This line of Playstation based figures kind of felt like it came out of nowhere a month or so ago for pre order. Most of them look pretty cool but I don’t really play most of the games and have no real attachments to most of the characters. I do however really like Aloy’s look and was at the time, playing Horizon Zero Dawn on the PC. She seemed like a good choice to try out the line.
I was a little worried before receiving the figure itself. The actual company making these is Spin Master, which makes more, young kids toys and some Tech Deck skateboards. Basically, they don’t really make a ton of action figures. They could be annoyingly brittle like NECA or have awful likenesses like a lot of non figure making companies end up. On the other hand, Jada toys is mostly known for their die-cast cars, but has been absolutely killing it with their video game themed lines.
Aloy here ended up being really really nice. The articulation is all well done and not too hindered by things like her skirt and shoulder pieces. She even has layers of articulation in her hair so you can make it look neutral or dynamic. The sculpt looks really nice all around, and the paint application is really good all around, especially with all of her multi-colored bits like the stripes on her clothing and elaborate weapon dressing.
If I had any issues, it’s that in places things feel almost a little too rubbery. This is more an issue with keeping her accessories attached. There is a little peg on her back for the spear or bow, but it has trouble staying attached. The same goes for her little arrow quiver that hangs on her side. Also, her feet are a little small which can make balancing her a little tricky.
She has plenty of accessories, which is also why she costs more than most of the line. I believe she is technically a “deluxe” style price point. She includes her bow and spear, the bow is super nice with a nice string for posing the barrow knocked. She also has one loose arrow for posing. She has several sets of hand options and an assortment of face plates with different expressions and face paint looks.
She is roughly 1/12th scale as well, so she will fit in nicely with other 1/12th scale lines and figures.
All in all, I am really impressed with the figure, and I kind of wish I had more interest in more of the line. I may have to pick up Kratos or something to get a second look at the line.
I have lost track of how many of these crossover Transformers we have gotten but it’s a pretty neat line that for the most part has been done pretty well. I particularly like that they are mostly original molds. It feels like it would have been easy to just do some mediocre repaints. I suppose making actual meaningful molds was probably part of the deal for getting some of these IPs.
The TMNT crossover is pretty good, it’s not perfect, but I like it. Party Wallop definitely has the “Ninja Turtle” look in Robot mode, with a few spots of added armor that sort of resembles Samurai armor. The neat gimmick here is that the head has a swappable bit that lets Party Wallop wear a bare green head or one of the four TMNT colored bands.
I am not sure I would suggest anyone order 4 of these. Mostly because he is very large. Not quite Leader class large, but he is bigger than a standard Voyager. Plus the alt mode is the Turtle’s Party Wagon, and having 4 of those doesn’t really make any sense.
Back on the largeness though, a lot of it is that he is really chonkey and wide all around. Almost too much so. The robot mode has plenty of articulation, but his mass makes it kind of awkward to use, or just awkward looking. Like a Sumo Wrestler doing Karate.
I am not real sure how much could have been done to slim him down, but there is some interesting techniques used in the transformation to make the Party Wagon smaller. There is a lot of crunching and compression and some of it seems a little hard to keep held together. I have trouble with the front wheel panels holding in place.
The Party Wagon looks really nice though when transformed. It’s missing the Red Door on the one side, but that could be painted if one wanted that bad enough. It would mean one shoulder pad becomes asymmetrically red though.
Considering the lack of red plastic anywhere else, I am sure they just opted not to make one red for cost savings.
He has some other nice features though. There are weapons for each of the 4 Ninja Turtles available, and everything has a place to store on Robot mode. The front of the Party Wagon forms the entire torso of the robot, but it can also be removed to reveal a more “Turtle Shell” looking torso. The front piece can be used as a shield as well, though the Turtles didn’t really ever use shields like that. It’s a nice bonus feature though. The front circle on the front of the van comes off to become a little pizza as well.
One last nitpick to mention, the package is not collector friendly at all, which I kind of hate.
It also feels like a missed opportunity not giving him a Mechaturtle head.
Overall, I really like this one. The thick chonkey body makes it a little awkward as a Ninja Turtle, but it’s still a very nice robot and transformer otherwise. That chonkey body isn’t really a problem in basically any other context that isn’t “Ninja Turtle.”
