JsARCLIGHT

I have talked with a SEAL or two in my time and most of them like the smaller pistols, mainly due to all the crap they are carrying anyway the last thing they need is for their back up weapon to be the size of a shoebox. After all, most specops folks are trained to treat pistols as backups and not as primary use weapons (let's face it, the concept of an "offensive handgun" is still sort of militarily unsound). I have heard that the hatch poppers (guys swimming out from subs) are the ones with the woody for the Mk23 as the gun can go from chilly deep deeps to surface without busting it's guts. Plus it is one of few handguns on the market purpose built to be silenced like the Hush Puppy which makes it a lifesaver if you need to get off some quiet rounds while riding a parachute down to a drop zone and your main weapon is too large to be useful in the chute harness. Most of the 1911's running around in the hands of Delta operators are not even milspec pistols... most of them are Kimbers, Wilson Combats and other syles of non-milspec modded pieces. When you can request any gun you want they ask for the best I guess. AFAIK the old old old 1911A1's have all been demilled or put out to pasture. I was referring to the deisgn more or less and not the actual original frames from WWII, Korea and 'Nam.

The Mk23 was designed from the ground up to be a purpose built special operations command OHWS (Offensive Handgun Weapon System) weapon, hence the nick "Socom" the gun lugs around around it's neck. The pistol was never intended to be a mass-issue replacement for the 1911 as the government had already flooded the ranks with M92s and SIG 226/8es. From day one when testing began in the early '90s the Mk23 was slated for exclusive use in the Navy SEALs and a few other select elite special forces groups commanded by SOCOM. The gun successfully beat out the Colt pistol (which was a steaming pile of crap many say) to become the OHWS for SOCOM. Since then not much has been seen or done with the gun. The LAM has undergone a few changes and has many different variations made by many different government contractors, the suppressor has remained the same and is one of the few working elements of the design that the gun works well at. Since it's introduction though some specops teams (supposedly) don't like to use it due to it's size and prefer to run the smaller, handier SIG 226/8... but for super deep underwater pop out of a sub missions the Mk23 is purpose built to stand the pressures and environmental damage. Since it's induction and apparent "dissapointment" in military circles, H&K has retooled it's USP using many of the same tricks they made the Mk23 with under the name "USP Tactical" and is now really pushing that as their new specops open market weapon of choice. Most police agencies and government units outside of the SOCOM command structure are usually seen with the USP Tactical rather than it's beefier brother. As for the regular joe troops, the good old 1911 has been in use with Delta, Rangers and other units up to this day. Retired or not that gun does not go quietly into the night.

It would be neat (and shut me up) if the game let the player pull out grass and break off branches and add them to your camo to help break up your outline better. That way they would be using a tad of logic and making snake more obscure in the process... and it would add a whole new layer to the camo thing: facepaint, camo and growies.

Free Willy II: The Revenge This time... it's personal.

I myself can forgive the quickie koala costume changes but the blind and brain dead enemies are too much. If snake had been totally decked out in a custom stalking suit or realtree camo from head to toe and lying totally motionless then I could buy it that a trained soldier walked right past him... but nooooooooooo. All I am asking is that on the harder difficulty settings the enemies at least respond like a real person would and notice that man sitting in the shrubs next to them rather than walk on by oblivious to him. I also just noticed something... some of those camo patterns (like the hideous one they are calling "fire") were not exactly around in the '60s... wonder what their super spy science fiction story will be to explain them? Perhaps snake will have a ton of what we see as modern gear which back then would have been new and strange.

If the game does take place in the '60s then you have a plethora of cool '60s "subversion" weapons that can be used in the game... Hush puppies, Sweedish K's, suppressed Ingrams, Colt Commando pistols and rifles... the list goes on. The baddies are carrying Kalishnakovs in the movie so we can at least expect that gun in the game. Oh and my knowledge of the Mk23 is first hand, not internet rumor and put ons. The gun is unwieldy and not as usefull as people make it out to me. I took one through a guantlet a while back and found it to be way to big, hard to manage even with both hands and it kicks strange. If given the choice of jumping into a hot LZ with a pistol BU weapon I' choose that 226 any day of the week. Smaller, higher capacity and easier to shoot. Sounds to me the only reason the specops people keep choosing that gun is because it is the only thing in their gun locker that can stand heavy underwater use... and just because it is their only choice does not make it their best. The Mk23 is a gun designed to fill a role the government thought the troops would want a weapon to fill... turns out the job that weapon was made to do happens once every one hundred or so ops and most of the time the SEAL's main duty weapon (usually an MP5SD6) more than handles the job instead. The Mk23 is an answer to a question no one really asked and thus it is a red-headed step child.

