Overwatch

Figma – Widowmaker

I never thought I would actually manage to get caught up on something around here but here I am, caught up on Overwatch Figmas. The last of the four released so far that I have yet to talk about is Widowmaker. I almost didn’t order Widowmaker. I hate Snipers in the game and don’t really play Widowmaker at all. I wanna say it was a slow month anyway for pre orders, so I decided to go ahead and let it ride out.

I’m kind of glad I did, because she’s a really great release for the line. She has all of the Aesthetic balance of say Reaper, with proper pose-ability like Genji, minus the weird quirks of Genji. Plus a ton of really nice and appropriate accessories. Hell the accessories are really kind fo what makes this figure for me.

The rifle is the big one. In the game, Widowmaker’s Sniper Rifle coppalses into a machine gun. It probably would have been easier to just include two guns I suppose, but instead, you get one gun with interchangeable parts. The barrel swaps on and off and there is an attachable scope piece. It all fits together great and works well for the effect.

Another one of her abilities is her arm mounted grappling hook. The figure includes a separate forearm piece with a hook attached. The nice part is this makes it really stable to allow her to hang from it for posing if desired.

She also includes her poison spider mine and an additional swap out part for her X-Ray thermal goggles ultimate ability. There aren’t a ton of parts, but they handle the gamut of her abilities superbly. She also has enough pose-ability to properly handle all of the various accessories properly.

So, regardless of my problems with Snipers in game, the figure is really nice. She also fills a nice roll along side Reaper and Sombra to filling out the Talon team.

Nendoroid D.Va (Hana Song)

Jun 12th, 2019

by Ramen Junkie.

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One thing I really like about the Nendoroid line is that they are hitting essentially all of my “Mains” in Overwatch. Tracer, Sombra, Mei, Lucio is coming, and D.Va. These are my top five, in some sort of order. I suppose that probably just says I prefer the mainstream heroes over some of the less popular heroes.

Not surprisingly, Nendoroid D.Va is just Hana Song, aka “Baby D.Va”. In game she rides inside her giant MEKA robot, collectively they are known as “D.Va”. After taking some damage, Baby D.Va pops out and the robot is destroyed. It’s a fun mechanic in game. It doesn’t work too well for toys. A working Nendoroid sized MEKA would really bump up the cost and while cool, wouldn’t really add much to the figure.

She does come with a mini sized MEKA figure though, which is fun to use with the larger regular D.Va. The small MEKA even has swivel arm articulation. If you really want a larger MEKA that mostly works for the scale for display, the Funko POP! D.Va comes with an un-articulated larger MEKA. The style isn’t perfect and the Nendo doesn’t fit inside it at all, bit it looks alright next to her on a shelf.

Aside from her mini MEKA, D.Va comes with the usual assortment of alternate hands and faces, as well as her pistol, a cell phone, a bag of chips and a soda. It probably would have been too much considering it’s “non canon” but I would have loved some sort of cheese covered “Gremlin D.Va” face to go with the food accessories.

The hands are really great. She can make a lot of her fun emote poses from the game, like her D.Va bomb selfie or the heart hands. The chips and soda fit well in her hands as well using little pegs. The stand has an extra accessory bit to attach Mini MEKA to.

D.Va also shares the pose-able articulation that all of the Overwatch Nendos have. For anyone unaware, a lot of Nendoroids don’t really have knees or elbows, but they often will instead have alternate arms for different poses. Occasionally there will be some, like the Overwatch line up, that have regular articulation, despite the small size.

All in all, D.Va works really well in this style. I will say though, next to other Nendos like Mei or Junkrat, she feels a little light on the parts and accessories. I’m not sure what more they could have given her though really.

Overwatch Ultimates – Lucio

May 29th, 2019

by Ramen Junkie.

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Today’s figure is Lucio from the Overwatch Ultimates line by Hasbro. I feel like Lucio could make a pretty cool Figma, but there are a lot of other factors that make me feel like Figma will never get around to doing Lucio. Of all the figures shown off prior to the line’s release, Lucio was the one I was the most worried about. Ana had her obvious flaws in the promo photos, so she is expected to be a little disappointing. Lucio basically had one photo going around, where he was standing stiff upright with his little effect parts attached.

Basically, I was really worried Lucio would be a complete brick. Fortunately, he is quite the opposite. His upper body is loaded with joints, including some neat butterfly joints in his shoulders, similar to ones often seen on Spider-Man figures in Marvel Legends, except hidden inside his vest. Even his ponytail is articulated, which is a nice bonus. His Sonic Amplifier has a little cord that attaches to his arm which also holds on pretty well without really hindering articulation.

The lower half is… mostly alright. The hips have a pretty wide range of motion, the ankles have a LOT more than expected. The real problem, and only real problem with this figure, is the knees. The knees have barely any range of motion, somewhat because of the bulk of his legs hindering things, though it also just seems to be limited. I posted a photo demonstrating the entire range of motion, but basically it’s like 20 degrees of bend.

This does kind of really suck for posing him in any dynamic jumping poses. He also can’t make a proper Sound Barrier pose since he can’t completely bend any knees.

The knees issue doesn’t completely ruin the figure, it’s just really disappointing. You can sort of fake some more dynamic range with his ankles and hips, but it’s not quite the same.

