Chronocidal

Glad to hear I might be worried about nothing then. Having a more detailed cockpit sounds like a very nice thing, though cockpits in AC games have only ever been superficial, with the HUD being a screen overlay. If they actually tried to paste the displays into the real cockpit, I'll be very impressed, though I don't know if that'll be a good thing or not gameplay-wise. Would be a nice option to be able to turn on and off though. I really hope they manage to fill out the hangar a bit more this time around though. Though they were mostly crappy, horribly inaccurate models, the wide variety of aircraft was the one thing hawx managed to do right. How they could be so dedicated as to include the YF-17 Cobra and then neglect to understand how aircraft even fly continues to make me scratch my head. Right now, I'd really love to see a retro AC, set in either Vietnam, or an alternate world version of a similar conflict. I really just want an excuse to make a game where you can fly everything from the 1950's up through about 1970 or so. I was originally hopeful AC0 would use more older aircraft like the A-4, F-8, F-4, etc. So many beautiful planes came from that period in history, and have really gotten the short end of the stick in games. Plus, it gives you the possibility of having the F-14 be the end game superfighter, and wallop everything.

The problem isn't in the execution.. It might be interesting to try, but I'm honestly sick of the focus on blood and gore in so many games, even if it is realistic. Just because we have the graphics to render it well now doesn't mean we have to go into slow motion to see all the different parts of enemies flying everywhere. The novelty wears off really fast, and if they've rebuilt much of the game to revolve around it, I don't know what'll be left when people get tired of it. Really, the Ace Combat series is already an incredibly niche franchise. Unless someone is already a fan of this type of game, the odds are heavily against attracting any new players in significant numbers. Changing things that drastically to try attracting a larger playerbase is a huge risk, because you stand to lose a lot more than you could potentially gain. In my experience, the type of people who like aircraft games are incredibly picky about what they like, and changing anything that was previously enjoyed brings with it the risk of turning a lot of fans of the genre away from the game entirely.

They tried something like this with hawx, it was much less than useful at best. All I remember is a flood of pissed of people who noticed that the voice command system tended to cause them to fire off a missile every other second. I don't know how it was supposed to work really, but the idea that you should rely on voice commands to fire your weapons is fairly well indicative of the level of understanding that went into making the game. In other news.. after seeing this clip, I really don't know what to expect. I have to be very honest.. after seeing this, I wanted to reach through the screen and slap the guy upside the head. Seriously, after all the success you've had with a working formula, you go and change it just because it felt old? Changing something just for the sake of changing it is very rarely, if ever, a good thing. I just don't know. It sounds like they're falling into the same trap that hawx did, trying to appeal to a wider player base. When are people going to realize that trying to attract a larger audience to a niche genre doesn't work?? It has two main effects: 1. Pissing off your original fanbase due to the compromises you have to pull to bring more people in, and 2. Not bringing in enough new interest to make up for the original customers you lost. It's like they're trying to bring the current generation's fascination with blood and/or gore to the flight game genre, where frankly, I don't care how cool it might look, it really has no place. They're rebuilding the entire game around this concept of being up close and personal with things blowing up, and getting further and further from anything aircraft actually do. I mean, the guy specifically mentions how you "used to launch missiles at stuff far away, so we want to bring you in closer." There are not enough faces or palms on earth. I'll have to try the demo I'm sure, but the more I think about this, the more I worry. They keep talking about everything being changed, and different, and I can't help thinking they're going to throw out a good amount of what people used to enjoy about these games just for the sake of seeing close-ups of shrapnel. Redesigning it from the ground up, just to make it different? Does anyone even remember "New Coke?"

I have to do at least one in classic VF-84 (still love that custom 1/60 from long ago) but I'm undecided about the second. Eh, I'll come up with something.... heh.. I wonder how a set of Warthog markings would look.

Next: Hollywood decides to reboot itself.

Woot! ditto, my pre-order payment just went through. Should be here early next week.

