Cent

So deep and serious o_o

I'll buy the VF-11 when Yamato releases the boosters with it too. CHASER ONE RYOUKAIII

I'd rather not have Yamato bump up the price any more than it is for the sake of adding sticky landing gears to the 1/2000 VF-1s. If you really want them, scratch build the landing gears. The new detail shots really make the SDF tempting.

I played through the entire campaign on PC with a Logitech 3D Pro in under 3-4 hours. I was pretty disappointed. Here is my review of it, and I compare it to AC, since of course, this game was designed with its major competitor in mind. Wall of Text incoming. After accepting the game for its surreal tone, and the ridiculous maneuvers and poor assist-off camera, I was hoping it'd at least match up to being somewhat entertaining as the Ace Combat series for me. That is, I wanted the game to have interesting mechanics, challenging missions, larger-than-life boss fights, and some wild environmentals like in Ace Combat. I got none of that. HAWX is has 19 missions, all of which are either defend a specific airspace, escort a platoon or another aircraft, bomb a set of ground targets, slip through radar, or shoot up all your objective targets as they close in on your position. Or a combination of any of those. It gets pretty tiring after a while, since there really isn't much more to it than that, and you really wouldn't be able to tell some of these missions apart. Their biggest gimmick was when your plane's computers got messed up and you couldn't fire any missiles. That's kinda funny, since I thought assist-off turned off all your computers anyway? Regardless, I like gimmicks, but if that's the best they can do, that's pretty lame. What did Ace Combat offer? You got to fight spaceships armed with laser batteries. Gigantic bomber fortresses with a cloaking field. Flying through caverns in training jets with no armaments dodging the detection ace fighter pilots. Sinking submarines with ICBMs fired at you. Flying through nuclear compounds ala. Death Star to blast missiles within the silos. Or dodging giant pillars of lasers fired from space. It was ridiculous, but once you got past that, the game was actually enjoyable... It's an alternate universe. Think of the game more like a bullet-hell game where you slaughter hundreds of enemies until you get to the end where you fight a massive boss. Those were always fun. The problem is that HAWX went halfway and fell short at pleasing anyone. You get past the insane flight mechanics (or lack thereof) but there really is nothing left for you to like. On top of that, for a Tom Clancy storyline, wow... Was it ever predictable and just mundane. I won't spoil it for anyone here, but the story was something you could see coming a mile away, and wasn't particularly noteworthy anyway. Maybe they wanted to really keep it down to earth (relative to Ace Combat) even though a few of the aspects about Artemis were outlandish, but what really bothered me, was the lack of character in both of your wingmen. They both like money, whores and money. Did I say money? They can't get enough of that. At least, until they need to be patriotic all of a sudden. Then it's all honor and glory. But now they want medals. And women. And medals. Did I say medals? Did they just cookie cutter these guys out of Army of Two or something? What the hell is going on here? Its even worse that at the end of every mission, you get the most juvenile dialogue out of these two, and its even REPEATED. As in, Ubisoft was too lazy to give them new lines. They used the same ones! And these are scripted dialogue lines, so obviously someone at Ubisoft didn't give a poo that you had to listen to the same ignorant crap that they already made you hear 3 missions ago. A few of the missions you fly will have your wingmen mysteriously not be by your side. What a relief right? Nope! They still come over your radio (and their portraits show them flying in their planes??) to pester you with their frat-boy depiction of warfare. Ace Combat, which has little story-writing base, at least does fairly well throwing in lively characters with differing (usually foil) personalities. In some games, where your wingmen actually die, you do miss them somewhat. I won't say they're deep, but compared to HAWX, they're the Mariana Trench. Your wingmen in AC will actually play a role in establishing relationships and connections with other NPC characters... Especially those you save in several missions. Even better is that those you SAVE and assist actually often come back to help you out in your final missions. Cue the cutscenes of a fleet of jet fighters, bombers and AWACS and heavily-accented Russians singing along with your wingmen (who could do without that?). Damn that is awesome, to for once, have the numbers on your side. Characters actually mean something in AC, especially since the cutscenes show them having some persona outside of their cockpits. At least they have a face. In HAWX, you never see your wingmen's faces. Talon and Casper (your wingmen) are as generic as can be. Worse, I would have thought that the Ghost Team you save in the very first mission, who tells you they 'owe you one' and they 'won't forget'... never actually come back to repay their due. What a letdown. Everything is very impersonal in HAWX, you don't really feel anything from any of the characters, save whoever is debriefing you... Since he's probably barking his head off at you (if anyone has played GRAW2, it's the same sort of 'way too loud and obnoxious authority'). I figured hey, maybe since its a video game, and they're not trying to be realistic... They'd actually try to aim at being entertaining instead.... Nope. Characters aside, the storyline in AC's 3,4,5 and 0 still trumps that of HAWX. Sad to know huh? Fun events happen in AC, and you can have multiple mission choices. Depending on how well or what you do on your previous mission, your next mission may be something different. You may also unlock special planes by doing things differently. Your carrier gets sunk while you are being debriefed on it, so you get to emergency takeoff with whatever plane you want (a relief after being stuck with carrier-based planes for a good 3-4 missions). You deal with several layers of conspiracy and internal sabotage. You're led into traps. You have to fight people who were your allies in the past. You find unexpected help from people you thought were your enemies or who you thought were dead. You get framed for war-crimes that you didn't commit. They're not great plot twists, but at least they are there. For HAWX, they guide the player on a monorail of boredom. I haven't found any alternative missions, you unlock planes purely by your experience level, and replayability is hugely lacking. Grinding experience and achievements to unlock new planes and their weapon packs (which you need to do if you want to use the other planes in Multiplayer) is not my idea of fun. There aren't really any surprises either. People who start evil end evil... Those who start good end good. Not like it even matters, since everyone is so single-layered. But your story basically follows the same route. Its a war, and you're winning it step by tiny step. You don't ever feel like you're being pushed back, or have the carpet pulled out from under your feet... It's pretty linear progression. HAWX singleplayer was a huge letdown. There's not much to do after you complete the campaign, other than doing it again on harder difficulties (or for achievements)... or free flight (fly around the map with no enemies). I don't remember for sure, but I don't think there were multiplayer modes outside of team deathmatch and coop either... So that will definitely get stale as well. One of my favorite parts was when one of your wingmen says "I haven't been in a battle like this since the Gulf War!"... Only for him to say again 3 missions later "I haven't been in a battle like this since the Gulf War!" .......... >_>

