Transformers

Transformers – Studio Series – Black Out

As sort of a last hurrah for the Michal Bay Transformers series, which is effectively done, Hasbro has been doing a sort of “greatest hits” line themed around the movies called Studio Series. It’s not a bunch of re-releases though, it’s new molds of most of the figures, with an emphasis on Robot Mode Scale. It’s also a way for Hasbro to give us better versions of a lot of characters who aren’t named Bumblebee or Optimus Prime. Often in the case of movie toys, for the sake of spoilers, toy companies end up working from pre production art and general descriptions or stills. They need to have the toys out when the movie releases, so they are working on the toys before the final movie vision is in place. So in the end, things don’t always end up being a perfect representation. Studio Series goes back to fix some of these issues.

The original Black Out toy from the first movie way back in 2007, isn’t really a bad toy, or a bad iteration of the character. His main offense is that he’s kind of too small. Black Out is one of the largest characters across all of the movies, and his Voyager toy isn’t awful, but it doesn’t really give off the proper huge vibes he deserves. For Studio Series, Blackout gets a Leader sized toy. The only other Leader Class figure so far is Grimlock from Age of Extinction.

He is definitely a nice size for Studio series at this scale, though he is actually quite a bit smaller than Leader figures from the Generations lines (Currently Power of the Primes) and even previous movie figures. Leader Class Blackout is noticeably smaller than Leader Class Starscream from the previous movie lines, for example. If you’re a real stickler for scale, Blackout is still going to be too small to go with a lot of the previous movie Transformers.

Blackout is still a pretty nice looking Transformer though. He is full of the little greebley bits that really made the live action style what it was during the Bay era. There are a surprising amount of little tab places on the fold over parts as well, particularly in his arms and shoulders. The whole robot doesn’t really look solid, but it is. I have had a little bit of trouble with one leg popping off the mushroom peg joint when turning it, it goes back on, but it’s kind of an issue. All of the little bits hanging off everywhere also tend to hinder articulation a lot. He has plenty of joints, but he can’t really use all of them. He also is pretty back heavy due to his backpack, which doesn’t help when trying to balance any poses. Probably the last major gripe about his little claw hands, which have no way or rotating them to do anything besides look like little flippers hanging off his arms. He has thumbs and everything, but the greebles and lack of wrists just makes them useless.

One final note of worry on the robot mode, the flat part of the feet are made up of two panels that later make up the sides of the helicopter tail. I seriously worry that these panels will end up scraped up and nasty looking after being used as feet, over time.

Transformation leans back into the complexity of the early movie lines as well, which will be a turn off for some people, and probably most kids. There is a lot of “do this in this order” and “position this just right” going on with panels and whatnot that need to properly mush together. It’s not a real hard transformation, it just can be tricky in getting everything massaged into place. Also, I found the joint holding the pelvis and back together on mine to be extremely tight. I knew it needed to separate and flip up, but it required enough force to free it that it made me uncomfortable pulling on it and I was worried it might break.

The helicopter itself is very nice, it’s appropriately large as well, almost 12 inches long. Like his 2007 version, Blackout includes a small Scorponok figure and like the 2007 figure, the Scorponok can be inserted into the tail area of Blackout’s vehicle. There isn’t really much else to the helicopter, there isn’t any spring loaded helicopter gimmick or missile launchers, it’s just a nice looking military chopper.

Ultimately, I feel like Blackout is a pretty cool sort of display piece, maybe not a super great toy. He looks really good in both modes, but the joint issues and complex transformation make his playability kind of weak. Also, the price tag of Leader class figures at $50 USD frankly. This is more of a personal complaint with the latest trends of Transformers pricing though.

Review – Transformers the Game (PC)

Mar 27th, 2018

by Ramen Junkie.

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I’ve been a bit behind here on my Transformers themed gaming here. I have yet to really get into any of the latest 3D incarnations of Transformers video games until recently. i figure the best thing to do would be to start at the beginning. Unfortunately, Transformers (Armada) isn’t available on the PC so I’m going for the game based on the first movie game. Keep in mind also, while I played the PC version, I’m pretty sure it’s essentially the same as the console versions for PS2, Xbox360, and PS3. It’s probably marginally different than the DS version however.