Despite that I’ve been writing about Star Trek Discovery, what really brought me back to Star Trek was Strange New Worlds. I had tried and given up on Discovery several times, not making it past the first episode, and I wasn’t hearing much great and Star Trek Picard. I was hearing good things about Strange New Worlds. I know the timelines and continuity is iffy, but it’s essentially a prequel series to The Original Series.
Something I kind of realized when starting SNW, is that I have never really watched TOS. I have seen episodes here and there for sure, and I have watched the movies many many times. I even have a pile of notes on the Animated series somewhere so I could forget to blog about it. But I have not really watched TOS properly. I may have to fix that. I am fairly familiar with it, but more with elements from the movies. For example, I forgot Nurse Chapel was there on TOS quite a bit, she is a main character here in SNW. There are actually several minor crew members in SNW that are also minor crew members in TOS.
Anyway, I also am aware of Captain Pike and how he fit into TOS. He was captain in the TOS pilot, and in a later episode after he was basically crippled into a space wheelchair thing. Basically, he was Captain of The Enterprise before Kirk. Which is the story SNW is showing us. The more interesting TOS character here is young Spock, who served under Pike before serving under Kirk. Rounding out the TOS characters is Uhura, who served as Communications Officer under Kirk, though she is a lot more floaty in her duties here under Pike. Part of her story is sort of, finding her place.
The show has its own share of new characters though, or in some cases, fleshed out minor characters. Pike has his Number One, who didn’t have a name in TOS, or in her Season 2 Discovery appearance. She gets a name finally, though it’s funny because her first name is “Una”, which is suspiciously close to “Uno”. There is the previously mentioned Nurse Christine Chapel, and her partner in crime Doctor M’Benga. Chapel was fairly present in TOS, but M’Benga actually did appear as well in a couple of episodes. The main cast is rounded out with Security Chief La’an Noonien Singh, whom is a descendant of well known Star Trek villain Khan Noonien Singh. And lastly, probably my favorite of the new characters, Lt. Erika Ortegas, who helmsman under Pike.
Oh right, there is also Captain Christopher Pike. I am really enjoying Pike as captain, though he does come off as feeling very Kirk-like at times. That may be a side effect of just how much more like Star Trek this show feels as a whole. Especially next to Discovery (Though I watched Discovery AFTER watching SNW). Unlike Discovery, this show is all about the crew and their interactions with each other.
There is a lot of strange irony going on that Ortegas is my favorite character here, and Unlike her character and feel like I know more about her character than most of the Discovery Crew. The irony being that Ortegas isn’t even a very fleshed out character. There was even kind of a memory episode where everyone lost their memory and Ortegas summed up her entire character as, “I fly the ship.”
Which bring up another thing I like about this show, it’s much more episodic in nature. There are hints of an underlying narrative, but it’s just that, it’s an underlying narrative, and less so a running plot thread. There are also a lot of subtle nods to various things in Trek. Characters that show up later again and such. A lot of the show revolves more around the character interactions as well, which is so nice because part of what makes Trek enjoyable is a fun crew that gets along. We still get history for these characters as well, with touches on La’an’s unsteadiness about her ancestry, or Chapel and M’Benga’s time during the Klingon War where they did some.potentially shady missions. There is exploration of Spock’s relationship with his Vulcan fiance T’Pring, complicated by his increasing feelings for Nurse Chapel.
But there are also a lot of fun goofy stuff going on. We get an entire musical episode when the crew encounters a special rift with a proclivity for music. There is also a really fun crossover episode with Lower Decks, where two of the Lower Decks members, Ensigns Boimler and Mariner, are transported to the “real world” past.
We also get some nods at things to come. Pike is haunted by a memory he was given during his time on Discovery, about his future death. He knows he is going to die and he knows there is nothing he can do to stop it. There are also several cameo appearances by a young Lt James T. Kirk. I am a bit torn on Kirk. The actor does a really good job and I like his character, but he doesn’t really look or act like Shatner. Funny enough, he looks like Jim Carey, who is most responsible for parodying Kirk and basically creating the “Kirk… talks like … he hasa weird… speech impediment” trope, that isn’t really very accurate.