Looks just as busy as the Sheryl VF-25 decals imo... So I really don't mind this, although the chibi characters kind of thows if off.

Those vertical stabs look huge on that VF-1.

He should try to fire his gunpod. Hikaru torpedo away!

Hopefully they'll include plenty of 1/2000 valks and destroids... But they should plant a small magnet in each of them so they can easily clip to areas of the ARMDs.

So you paid $50 for a 1/100 fighter model. Sounds like you were buying from Yamato!

While auto transformation would be neat, you'd have to consider what it entails. 1. The possibility for even more things to go wrong with the toy, especially now with the internals. 2. Batteries. Oh God.

That's hilarious. Good luck seeing anything in the cockpit. XD

Bad guy mecha can sell too! Look at the SV-51's for instance. As for non-transforming mecha releases... I guess they tested the water with their destroids, which turned out quite well imo.

Yamato does fill a niche of goods you won't find elsewhere. They 'try' to produce toys that are of the highest visual quality each time they release anything. Whereas Bandai may have taken it safe with the initial DX launch, I'm pretty sure Yamato would have done what they usually do and if they were to release a VF-25, it'd be made as accurate as they could with a much heftier price tag, and thus a smaller market to sell to. Of course, just because Yamato tries to reach this objective, doesn't mean they always reach it, but it does put them ahead of the other more mainstream producers, but they will always suffer from QC issues because they aren't like the others. Either you have a company that produces a smaller number of highly detailed figures, with higher prices and QC problems or you have one that will produce a lower detail toy at much larger number with lower prices and an inherent ruggedness to the toys. You can only have one or the other, as the business objectives are entirely different. Releasing highly detailed figures raises the prices, leaving you with fewer customers to sell it to, and results in a smaller operation more prone to error... or releasing lower detailed figures in mass production lowers the prices, but increases the scale of production and the ruggedness. If you buy highly expensive hand made collectors vehicles... But you try to drive it like your average automobile, you're going to run into problems, despite paying an outrageous price tag. Its not like a high price tag automatically makes your collectible also double as a toy - you're going to need to pay an even higher price for that, and your market then becomes even smaller.

yea the shield separates entirely, and has to be fitted onto the side of the arm using the peg. I dont know if I can blame them for that though, since there is really no good way for the transformation to accompany a transformation-connected shield. I really see the whole shield transformation as being akin to the gunpod one. Its an object that detaches from the plane entirely during transformation, and is grabbed and latched back on by the movement of the hands and arms when the VF transforms. As long as ALL the parts that were in fighter mode are reused in the battroid mode, that's pretty PT to me. Bonus points for having less anime magic where the arms/hands magically snag loose parts out of the air and incorporate them into the transformation.

perfectly expensive.

The VF-11 Thread seems to have confirmed a color change for the logo.

I think it'll be pretty difficult to get the PT on the 19 right. Too much anime magic involved, and while Yamato did make some QC errors, overall, i think they did a pretty good job doing what they could while keeping fighter mode as accurate as possible. The DX inaccuracies are a different story. It was purposely made less accurate to bolster 'durability'. I'm not sure if I buy that entirely, since I can see places where accuracy could be improved without sacrificing durability, but the bottom line is one toy tried to be accurate, while the other did not have the same sort of priority. I think that behind it all, it's the design decision that garners a lot of flak.

Really, I wouldn't mind paying a bit more for some magnets in their retool version. It'll be just as rugged, won't change the aesthetics and is sure better than the possibility of pegs and clips snapping off or being a pain to remove. Here's a chance for them to make some good choices after the mistakes they're now having to deal with from their first release... And they're going to do it again.

Yea well in that case, I still need to know how big its gonna be to determine where I can put it =P I hope its really big (like the Sheryl Decal). Maybe enough to replace the skull decal as well. The issue with that though is that it limits the number of areas where the decal will fit... so they might not make them that large.

anyone have a larger image of that cathy decal? Maybe they'll make a 1:8 figure out of that too xD Also, I can't for the life of me find where the Cathy decal is supposed to go? Where is 62-64??

? And they just decided to put holes and reissue their VF-25s for fun? No. I don't think so. They put in the holes because they needed them.

SK WAS INSPIRED BY WALL PLUGS IN THE DESIGN OF THE YF-19! IT ALL MAKES SENSE NOW.

While the new version is nice and all.... I hope they fix that giant crack running vertically through the front of the YF-19's legs.

Im not seeing a huge difference between it and the DX in battroid honestly. Although the 100 seems to be begging to be panel lined.

for $18 bucks, i woulda gone for the GNUs straight away. But regardless, revoltech's YF-19 has tons of anime inaccuracies as well. Also, why is it that the fastpack is not grey??