This is a game with a bit of extremes going for it. I’ll start with the good extremes because, generally good = boring. The graphics are pretty swank. Everything looks really nice, there’s a ton of great particle effects and every character looks pretty much the way they should. As a bonus, the numerous cut scenes, as corny as they may be, are well animated and fluid as well. The action and Transformation gimmick is used fairly effectively as well, though more so for land based vehicles (more on this in a bit). My only complaint with the transformation gimmick is the “button” for how to do it is not in the controls options, which mean I had to putz with things until I figured it out (it’s mouse wheel up).

Speaking of controls, let’s move on the the extreme of bad. The controls are mostly decent, except for the flying sequences. Controlling Megatron wasn’t so bad but Blackout and Starscream have extreme issues with the up and down precision. It’s possible this was just my machine or something but it makes flying anywhere almost impossible. Thankfully it’s never ever necessary. Even the mission where you have to shoot down 20 jets can be done by standing on the ground shooting rockets at them as they very slowly fly by.

Assuming you can lock on to them. The next major gripe I have with this game is the incessant military/police. You see, due to the nature of the film, creating things to fight and DO on missions was a bit tricky. Each side has like half a dozen main characters to choose from for creating storylines and missions. This leaves the pool of things to shoot at extremely small. This is “fixed” through two methods. Each faction gets a whole mess of Drones that show up in mass from time to time. Also there is an almost constant stream of military or police forces. This means you’ll constantly be chased by police cars and constantly being assaulted by Ospreys and Blackout style helicopters. The human attackers generally do little damage and mostly serve as an annoying nuisance than anything.

The drones help give a more formidable set of opponents but they aren’t without their issues either. They come in a variety of sizes and flavors however both the Decepticons and Autobots use the exact same drones. Also, each type has some gimmick to defeat it, two of which are extremely annoying. The two largest types require you to throw some sort of vehicle at them to remove their defenses. There isn’t any way around this and finding a vehicle can often be tricky. Once you find a vehicle getting it to connect just right among the mess of police/military and everything else going on can be tricky as well. To make things more tedious you will have to hit them 3-4 times each. If you try to straight attack or get to close they will fling you halfway across the battle area.

Which brings up another bit of annoyance, almost every encounter has a completely arbitrary “Action Zone”. Leaving this circle for more than about 20 seconds means instant mission failure.

The hero characters all show up of course. Through the course of the Decepticon missions you fight Bumblebee, Jazz, Ironhide and Optimus each to their destruction, which makes a nice twist on the plot of the film. Ironhide however is probably the most annoying boss battle ever as it involves a lot of drones, a lot of “kill stuff then fight the boss”, all while doing a lot of “stay away from the boss between rounds or he’ll fling you across the map”. I could understand this more if you fought Ironhide as say, barricade or Scorponok but you fight as Blackout, whom is considerably larger than everyone.

The Autobots of course showdown against the Decepticons with one major twist. Shockwave shows up as a boss. He’s even a triple changer transforming from a stationary gun turret, to robot to a helicopter similar to Blackout. This is somewhat odd for several reasons. First is that no other major characters were added. Sure we have the “drones” but they are all clearly called drones implying they are nobodies. Secondly, shockwave has never gotten a movie based toy. Even the drones are all based on toy designs, Swindle, LIST DRONE TOYS. Thirdly, Shockwave is rumored to be a major player in the third Transformers film. Will his design have any relation to the one presented here. Technically the game isn’t really cannon in anyway, but it is something to question.

There is one character conspicuously absent from the game. Ratchet is not a playable character nor do you ever fight him. He makes a few short appearances in some of the CG cinematics but he doesn’t ever appear in game. Bonecrusher shows up in an NPC role during one of Starscreams missions and Brawl is fought during the Autobot quest though you never get to play as either of them. This is actually somewhat disappointing as I was hoping to play as Bonecrusher. His articulated claw could have added some interesting dynamics to the gameplay. Also Brawl is extremely small compared to his movie counterpart.

Brawl was the tank, referred to as Devastator in the first movie. He’s correctly called Brawl in the game but in the movie he was several stories tall and it took a great deal of effort by almost everyone to take him down. In the game he’s the same size as Ironhide, who turns into a larger pick up truck.

The missions themselves are decent though fairly standard for an action style game. The Decepticon missions are probably the better set if only because the Decepticons are more varied than the Autobots and the Decepticon missions come off as less hypocritical. By Hypocritical I mean, the Autobots get penalized for “Destruction” while at the same time you have missions like “Drive around as Jazz blowing up gas stations to distract the police”.