Aside from the Sonic Amplifier, Lucio has 2 extra hands (4 total). Oddly, 3 of the four hands are for his left hand while he only has one hand for his right hand. There is a hand to let him hold the Sonic Amplifier on the left but there isn’t anywhere to plug the little cord in on the right. He also has a couple of green swooshy effect parts to look like his speed boost skating. The effects are pretty good aside from the rubbery plastic on mine was bent and distorted out of the package. I could probably boil and reshape them if I wanted to.

All in all, Lucio is pretty satisfying. he could use better knee articulation but otherwise he’s a nice figure. He has a lot of dynamic style going for him too which makes him generally fun to mess with.

Figma – Genji

May 22nd, 2019

by Ramen Junkie.

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The second release in the Figma line for Overwatch was Genji. Tracer being the poster child for Overwatch made sense for release number one, Genji kind of makes sense for release two. He is a pretty bad ass ninja, his robotic design lends itself to being highly articulated, and he looks like a sentai warrior. I don’t really know how popular Overwatch is in Japan, but Figma IS a Japanese toy line, so that audience is sort of the primary audience.

Genji actually is quite a departure from Tracer. I mentioned how his cyborg design works for the articulation, and it definitely shows, he is quite a bit more articulated than Tracer. Almost too articulated if that’s possible (side note, it is, look at any AY Revo). He neck and shoulders in particular have a sort of double ball set up going that let them extend quite a bit. It actually makes his shoulders look odd at times and his neck definitely feels too long if you are looking at it from the wrong angle.

Genji also has a lot more interesting accessories than Tracer. Tracer got a couple of guns and her pulse bomb. Genji has his Dragon Blade, his smaller dagger weapon and a neat effect part of his stars being thrown. There are also scabbards for both blades on his back, though neither actually holds a blade. Instead they each have removable handle bits, for when the blade weapons are being held.

He looks great holding his swords. His articulation allows you to do all sorts of sword wielding poses as well, both single and dual wielding. The ninja star effect part is neat, but the weight and looseness of some of the joints make it tricky to pose at times. Plus it kind of vanishes into the flatness of itself when looked at straight on.

He is quite a bit larger than Tracer as well. The added weight and larger feet allow him to stand pretty well even without his stand, something that’s kind of a problem for Tracer.

Despite his wonky joints, Genji is probably one of the better releases for the Overwatch Figmas so far (as of this post). Aesthetically Widowmaker is a bit nicer but in terms of pose-ability and fun factor, Genji is better than Widowmaker.

Overwatch Ultimates – Reinhardt

May 15th, 2019

by Ramen Junkie.

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While I really prefer the Figma Overwatch figures to the Hasbro Ultimates versions, I have very little hope that Figma will every put out any of the larger Tank heroes. This is the one place where Hasbro definitely has the advantage. A standard sized Figma is anywhere from $50-$70+, a Figma the size of any of the tanks would easily run $150-$200, versus Hasbro’s $50. The first of the larger figures put out by Hasbro is Reinhardt, in his standard look. I believe Reinhardt has a slightly more limited release versus the single packed figures. I imagine part of this is his price and his size.

I was a little worried about the idea of this figure. There are a lot of elements here that could easily go wrong. He has slightly swirly” plastic, he is bulky which could hinder articulation, he could feel too large or too small, that sort of thing. The articulation was the biggest worry. Larger figures tend to have issues with articulation, especially from Hasbro, and armored figures in general tend to be super limited by armor bits. Reinhardt, fortunately, manages to avoid this problem for the most part. He isn’t “Spider-Man” articulated, but he is pretty pose-able. The bulk gets in the way of everything way less than expected.

He also scales very well next to both the other Hasbro figures and the Figmas. He has a lot of nice heft to him and feels solid all around. There are also a lot fo nice details on every part of him, I particularly like his hammer. The hammer works well, he can carry it in one or two hands and pose to look like he is swinging it.

He also has a shield accessory part. The lion crest on his arm pops off and the shield can be placed between the arm and crest. It has a couple of pieces that let it stand on the ground independently but Rein can also carry it around. The shield is pretty neat, but I have a few complaints with it. It feels a little too opaque. Part of this is the plastic needed to make it durable I’m sure, since transparent plastic tends to be much more brittle. A second complaint. The lion crest tends to fall off his arm. The armor sculpt gets int he way of fitting it on snugly, so it just, doesn’t fit very securely without the shield.

My other nitpick with this figure, especially for the price, he really should have come with a swap-able helmet free Reinhardt head. You could argue they might do this in a future release, for a different skin. You could argue that in game Rein always has his helmet on with this skin. I would argue that Hasbro will be very lucky if the line lasts long enough to release all 6 tanks (Rein, Orisa, Roadhouse, D.Va, Winston and Hammond), much less alternate skins of the tanks. Even if they did release another Rein with an unmasked head, I doubt a lot of people would want or need a second huge Rein figure and they certainly aren’t going to drop $50 just for the head. Basically, I doubt there is ever a chance to put out an unhelmeted Rein head, and not getting one now kind of sucks as a result.

Other than the head thing, he really is a good figure. I do feel like the $50 price tag feels a bit too high. He doesn’t really feel like 2x a single packed, smaller figure. He comes in a huge box, but a lot of the huge box exists to accommodate his huge shield. I would say he is still worth picking up for Reinhardt fans and anyone wanting a tank to go with all the smaller figures.