Kirk doesn’t yet serve on the Enterprise though, so he only shows up occasionally.
Anyway, rather than push seasonal write ups, I figured I would wrap Season 1 and 2 up into one, general thoughts, write up. Overall, Strange New Worlds is really great though, and it’s done a great job of pulling me me back to Star Trek.
Last year when I did Blaugust over on [BI], I dis a series of posts about my history of computer use. I wasn’t really going to try to go all “hardcore” at posting this year, but I decided it might be fun to try to parallel that series a bit with a history of my Video Game memories.
Also, I have no idea if these are all 8-bit systems, it’s just an easy way to segment things, don’t @ me.
Like my computer use, I’ve played video games, essentially my entire life. I’ve played a lot of games. My god it’s a lot. I covered some of the PC based gaming in the other series, so I’m going to stick more to consoles for this series, at least for a while. also the break points are a bit fuzzy because I generally just, keep playing games on every system. I have the same SNES and Genesis hooked up to my TV today that I had when I was a kid. I still own my original NES. I have all of the same carts too.
My gaming journey started earlier than that a bit, with the Commodore 64 and the Atari 2600/7800. I don’t recall my family ever owning an Atari, my friend had a 7800, I think my grandparents had a 2600. I never really understood the difference, I just knew that, for the most part, the games for one worked on another. My favorite games on the Atari included River Raid, Chopper Command, and the Olympic Winter Games. River Raid was my favorite, it is essentially an early top town shooter, you control a little jet flying through a ravine avoiding the walls and enemy boats. There was also a fuel gimmick where you had to pass over fuel cells to refuel. It helped a lot to hold down and slow down.
The Commodore 64 made up a lot of my early gaming as well. We played a lot of Park Patrol and Ghostbusters, even though I never understood how to actually accomplish anything in Ghostbusters. It was still cool because Ghostbusters! Park Patrol was just silly. You were a park ranger who had to wander around rescuing drowning swimmers and avoiding turtles and snakes.
The real gaming adventure started when my grandparents bought my brother and I a NES for Christmas one year. I’m not sure the NES was technically better than the other options, but it certainly FELT better. And it only got better over time. This is the system that basically created my real love for games, starting with that classic Super Mario Brothers. My friends all had a NES as well, and we often traded titles. And between the three of us, we had and played a lot of games, both single and multiplayer.
Notable titles, off the top of my head.
Super Mario Brothers 1,2, and 3
River City Ransom
Final Fantasy
Ivan “Ironman” Stewart’s Super Off Road
The Legend of Zelda
RBI Baseball
Willow
Contra
Life Force
Dragon Warrior
Mega Man 3
Tecmo Super Bowl
Chip N Dale’s Rescue Rangers
I also had an NES Advantage controller as well. I absolutely loved that controller. For those unfamiliar, the NES Advantage was a large flat arcade sticks style controller, that included optional turbo button toggles. These turbo buttons were an absolute blast in Super Off Road. We would play for a while building up Nitro Boosts until reaching 99, the max you could carry. Then turn ont he turbo and jet around the track super fast. It was amazing.
Probably the game I most obsessed over was Final Fantasy. I never did beat it when I was younger, but my friends and I absolutely loved this game and we played it all the time. I also had a strategy guide from Nintendo Power that I obsessed over and probably memorized. It’s an obsession that would last for a very long time as well, Final Fantasy will definitely come up again in future installments of this series.
Speaking of Nintendo Power, that was another long term love developed from this era. I started on Issue 20, with the Mega Man 3 issue, the first to feature a square binding instead of a round binding. I would eagerly anticipate the arrival of every issue. Before the internet, this was how you got news about new games coming out. And the only way to get tips and maps and guides for games. Today you can just search and get it all, but when I was a kid, you had to really hope they would cover the game you were playing at some point. And sometimes, it wasn’t the featured game, it would just get maybe half a page of hints, without any maps.
I just want to close out this era with a nod towards the Sega Master System. One of my friends has a Master System, we never played it much, and I don’t remember anything about it other than if you turned it on without inserting a game, it would load a Snail Maze game. Which was kind of neat.
I wish it were more exciting this week, but it’s kind of more of the same. I’m admittedly in a bit of a rut in my gaming lately.
