier. May not have been the first place Vader would have gone looking for Obi-wan, but how he never got around to checking there seems odd. Then again.. now that I think of it, Obi-wan never actually visited there before dropping off Luke, did he? While he was there in EpI, he never went near that spot on the planet, and while Anakin and Padme went there in EpII, Obi-wan was off chasing the Fetts. Still surprises me a little Vader never made a housecall there looking for potential jedi, but I guess he may not have considered anyone there to be any threat to him.

Ok, if you want to get really picky, I think the lines went like this... ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Obi-wan: What brings you out this far? Luke: This little droid. Seems to be searching for his former master, but I've never seen such devotion in a droid before. He claims to be the property of an Obi-wan Kenobi. Is he a relative of yours, do you know what he's talking about? Obi-wan: Obi-wan Kenobi.. now that's a name I have not heard in a long time.. a long time. Luke: I think my uncle knows him. He said he was dead. Obi-wan: Oh he's not dead... not yet. Luke: Then you know him? Obi-wan: Well of course I know him, he's me. (Artoo seems surprised for some reason, that is a problem.) Obi-wan: I haven't gone by the name of Obi-wan since, oh, before you were born. Luke: Well, then the droid does belong to you. Obi-wan: I don't seem to remember ever owning a droid.. very interesting. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yeah, I scare myself with how much of the movies I can recite. I don't see an issue with Obi-wan's lines, because technically, he never did own a droid, not these two at least. Threepio was built and owned by Anakin, then by the Lars family when his mother was freed, then back to Anakin in EpII, then Captain Antilles in EpIII, then back to the Lars family again in EpIV. Artoo was property of the Naboo government, and became attached to Padme and Anakin in EpI. I don't recall whether he was with Padme or Anakin at the beginning of EpII, but he was with them the entire movie. By EpIII, he was attached to Anakin as his copilot, and stayed with Padme when Anakin went all evil. At that point, he wasn't really owned by anyone, but Obi-wan turned him over to Captain Antilles when Padme died. After that, he went along with Threepio to the Lars family. It's probably splitting hairs, but if you consider them owned by Anakin and Padme at the end of EpIII, they'd be passed down to Luke and Leia, and in the interim, Bail Organa was the one who turned them over to Captain Antilles. There's just huge glaring problem with all of this though. Artoo didn't have his memory erased.. not right away at least. He must have at some point though for anything to work, or he would have known everything. Leia obviously didn't know much about who Obi-Wan was, but there's no excuse for Artoo not to. Maybe they just relied on the fact that he couldn't actually talk? See.. I get the feeling that GL wanted to paint this picture of a huge grand epic plan to save the galaxy, all hinging on Anakin and Padme's kids. But the evidence of that just isn't there in the OT, because it obviously hadn't been planned that way originally. For instance.. Obi-wan and Bail Organa specifically split up Luke and Leia to protect them. Were they going to be reunited to fix things? Or did they plan on just hiding forever? Also, there is no way in hell Obi-wan was unaware of who Leia was in EpIV, and he saw her reunited with Luke right before he died... yet when talking with Yoda, he's all "That boy was our last hope," and Yoda has to remind him about Leia... whom he helped rescue. WTF? The comment Leia made about her mother always made perfect sense to me, but I admit I had really had expected Padme to survive EpIII due to that line. It still works when you consider she would only remember her adopted mother anyway though. Leia was raised as though she were their own child, while Luke was just raised all along as if his parents had both died. What I found funny about that situation was that for a while I think the EU considered Owen and Beru Lars to be friends of Obi-wan that he turned Luke over to. For better or for worse, GL connected the dots to make them his actual aunt and uncle. The only thing I think actually did work out well with the whole grand scheme bit though.. Anakin was the one who brought balance to the force. He just took the longest possible route to get there. ....and after re-reading what I just wrote, I realized something. Good grief do I ever need to get a life.

Original, the reissues used a plastic with an entirely different texture to the originals. It's why I think they simply got the mixture wrong for that particular material. Actually I bought it from someone here, and already knew about the shoulders, but the knees were a total surprise. I never really heard about knees shattering for anyone, but they're much more sturdy due to the amount of material used in them. The shoulders were much more finely molded, and used a lot thinner plastic, so they were very quick to fall apart.

Mmmm... I seriously doubt that any amount of chemical reaction to rubber would cause the damage I saw on my VF-0A. When I disassembled the knees, they were shattered. They were criss-crossed with a spider web pattern of stress marks that no amount of contact with rubber could have possibly caused. If chemical reactions were involved, they most likely occurred when they were mixing that batch of plastic. Maybe it was the molding process, maybe it was the way they were cooled or filled, or what have you, but that plastic had more in common with obsidian in the way it sheared apart than any plastic I've ever seen.