No, first you need to dub them over in Japanese, and sub them. THEN you go and make a dub off of the subtitles, changing random words and meanings in the first movie, and completely ignoring the original plot in the other two. Actually, if you consider the idea that the Tiger's Claw was built from the wreckage of the ships in ID4.. hmm. Reminds me of something I wanted to do for a long time: find a Japanese dub of the hollywood Godzilla movie, and watch it with English subs.

Is it bad that I kinda cheered when that happened? I mean, besides the "less than worthless" status your wingmen in those games usually get, he was flat out asking to get blasted. You DO NOT EVER talk about going home to get married during a battle. I had to give AC5 credit though. They actually gave players their wish, and killed off the most annoying character, but did it in such a way that you could actually wind up feeling bad for wanting it to happen.

True, it's only really three and a half years. Due to lateness of the premier, and relative earlyness of the month. But still.. I was still in college when it came out. Those were good times.

Know what's slightly disturbing to me about that? It means Macross Frontier will already be five years old.

My inner 12 year old just began snickering loudly. He was promptly complemented by my inner 17 year old for catching the joke. Then they were both sent to their rooms so the 23 year old in me could conduct said inspection properly.

Sadly, microtransactions are pretty much here to stay, they're just far too profitable for companies to ignore. Even if it does piss off a good number of people and convince them not to play along, they'll make up the losses by people with money to burn who absolutely must have that vintage Starsky and Hutch edition speeder, completely with a set of Jedi Ray-Bans. I was really looking forward to this actually, until I saw a gameplay clip. I really just can't deal with this type of combat system. So many people use it, either out of simplicity (real easy to program attack animations if you have a standard pose that never changes), or because it worked for WoW, but the way it adapts old turn based rpg battle to real time just looks dumb to me. There are so many other ways to make a game, I wish people would get more creative. I guess overall, I just don't care for anything that I can use a macro system in. To me, that becomes roughly, "Press A to win battle." Plus, there's the disconnect between seeing my lightsaber slice through someone's head, only to see in giant red letters, "MISS." I realize that's a carryover from old rpg systems, but I guess it just seems incredibly counter-intuitive to me to make games that way, when it's entirely possible to make a real time combat system. When there are so many games where I can aim a weapon manually, I have a hard time letting a random number generator decide whether or not my shot hits my target. Eh, but what can I say, I'm a bit of a control freak.

Oh, no, see, the pieces are fine. When I glued all those panels together, they fit perfectly on mine. The mechanism itself just tends to screw with things, but the pieces all fit beautifully together when I test fit them. That sort of mismatch between parts is just plain fugly.

Oh, yeah, that's why that last set of pictures looks odd... it's not fully painted either. They forgot to paint the wing tips.

Actually, no, given the amazing complexity and precision of their 1/72 kits, a flaw like that is pretty inexcusable. I half wonder if it's some sort of molding flaw in that piece. It's nothing that a little glue/putty/paint won't fix, but these kits aren't supposed to need anything like that.

Looks like the legs are nice and high on that pic, so I'm eagerly awaiting this one. Though, the little wing tips outside the boosters look kind of droopy, hope that isn't the new version of the flappy VF-25 wings. I really hope they came up with a better stand this time though. The modular design for the attachment point on that stand was the quickest way to guarantee that if I ever left my VF-25 on it for more than a few minutes, I'd find myself watching the plane fall right off the back of the stand as the mount fell apart.

Meh.. The Morgan always looked like it needed the boat tail extended to match the wing planform better. I did a few tweaks to it in a drawing once, and it looked much better. Comparitively, this new plane is a lot more structurally sound looking, despite the double intake not really making any sense. As for the YF-23... only if the developers pull their heads out of whatever bodily orifice it was firmly lodged in for AC6. Half the fun of the games is unlocking all the variants of the aircraft, and the jump from AC0 to AC6 was just incredbly irritating. Also.. I miss the days when you could go out to stores and buy a complete game. Computer games have had expansion packs for years of course, but the DLC for AC6 made me want to strangle someone.