Overall, this is an OK game, though not spectacular. The real issues ironically come from the more “Game” like elements.

NOTE: It’s almost inconsequential but I just wanted to note that while playing this game I took screen shots of my OWN all the way through of lots of great stuff using a program to do so only to find out the program had not saved ANY of them. So I’ve had to resort to picking up a bunch of random shots from around the web.

Review – Transformers – Titans Return – Topspin and Twintwist

Oct 12th, 2017

by Ramen Junkie.

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Where Combiner Wars did it’s duty by giving us remakes of all of the original Combiner Transformers, it also used that opportunity to repaint all of those molds into different versions of the original G1 Autobots. Titans Return has been moving into a lot more interesting territory. There’s a lot more updates of Targetmasters, Movie bots and in this case, Jumpstarters. Topspin and Twintwist were a pair of very similar G1 bots that had one specific gimmick. Pull them back, and a motor would speed the vehicle along and eventually it would pop up and land on it’s robot feet. The entire transformation was literally “fold in half at the waist”.

Topspin got sort of an update with the movie line, he appeared in Dark of the Moon as one of the Wreckers, as a blue Lowes NASCAR. His toy even got a gray colored repaint that kind of worked as his buddy Twintwist. This iteration had pretty much nothing in common with his namesake aside from a vaguely Blue and White color theme. The original jumpstarters are more of a turquoise than a blue.

Titans Return has given us a proper update to this pair. Topspin came first but Twintwist is a straight remold of the Topspin mold. The new mold isn’t an exact replica of the original space ship/tank thingy, but it’s close enough, and the originals were kind of misshapen anyway to help accommodate the auto transform gimmick. The transformation is also an actual transformation now, and naturally a lot more complicated. It’s still reminiscent of the original. The bulky back end becomes the legs with the sides becoming the arms and the end result looks pretty close to the original robot with better proportions as well.

Like a lot of Transformers lines, the later figures tend to be get better all around, and Topspin is no exception. He’s definitely one of if not the best mold in the line. The closest rival is Triggerhappy. A lot is helped by the way his transformation does a good job of hiding a lot of the hollow bits that have been prevalent lately. He also does a lot of interesting twists and flips that help him feel like he actually has a complex transformation. Something else lacking in a lot of figures lately. Particularly of note is his arms, which do this neat open up and collapse in on the shoulder and hand, often it’s a trick done on one end or the other, not both.

Both vehicles do a great job of lending itself to the Titan Master gimmick. The space ship design is perfect for a cockpit for the small robot to sit in and pilot. The little drill tank of Twintwist is a great vehicle for these little guys as well. Neither was originally a Headmaster but the gimmick fits well.

Topspin and Twintwist are definitely a top notch toys for the Titans Return line. Twintwist is slightly weaker than his mold originator Topspin. The guns don’t work as well in the tank mold and the tank dreads kind of just hang off and look ugly in robot mode vs Topspin’s wings. There’s been a lot of hits in this line but this mold one of the best. It’s a solid update of a unique and interesting G1 design with a modern appeal layered on top.

Review – Transformers – RiD – Scorponok

Sep 28th, 2017

by Ramen Junkie.

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Possibly the last of these fun little animal Decepticons we’re going to see is Scorponok. There’s also a Toys R Us purple colored repaint of this figure called Paralon, who actually really resembles Beast Wars Scoponok, but this review primarily covers the normal brown colored mass released version. Scorponok’s animal motif is, a scorpion.

In fact, he simply IS a scorpion in his alt mode. While the other Decepticons all turn into vehicles with animal like themes in robot and beast mode, Scorponok just turns into robot and a scorpion. Straight out Beast Wars style. He has a really unique style going for him as well, and a very unique Transformation. The scorpion mode gives him some really obvious choices for hands, but Scorponok eschews that with a clever trick.

His scorpion claws slide up his arms to become a pair of huge shoulder pauldrons. No parts forming here, but they are essentially lose pieces at one point. The effect is neat for sure, but the connections tend to be a little lose on the shoulder joint. Given their large size they catch anything passing by and easily leverage out of their joint to become crooked or loose. The end result also means his claws have no real joints in Scorpion mode, which is kind of a lame trade off since Scorpion claws are one of the more versatile and fun joints in scorpion toys. Who doesn’t live a big set of vicious working pincers?