I think it has potential to be a fun game as well, but come on. While watching that footage I kept saying "he'll see snake... now... ok... now... ooooohhhhkkkaaaaayyyy... now.... what are you, blind you idiot he's right there! Now he's moving! Can't you see the grass moving!?!" Enemy AI appears to be dumb as a post to me. I'm hoping they make the game a bit harder so they actually pick up on the super obvious this time.

Here's a hint: "We can't have any firing in there. I want rifles and grenades slung, flame units only." "WHATTA WE SPOSED' TO USE AGAINST 'EM, MAN? HARSH LANGUAGE?"

OK, I just now saw the test movie (at work where I have a DSL connection)... Holy cats that has to be the lamest thing I have seen in a while. HE'S RIGHT THRERE! Any idiot who plays paintball could spot snake! Next generation uber commando genome soldiers my aunt fannie... I understand the need to dumb down the game and change elements so people can play a "tactical action" game with some fun elements in it but at least in the first MGS games it was somewhat realistic that Snake was obscured by walls and things... I mean he was actually hiding then. Now they have just gone stupid on it. UN Spacy is 100% right that even while hiding in a field of grass while wearing tiger stripe camo a trained eye can and will spot you in seconds. If they want to use this premise I suggest at least making it so when you hide up against a freaking tree four feet away from an enemy that at least the enemy is smart enough to say "hmmmm... strange... that tree has buttons, zippers and LBE equipment on it..." And what is with all the motion? Nothing defeats camo better than moving around a lot. Oops, here comes an enemy! I better crouch down and back away from him! He'll never spot a large moving blob five feet away from him disturbing the grass and making shuffling noises... Combat camo is made to give you a split second advantage over your enemy, not conceil you completely from their view at four feet away. In order to pull off the kind of conceilment they are passing off in this game you would need a nice Guile suit, tons of training and nerves of steel. Oh well, we now know what this is... yet another: VIDEO... GAME... GIMICK! dun duuun duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuun.

Anyone seen anything on what type of gear (other than camo) is going to be in this game? I'm a bit tired of all the spec ops "oops" choices they made for the new games... Mk23 Socom? D'oh! FaMAS? D'oh! M92 that shoots magic sleepy time bullets? D'oh!

I'd buy that for a dollar.

100% Correct. To quote Sgt. Barnes, washington kept trying to fight the war with one hand tied around their balls (a.k.a. they kept trying to force the enemy to fight "our war on our terms" rather than meet them head on on their level. See above, subsitute 1964 for 2004. Either that or we will go to war under some dumbass doctrine like "don't shoot unless fired upon" which totally negates those wonderful planes, tanks, APCs, bombs, nukes and sharp sticks. We may have the most kick-patootie toys on the block but when mom won't let you take them out of the toy chest and play with them there sort of is no point. What we really need is to invest all that DoD money into some nice killer robots... something that will apease the doves by "not getting our soldiers killed" and something that will sate the bloodlust of the hawks with "robotic chopping knives death attack".

One of mt favorite tricks is to spook a heard of tri-gens or mercs and get them to follow me back to a point where I have stashed a Humvee, Boat or Minigun and just hose them when they round the corner or crest the hill. Good times.... good times...

Is it a bad move cancelling this fighter? Maybee... Is it a bad move cancelling this fighter for this reason at this time? Definately. Someone really needs to take the keys and credit cards away from these people before they spend and cancel us into another era of weakness ala the 70's of post-vietnam. ... now where is Agent One with his Ronnie Raygun to give us all hope again?

A few days ago I cleared the first "island" and am now on the second island (the one at night). I keep getting killed either by roaming tri-gens or by getting ganged up on by troops. I'm trying to "solid snake" my way through the level and pick off as many guys as I can without being seen and having to engage in a stand-up fight. Oh and the Jackhammer is the perfect tri-gen whacker.

I'm only a fan of the original SDF: Macross and DYRL... so when the VF-1 goes goodbye so will most of my valk buying. As others have stated, if Yamato comes out with Destroids or enemy units I'll buy those... but my interest in the new crop of Macross stuff can be measured in micrometers. Then again I am all aflutter over the upcoming Legioss fighters from Mospeada...

Of Macross I collect Yamato 1/60s and 1/48s (and have a full set of each with my 1/48 Max 1J on the way). I even have a few customs made just to have complete "groups" within my collection. My other hobby is collecting 12" army dolls... and sheesh there are so many of those made by so many different makers that it is sort of a "buy whichever ones you like" sort of thing as being a completist in that toy field would take more money than microsoft.

From what I can remember Playmobil has always been a bit off... then again they are sort of the antithesis of Lego. Lego has always been so clean-cut and whitebread... I guess Playmobil and their European makers decided to be a bit risque with their offerings. After all, in Europe is it not uncommon for children to take a little vin now and then? So who is to say they do not like play with their toxic cleanup Playmobils, no?