I admit, I probably would still like and buy it if that wasn't required, but it's not like Namdai is going to change it now (it sounds better than Banco ). If it turns out that you don't need it, I'll eagerly grab a copy, but given the way it's treated in the demo, I sincerely doubt you'll be able to play the game without having to rely on the splatter cam. Main reason is this: if they went to the trouble to make all those close-up explosion cutscenes, and all those scripted mission events having you fly through high-rise buildings, you don't honestly think they're going to let you beat the mission the way you want to beat it, do you? You can't finish the demo mission without using the camera, because otherwise you never trigger the ending event cutscene. I must have blown away an hour of my life trying to destroy the last plane manually, only to find out it wasn't going to die unless I engaged him in cutscene mode. Also, I can't really put into words what I felt when I saw the ad in Gamestop yesterday for the pre-order bonus (letting you fly an F-4)... Actually, yes I can put it into words. But they are not fit for hearing by any human being, and I know a good number of sailors who would blush, cringe, and shield their groins in fear if I were to utter them aloud. DLC can go #$(*& the @#$% and #$*$#) itself in the #$)#$&* to #$)#($*# fire hydrant #$#)$ with a @#$)(*$ winnebago #$#&@ $#$$#) and #$)#$* in the #$)@#* with $#$#)#$* scientologist %#$$*#) #$#$)#*( through #$)#$#)* in the head.

"Yo hey man, I heard you're selling a new VF-19... would you take 2 goats and a Rhode Island red for her?"

Youch. That's pretty much exactly what my YF-19 shoulders did, but Graham's break is a bit more severe. The main thing I see though is that the screw shaft just completely sheared off the half of the shoulder it was attached to, just like mine did. Really just a terrible design. I had to repair mine the same way, but my shoulders never got enough tension back to support any weight. Essentially, in order to fix this, you have to fuse the entire upper shoulder together with glue around the pivot. Given the time the YF-19 came out, it really doesn't surprise me that the materials seem very similar to the VF-0 brand explodium. In fact, not just the shoulders and knees, but a large portion of the body of the YF-19 has the same texture as that plastic that tends to disintegrate. Notably on mine, the hip areas have several stress marks around where the ball joint inserts are mounted. I also remember hearing of people having odd fractures in the upper chest plate, supposedly caused by too much squeezing the hips and wing mounts together in fighter mode. Then there's those infamous little brackets in the forward fuselage that a lot of people had break.. In general though, the VF-0 and YF-19 are the only Yamato valks I can recall that ever used this type of plastic (it's close to the plastic used on the 1/48ths, but not quite the same). By the time the SV-51 and YF-21 came out, the plastic quality had improved a lot, and everything since the v.2 VF-1 has felt to me like it used a much higher quality plastic in general. Specifically in the case of the new VF-19, the shoulders feel much better, despite using a very similar construction. The plastic has a nice shine to it, and it feels very different compared with the YF-19's shoulders. I'm still concerned about the construction itself, seeing as how shoulders built that way can fail so badly on the YF-19, but only time will tell in this case, since the plastic doesn't seem prone to spontaneously disintegrating.

I'm talking real life in this particular case. Ace Combat in the past has taken what I think are acceptible shortcuts with this, due to the fact that no one wants to be flying around staring at a radar screen for all your info, and launching missiles 10-50 miles away. That's generally how -actual- air combat tactics work. AC has usually taken the approach Top Gun and other aircraft movies do, condensing the battlefield fo fit on a screeen. It's essentially applying classic WWI-WWII combat tactics to modern aircraft, and in general, gun ranges have always seemed relatively accurate, even if the missiles would never have time to track at the ranges they're fired at. In most cases, the only reason you'd ever be close enough to even recognize paint schemes on an aircraft is due to various conflict's rules of engagement. With this game, they seem to be going with the "Don't shoot until you see the whites of the pilot's eyes" method. Forget fitting the battle on a screen, you're so close you can't even see around your own aircraft to ID the target.

The western market/audience needs to shove it. I'm really fairly sick of everything they seem to find fun, which is why I've been looking so hard at foreign games. For instance.. just because zombie massacre games are popular does not mean you remake every game to cater to that audience. Just wait. We already have zombies thrown in absolutely unrelated material like Pride and Prejudice.. The next AC game will probably take place during World War Z. Yeesh. It's like the game industry is joined at the hip to Hollywood (which, really, they pretty much are), and caught the same disease causing an absolute lack of creativity. Honestly.. the bottom line here is that trying to give a more "up close and personal" feel to air combat is the like trying to mow your lawn with a bowling pin: it doesn't make any freaking sense whatsoever. Air combat is the most detached and long distance type of warfare on earth, short of using ICBMs. In the modern battlefield, if you ever even get within visual range of an enemy aircraft, it's because something has gone terribly, horribly wrong. Steel carnage" needs to burn like the debris it generates, and choke on it like the engines of any aircraft would from that kind of crap in the airstream.

The YF-19 I got had this in both arms. The shoulders appear to be made of the same material as the old VF-0 shoulders, with approximately the same effect. Specifically, the little shafts on one half that the screw goes into just sheared off at the base, allowing the shoulders to completely collapse. I was able to get them to stick together by essentially dunking the shoulders in superglue, but neither shoulder will support any weight. The one thing about the VF-19 that bothers me the most is that it uses the same sort of shoulder design. The material looks much more sturdy, and doesn't have the texture of the VF-0 shoulders, but relying on a single screw to both hold the shoulder together and provide tension still has me worried.