He also has a ton of fun character in his face and overall design. His little face with it’s little robot mustache makes him look pretty interesting. He also has a set of spindly legs that work well despite their small size and his upper body girth. He also completed his sandy sort of Persian motif with a scimitar weapon. The sword can be held in robot and scorpion mode as a giant stinger.

Overall, Scorponok isn’t the coolest Decepticon in the line, but he’s still a fun little toy. He does feel a little small overall, which is probably his biggest downside. The Paralon repaint kind of fits the name Scorponok a bit better, if you are looking at getting only one, but I find the brown color scheme works better for the figure overall.

Review – Transformers – Combiner Wars – Computron (Technobot Giftset)

Sep 14th, 2017

by Ramen Junkie.

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Combiner Wars was definitely an interesting take on the line. The need for every figure to be a robot and a vehicle and an arm or a leg really made for some pretty similar designs across the board. All of the most well known combiners, Superion, Menasor, Bruticus, Defensor, ended up with a release in the main line. Devastator got a massive Titan Class boxed set release as well. One vehicle combiner missing from the mainline was Computron. Instead of individual releases, Computron came available at the tail end of the line as a boxed set only, though he consists of repaints of previously released figures.

The boxed set for Computron consists of 7 figures, 5 forming the core combiner and one Legends class partner, like all of the other releases, who happens to also include another even smaller partner toy of it’s own. Unlike the other 4 known combiners, Computron is a straight update of his normal 5 members, no stand ins like Rook of Alpha Bravo. It’s also worth noting that there was also a Japanese boxed set released around the same time that costs around the same price. There are a lot of different design choices in which molds are used and both sets contain unique new remold versions of Strafe. I do not own the Japanese version but there are pluses and minuses to each design choice and a lot of what it comes down to is a preference of G1 cartoon vs G1 toy aesthetics.

Lightspeed

I want to start with Lightspeed since he’s probably the most boring of all of the figures in this set. Not really so much because of his design, but because he’s a repaint of the Streetwise/Prowl mold which is itself a remold of the Breakdown/Wildrider mold. Basically, this mold has been used a ton throughout this entire line and so it’s starting to feel a little tired. On the plus side, it’s one of the better molds in the line. He has a nice range of pose ability, his transformation is a little more interesting all around and it works well as both an arm and a leg.

The overall shape fits pretty well as an update to G1 Lightspeed as well. The original toy was a bit more orange in color however. This color works pretty well though and homages closer to the cartoon color pallet.

Nosecone

Next up we have Nosecone. Probably the weakest figure in the entire set, primarily due to the choice in base mold. The original Nosecone was a drill tank thing. Rather than take the Takara route of extensively remolding Rook, Hasbro’s Nosecone is simply a repaint of Brawl from the Combaticon set with a new drill bit turret.

A lot of Nosecones flaws are simply due to using the Brawl mold, which is the weakest in the line. He is so close to being pretty good though, at least in robot mode. The waist joint however is very poorly designed, things accordion together to connect the legs to the torso, but the accordion action isn’t quite a solid as it wants to be or should be. He does have a pretty nice paint job in robot mode as well which helps. The paint apps are more designed to homage the original toy than the original cartoon.

Where things fall apart is the vehicle. The intended design is to position the turret out what is the back of the original tank. The problem is this means the bottom of the feel are really obviously exposed in all of their hollow glory. You’re better off just positioning the drill facing forward the way Brawn’s turret sits and calling it a day. It’s mildly less accurate but looks a heck of a lot better.

Strafe

Strafe is kind of the polar opposite of Nosecone and Lightspeed. Where both of those were straight repaints, Strafe is an extensive remold of the Air Raid mold. Where Air Raid turns into an F-14 fighter jet, Strafe has an entirely new front half and a completely different wing assembly on the legs. The only real noticeable bits that are the same are the robot parts and the rear tail fins. As such he shares the same basic transformation that all of the Aerialbots used with the clam-shell leg mechanism and the arms folded to the sides and the nosecone backpack. All of the Aerialbots are solid figures however, which translates into a nice plus for Strafe.

Unlike his Aerialbot counterparts, Strafe’s “funky space ship” alt mode allows him to wear his bulky undercarriage much more well. He isn’t trying to be a sleek jet, so the body bulk and complete lack of aerodynamics become much more excusable.