Overwatch
I almost wasn’t playing this anymore, again. It’s starting to reach a point where it’s more frustrating than fun again. Last weekend had a trial round for the upcoming new hero Juno (maybe it was two weekends ago?). Juno seems, a little lame honestly. She is a healer, but it kind of feels like an “easy mode” style healer. She doesn’t need to toggle between healing and damage, so you can just “shoot shoot shoot” But she seems really really weak. Like, her health is too low and her output for damage is super low. I didn’t get any real matches with her though aside from a few No Limits matches, which were almost exclusively 6v6 Juno, because everyone wants to try Juno.
This D.Va has nothing to do with anything, I just didn’t have any other non scoreboard screen shots from recent games.
The real tragedy of Juno’s release will be poor Venture. Venture was the last hero released, an they are a lot of fun to play and I just, generally enjoy them as a character. Juno falls into the same “cute Asian girl” category like D.Va and Kiriko which will make her extremely popular, instantly. Venture is a non binary person in a giant coat who eats dirt and rocks for fun. The point here is, I want more and better skins for Venture, who basically has nothing outside of a few recolors. Juno will probably get like 5 legendary skins right out the gate, because, she will be real popular for that.
Juno aside, I’ve long since finished this round’s base level battle pass. It was all Tokusatsu themed with a mix of Kaiju and Karate Bugman style skins, several for heroes I didn’t have any good skins for (Mauga, Soujorn) which was nice as well. All that is left is the Player Titles, which aren’t anything to cry over if I don’t get them, but the level 200 “Final Boss” title is kind of neat.
Sky: Children of the Light
It feels like the folks at ThatGameCompany has realized they have a popular game, but it needs more variety of activities to keep people interested. We had the Season of Nesting adding player housing, Now we have the Season of Duets with emphasis on the music aspects. I am a bit disappointed, not with Sky, but because I backed a Kickstarter recently for a little bluetooth keyboard deal that is supposed to be Sky compatible. That isn’t the only reason I wanted it, but it was one of them and it hasn’t come in yet. I mean, it hasn’t been very long, so I shouldn’t really be impatient, but it would have been cool to have for the music season of the game.
But also, right now there is an Olympics themed “Days of” style event. I’m not sure the official name. Each player was randomly assigned to one of 4 teams for 4 of the realms, Prairie, Forest, Wasteland, and Valley. Players can do a pair of mini games each day and compete with each other team for points. I don’t think there is an overall prize of any kind, but each day the highest point scoring team wins medals.
I ended up on the Forest Team. Which is fun because well, Forest is dominating the standings. They have won both Gold Medals every day so far. I almost feel bad. Especially because I am super bad at the daily games, i always come in last. It’s still a nice change of pace from the usual Days of Events where you just, go to an area and pick up 4 event currencies. It’s kind of nice to have to actually DO something.
Doom 3
I did branch out slightly, with Doom 3. I played through Quake II recently and have kind of been wanting to play something similar to that. The Doom series kind of felt like a logical place to move to, being the sort of, precursor series to Quake. I have never played Doom 3 so I decided to give it a go.
I’m… not really enjoying it. I’m really not into “Zombie games” and Doom 3 seems to very much be a zombie game. Also, everything is so fucking dark. God it’s so dark, why is it so dark? There is a flashlight, but it has a battery mechanic, which mostly feels meaningless since you can just, turn ti back on. It’s not like you have to find energy cells. It’s like someone realized it was all too dar, and instead of beefing up the lighting, they just added a shitty flashlight.
I played it, I’m not sure I’ll go back to it. Also, these models are kind of ugly.
American Truck Simulator
I’m almost caught up on my mission to visit every city for the DLC that I own. I’ve also started working on some of the other achievements in the game. A while back I started obsessing a bit with 100% completing achievements, and I could definitely see doing that for ATS over time. I’ve been playing it while watching through Star Trek Lower Decks. It’s a good sort of game for that, since it doesn’t require a lot of attention at times. Though sometimes I definitely don’t give it enough attention because I’ve gotten into more than a few accidents because I forgot to watch the traffic.
Something something don’t stream and drive people! Unless it’s a virtual truck, then it really doesn’t matter.