Don't think that's the case, considering the previous set of pics shows them doing the same thing without the legs dropped at all. The unpainted prototype has the legs mounted much higher, with one of the feet still opened. Really.. I kind of don't trust any of the pictures in that preview. Looking closely at it, they were very sloppy with the transformation as a whole. The largest view of fighter mode looks like it has the legs dropped, because the knee joints aren't fully lined up, as if they forgot to collapse an extending knee joint. What's more, the whole thing looks sloppily aligned, as if they were having trouble lining up the arm mechanisms. They almost look like they had trouble getting the wings level too, which could be related to not lining up the leg tabs. I don't think I'd worry about the legs not sitting high enough. They might not go as high as the VF-25's should have, but I think that's part of the changes needed to add that turret.

Looks amazing, can't wait to see it painted up. I'm eagerly awaiting someone to make a matching Prometheus, or if someone gets crazy enough (and has a spare garage for the aseembly) even an SDF-1.

Looks definitely like they just don't know how to transform it. Check the bottom middle picture on the second page, the one showing the feet. You can see both the tab and slot that should be holding the legs up, they just didn't connect them.

K, good to hear you got it. The trouble with opening the arms is that the magnets in them tend to pop out, and can be a pain to get back in correctly.

Short of drilling out the screw covers, no, it's not really possible to pull the arm apart. I tried on my first one, and nearly broke the entire thing. The way I fixed it was to put thick super glue on the tip of a pin, and dab it onto the main support. Once a little had accumulated, I kept spinning the tail around to keep it from sticking in place. It did fog up the plastic around the joint some, but it's a very small area, and it was worth it to get the tail to stay in position I think.

Makes me glad I was willing to shell out for my M&Ms when they first cameout. I think they're actually the only two v2 VF-1s I didn't wait for a sale to buy. I never picked up an Elint though. I can definitely understand why it's fun, but it reminds me a little too much of a joke I saw once about the K/R/F/A-18EFQP-6 or something like that.. it was basically a joke about continually tacking new mission gear onto older aircraft, and had an F-18 with 4 seats (single file even), an AWACS dish, a refueling boom, every type of bomb and missile imagineable, and antennas sticking out everywhere. Granted it works much better in a space environment, but it just looks funny to me. Plus, it removed the need for the Catseye in the movie, which is sad, because I love that design.

True, though I kinda see this as making up for the fact that Max has always had more planes to begin with. I've bought every M&M valk pair so far (no Q-Raus though), but I have a TV and DYRL Max 1A, so he's ahead by 2 right now. If they ever do a VF-11 pair, I'll get those too. I would have bought every one of Max's valks too, but I've never felt the need to buy more than one of a particular paintscheme, and they didn't release a fast pack bundle of Max's 1S, so I got his 1A instead. I really do want a Millia VF-17 though, and I can always pair her up with my Max VF-22 if I have to. I mean, come on, it's a bright red stealth fighter. I can't pass that up.

I saw the Ostrich again on sale a while back at HLJ, but I don't think it was a second production run, since people reported they still had the splodey shoulders. I don't think they were ever actually limited release, but the Ostrich and Elintseeker never seemed like big sellers (the Ostrich less so due to how much screentime it got). Lots of people here love them for their unique looks, but they just might not be very popular with anything but die-hard fans. I think a good portion of the people here are fans of Macross due to their interest in the aircraft, so of course we're going to like all the variants. In Japan though, the show probably appeals to a broader audience, and while there will be aircraft fanatics in there, many people will buy the more recognizable valks just because they like the cool transforming robots. Neither the Elint nor the Ostrich were shown as bots, so they don't appeal to as wide a fanbase. They just aren't as recognizable. As for the M&Ms, I'm actually pretty surprised those haven't been re-issued, but I do wonder if it's partly due to their limited usage in the original show as well. I mean, looking back on the 1/48 releases, it seemed like no one could ever get rid of those two, either due to not being popular, or having known defects. I always remember seeing the M&M 1/48 sets still in stock long after the rest of the 1/48 line had all but disappeared. Besides that though, I wonder if stand-alone releases without the fast packs would sell better. The high price of the 1/48 packs might have turned people off to them the same way. As cool as it is to have color matched packs for them, it might not be a good selling point in the long run.