Afterburner

Afterburner is the pseudo new mold of this set. The motorcycle mold in Combiner Wars showed up originally in Takara’s Defensor set for Groove. There has been rumor and speculation that the US release received Rook in place of Groove because of safety issues involving the clear plastic canopy, due to scale issues of the motorcycle, and possibly just because the mold is a little large for a standard deluxe and this didn’t fit price wise. Eventually Groove did get a limited release in the states through several online retailers. Afterburner however is the most reliable way to get the mold in the US, though Afterburner is also a remold and not just a straight repaint of Groove.

I can see why he might have failed standard safety tests, that window backpack just sort of hangs off of the top of the figure and clear plastic tends to be more brittle than the standard plastic used in most figures. On the other hand, here we are, with a regular mass release version of the mold. The speculation that he’s too large is feasible as well, he is definitely taller and bulkier than most of the Combiner Wars deluxes. The scale issue, at least in Afterburner’s case, kind of falls away however. Groove is a police motorcycle, thus would be much smaller than his fellow Protectobots. Afterburner is a space motorcycle. Who says he isn’t a giant space motorcycle. Especially when all of his friends are giant robots.

Scattorshot

Scattorshot is a repaint of the much more muted color pallet, mass released, Scattorshot who is a remold of the Aerialbot torso, Silverbolt. The mass release version of the figure was very bland and mostly red, and formed the torso for “Beta-tron”. I’m not sure why he ended up with two releases, my only real assumption is they weren’t sure Computron would actually get a release. The boxed set version has a lot more white spots of color and different shades of red, which really helps make the mold look a lot less… beta, in design.

This mold is one of the better torsos in the line, but the individual robot is a little funky looking with it’s huge boots. It does work for Scattorshot though, the original toy also had some kind of funky proportions going on with his body. The funky space wings really help to make him seem different than Silverbolt as well, which is nice.

The vehicle gets a new node piece in the form of a giant cannon, in addition to the previously mentioned space wings. There are enough little greebly bits added to the vehicle to help him stand out even more from Silverbolt. The torso, doesn’t fare quite as well however, as it very much resembles Superion’s torso.

Scrounge and Cybaxx (Boltax)

Because there were little “helper” transformers in the Legends scale for each of the other combiners, Computron also includes a repaint of Generations Cosmos and Payload in the form of Scrounge and Boltax. Both are relatively obscure G1 comic characters, both of which were originally yellow gold colored. The original Scrounge seems to turn into some sort of wheel thing, so Cosmos’ flying saucer works pretty well there. Boltax doesn’t really have an original alt mode, his association here is more on the “smart guy” side of the Technobots theme. He was sort of an omniscient librarian in his original form.

The new head on the Cosmos mold is a nice little touch, it would have been really simple and easy to just make him a repaint. Given that this is an older mold from an older line, the interactivity with the larger Computron is pretty weak. Where Menasor and Defensor got new chest pieces and Superion and Bruticus got guns, Scrounge sort of becomes a shield that loose bolts onto existing pegs and Boltax turns into an undersized targetmaster style gun (just like Payload). Well, undersized for Computron, less so for any of the individual robots.

Computron

So, being apart of Combiner Wars, and the combiner Computron, these figures all merge together to form one giant robot. He’s actually got quite a bit going for him in his combined form, compared to the other combiners in the line. Despite some of the individual flaws, all of these figures are good limbs. Couple this with the Silverbolt/Scattorshot torso and you end up with a pretty solid combined robot.

What also helps make this set is that he also includes a new set of hand/foot pieces. The individual releases all came with various hand/foot bits that could be either a hand or a foot. They were also a bit undersized for the combined robots, especially for the feet. Computron here has two dedicated feet that are much larger than the previous hand/foot gun pieces, and two nicely sculpted left and right fists. The Hand/Foot Guns all were also designed to work as a left or right hand. These pieces really help him look more beefy and properly proportioned in his combined form.

His color scheme is a little hodge podgey, though the tones are all sort of in the same general pallet and there is a lot of colors across the limbs that helps everything feel a bit more blended. He also benefits from the boxed set benefit of budget, because he has a bit more paint apps across the board, which helps make him look really nice.

Overall, Computron is a really great complete package of a combiner. He’s probably my favorite of the 5 combiner sets that I own (Superion, Bruticus, Defensor, Menasor, and Computron). The techno spacey Cybertronian theme of all of the vehicles helps these guys stand out in a sea of Earth modes and help hide some of the bulky-ness flaws of the Combiner Wars line. You also get an entire set instead of having to hunt down individual robots, which makes things a lot easier.