This is the bootleg I mentioned: It IS the only current HK bootleg version available... then again I have not seen one for sale in quite a while. I think the release of the domestic one all but killed off the bootleg. If you can still find one of these they go for like $25. The picture and sound is good on the series but LLA is choppy. The subs are as bad as they come but have tollerable incidental translations... as stated though the songs and LLA are not subbed.

To my knowledge the only exsistance of LLA on DVD is on the most recent bootleg set. It is thrown on there as sort of a "bonus" but it is A) not subbed, B) of horrid quality (think someone transfered an old VHS tape to digital) and C) you have to buy the whole bootleg set to get just it. IMHO: not worth it. If someone has it to DL just DL it as that quality can be no better than what is on the boot DVD set.

I think what Roy is really asking is that people refrain from using the button to solve any and all problems like stuck pickle jars and cats in trees. It's sort of like they said "hit the horn if you see anything" and we basically said "there's a tree!" HONK "there's a sidewalk!" HONK "there's another car!" HONK "there's Roy coming back out of the store with a bat!" HONK "there's a..." <WHACK!>

Oh you have got to be kidding me... THAT topic is what started this thread? Allegory, dude. Allegory. I half expected to see someone burning bibles or something (and I got my smores kit out for nothing...).

This is sort of a strange question here but do you think when SW: episode III comes out that the characters will have any of the traits of their cartoon likenesses? By this I mean will we see Obiwan wearing trooper armor under his jedi smock? Seems the designers went well out of their way to capture the costumes rather well... makes me wonder.

The price point at which I start to cringe for something that is not essential is $200. If a "toy" passes that mark then I might not get it as then it becomes just too expensive. Then again I'm a guy who will dump $100 down a high town resturant in one evening with the fiancee. I was once one of the college students... eating mac and cheese for every meal, drinking tap water and wearing secondhand clothes because I had little to no money for anything, especially toys. But when it comes down to it, collectable toys are not for everyone. They are a rich man's hobby just like muscle cars, guns, boats, and art. How many people are there out there saying things like "I really want that 1970 Plymouth Hemi Roadrunner but I'm mad at them that they won't price one under $1,000 for me on my blue collar budget". Same argument can be made for home entertainment electronics, houses, cars... heck just about everything. The market drives the prices and when people with money pay that money for items the market tends to come to rest in that range. Here is another honest question that pertains to this subject that I feel we need to clear up here as this question keeps coming up a lot on here: Just how old are you and what sort of job or prior commitments do you have that does not allow you to buy the things you want? My guess is that a good deal of the people complaining about prices are either kids (13-18) still in school with no real source of income, people with lots of prior commitments like kids of their own who don't have a lot of extra money to spend on trivial things like collectables, people who just don't make a lot of money or people like me that have the means to buy the toys but just don't like spending over a certain price point. Let's face it, life in general in the US is very expensive. You pretty much have to make a minimum of like $30,000 a year in this country to live in any sort of relative comfort. I know people still to this day who work at Target, make like $18,000 a year, live in rathole apartments and can barely afford to pay their car insurance let alone buy a $200 premium collector toy. I would just like to know if there are outlying reasons for people griping about collectalbe toy prices outside of "they should cost the same as US toys". I myself am a thirty something college degreed veep of my own company (now an inc.!), I'm getting married in the next few months and I have no kids and we most likely will not have any. I make more than enough money from my job, investments and other business deals that I live a comfortable life... in all honesty I sometimes have more disposalbe income than I do bills some months. If I really, really wanted something I could buy it I guess but to me the principle of paying assloads in premiums or markups for something is the issue keeping me from getting it. Say if a toy "retails" for $99 I would start to bark if the importer doubled that price, or if a scalper tripled it just because I can't find one on the shelves at a TRU. I still remember the days of eating ramen noodles for months on end just to afford my books for the next school year and paying premiums for things I can get for much less in other ways is just plain dumb to me. Then again I'm a frugal bastard at times and a crazy nuts spender at others, because sometimes you need to just bite the bullet and jump on things lest you end up paying much more for the same thing months down the road.

Sundown is right I believe. The group mentioned in this thread is more or less a "hired goons" service. They put on a pretty front of calling them "Security specialists", "tactical consultants" and other BS terms but basically they are selling combatants... people who have "been there", "know things" and impart their knowledge to others while being hired muscle in the meantime. Most of the time they are used as these folks were used: rent-a-cop / rent-a-soldier / rent-a-commando. Companies rent folks like these to do their dirty work / wetworks that a pencil pusher or private dick cannot handle. If you ask me (and with all due respect) those "professionals" totally misread the situation they were walking into and got themselves dead. It happens. Then again perhaps their hands were tied by the people that hired them... then that pretty much plays back into the whole "hired goons" just doing what the man with the money says thing. Any way you slice the pie in the end those boys were paid mercenaries, they died for money not because they wanted to be there and fight the good fight. And then again who is to say that all wars and this whole situation is not one big fight about money.