I'd be a lot more pleased with Yavin if they had bothered to actually give the ships varying R2 units... Also... never do a frame-by-frame of Yavin's intro. You can count the polygons on the "round" pieces of the X-Wings. Those graphics are the main reason I never watch the SE of ANH. Even if they move like molasses, physical models are always so much better.

No, you ARE forced to use it, and that's what pissed me off so much. I spent over 200 missiles on those planes, and put arguably thousands of cannon rounds into them. They never went down until I used the close up view. We're talking, the plane is on fire, I see pieces flying off it, it's a flaming hulk, and should not be flying. But it wouldn't let me kill it without the camera view. I used every missile of every type I had, and ran my cannon on it until the mission ended from being out of time, and nothing worked. Now, whether this is something that only applies to the demo and/or tutorial remains to be seen, but the way they presented the camera mode in the tutorial was that it will be required, as it was for the demo. Perhaps if the fans raise a big enough ruckus, they'll make it purely optional, but as of right now, it looks like they intend to force it on us for triggering plot events. After all.. it's really easy to script cutscenes if the path you fly is on rails. As for catering to the gore fans.. yes, it's oil, but with aircraft it's about as close as you can get. Doesn't mean it's trying to appeal to anything other than fans of that type of "detail." It just comes off as a cheap grab for attention from players who don't give half a rat's ass about aircraft games.

No no, you misunderstand. This has nothing to do with joints. I mean I'm cutting pieces of the nose off. I might do a write up on it later, but for now, it's still in a mid-rebuilt condition, and the nose still attaches the old way.

The problem is, this is a change in formula that no one asked for. It's a marketing gimmick to attract attention from the fans of blood/gore/splatter, who often would likely have absolutely nothing in common with flight sim fans. In short, they're trying to get more people to play it that wouldn't otherwise give it a second glance. In my own opinion.. the problem is just that in the past, AC has had a very specific approach to the way air combat works. They tend to exaggerate/alter certain aspects of the way real aircraft work in order to make the game more fun. In the past, this has generally been restricted to things like missile ranges/mechanics, G-limits (as in they don't really exist), and the amounts of ammo you can carry. They've essentially applied WWII-ish dogfight mechanics to the jet age, in that you typically stay within visual range of targets, even though you're using missiles. One thing AC has not messed with much though has been the way you actually fly the aircraft. While individual aircraft capabilities are obviously not realistic, the way you fly the aircraft generally is. AC6 pushed this a little with the "high-g" maneuever thing, but there actually is a semi-realbasis for that type of maneuver, and it actually does involve simultaneously increasing drag and thrust. Historically in AC, you fly manually, you control the aircraft by the same basic control mechanics as a real one, and if you want to avoid a missile, you're going to have to do it yourself. That is.. until now. I'm sorry. Pilots do not have a "dodge missile" button in the cockpit. Nor do they have a button on their throttle that says "do backflip." I don't care how cool anyone thinks it looks, it just doesn't happen. There's a reason you only ever see planes doing those maneuvers in airshows: they're done by stunt pilots in specially configured aircraft. They're not something the average pilot uses on a daily basis. I cannot put into words really how much I HATE automated maneuvers in a game that otherwise treats aircraft as lovingly as AC historically has. If this were a car game, the difference would be akin to putting a "DRIFT" button in Gran Turismo, and would elicit the same sort of hate from car afficionados. In a game with physics that are refined enough to actually let you do such an advanced technique manually, putting in an "easy" button is a slap in the face to people who actually learn to do it. Or, you could compare it to putting in a single button command that'll automatically execute any difficult combo in a fighting game. People who know how to do it the "right" way are going to be pissed off, because now it takes no skill to do. In a game that will obviously have a large amount of online competition, this system is going to tick off a lot of people (if it works in multiplayer at all.. frankly, I don't see how it can). When you dumb down the game mechanics to make it easier to do hard things, you ruin some of the inherent challenge of a game. People tend to hate that. A lot. Seeing an AC title for the 3DS is a nice thing though, and might be the thing that convinces me to get one. But the fact that I saw the F-22 basically executing Starfox style barrel rolls concerns me greatly that it's going to be the same sort of thing: adding a "dodge missile" button. I know some people like this sort of thing, and that's fine. But the Aces team is taking a huge risk here by betting they're going to attract more people than they piss off. The flight game niche is small enough already, and adding these features is going to split the fanbase something awful. Unless they somehow manage to drag a bunch of new fans into the game with all the new blood and guts crap, the little group of people who like Ace Combat style games is about to get a whole lot smaller.

I actually do wonder how many people will cancel their preorders after that demo. While AC fans are a small group, I wonder if the dev team would postpone the game to revise their thinking if enough people cancelled?