mikeszekely

Hey, it's gotta be for somebody besides suckers who buy everything to write Transformers reviews on a Macross message board.

Gonna do a little cleanup before the next waves start hitting (and Alchemist and Vortex have both be pre/reviewed in Asia, so maybe not too far off). Here's all the recent repaints. We're opening with Leader-class G2 Grimlock. There's not a ton of difference between him and the original Studio Series release. His eyes are red and he's got some painted sticker detail, but the biggest change is that the gray plastic was swapped for blue. To be fair, though, that's pretty accurate to how the original G1 toy worked... There's no changes to the mold, so we have to wait for an upgrade kit to give him articulated dino arms or his front teeth. He even comes with the same accessories- gun, crappy Wheelie slug (painted to look like the Marvel comics, but still just as un-articulated and worthless), still no sword. All-in-all, he's fine, if you've somehow missed this mold so far or are super attached to the blue one because that's the one you had as a kid. But frankly, the Walmart version of the unreleased G2 colors is the better G2 Grimlock, while the less visually interesting Studio Series one has the benefit of being cartoon accurate. Age of the Primes also gave us Deluxe-class Wasp, who's a essentially Legacy United Animated Bumblebee with a new head. One the one hand, I do like this mold. It's got its flaws, like the seriously wonky shoulders, but there's something I find interesting about the transformation. Plus, I know Waspinator had a toy in the Animated line, but I don't think Wasp did, despite spending more screen time as Wasp. So I think this is probably a win for Animated fans. Then again, while I did like the cartoon I've talked before about how I don't like the stylized 2D designs of Animated as 3D objects. So... I kind of think if you have one of this mold that's enough. Especially if you're more into G1. But like I said, I can see Animated fans being jazzed for Wasp. While we're still Generations-adjacent, here's Walmart's retro Gears. New head, lighter blue, silver gun instead of black, and some different paint apps to better represent the G1 toy's stickers. Shame he still has the unpaintable gray parts in his elbows and fists, though. The blue windows are black like the G1 toy, is is the strip on his hood and he's got his sunroof back. Since it's not molded onto the original hood, they tampoed a Microchange "M" onto the hood. All-in-all, a toy deco doesn't totally capture the wonkiness of the actual G1 toy, but if you like toy decos it's pretty good, especially with the new head. Bumblebee, sadly, didn't fare quite so well. Ditching the yellow pelvis and forearms and using black translucent plastic for the windows is nice and toy accurate, and the shade of yellow is better than the Kraft Singles color used on Neftlix Bee. But, even it it happens to match the Walmart-exclusive G1 reissue with the new cartoon head from a few years back, it does NOT match the battle mask of the G1 toy. Then there's the crappy Cliffjumper Bazooka thing, the lack of alt mode storage for it due to the licensed VW alt mode, and the fact that you have to partsform him to get to said alt mode. Long story short, I'd have strongly preferred this deco with a proper battle mask head on the Studio Series toy, not this one. Alright, moving into Studio Series we have Gamer Edition Ironhide. As the lone SS retool, I guess they had the budget to go hard on him. He's got a new head, new torso, new shoulder pads, and a new weapon based on the EMP Shotgun from the War for Cybertron game. He's also got the same axe as Ratchet. He has a surprising amount of retooled parts for alt mode, too. New front bumper, tweaked roof, and a new rear hatch. The slots on said hatch are a little closer together, so he couldn't carry Ratchet's weapon back there, but fortunately the tabs on the shotgun are closer together, so it works. Despite being slightly tweaked, the roof still has the tabs for the axe. Gamer Edition hasn't been a particularly impressive subgenre for Studio Series, and if you've been skipping them Ironhide is definitely not the one to start with. But if you have a couple, and you liked Ratchet, Ironhide's basically the same thing. Lastly, coming out of left field (well, actually, Japan) we've got Bingo Sports Optimus Prime, a Japan-only retool of Studio Series Crosshairs as Age of Extinction/The Last Knight Optimus. It's a fairly extensive retool, with a new torso, head, shoulders, and biceps. He does have a new gun... But if you'd rather, he comes with the same SMGs that Crosshairs did, and they store in his "coat" the same way they do on Crosshairs. Speaking off, while the new torso and head isn't bad for a Deluxe, Crosshairs had a lot of kibble that we kind of ignored just because it was supposed to be his trench coat. But Prime doesn't have a coat or a cape or anything like that, so on him it's straight up just kibble. As with his bot mode, Prime is a suprisingly heavy retool. The nose, the grill, the spoiler, and the sides are all new, really only leaving the roof, windows, wheels, and butt carried over from Crosshairs. And on that note, you'll see that they both have a pair of notches under the spot for the license plate... This notch allows you to (awkwardly) plug in his new gun. And it's kind of weird that on a figure with so many new parts, the one place the new gun plugs into was a place that isn't new and already had holes despite the fact that Crosshairs did NOT have anything to plug into them. I guess the question you might have is, "why even make Prime a Corvette in the first place?" And the answer is simple... because the Corvette is a real car! Bingo Sports, a Japanese company that helps buyers acquire high-end cars, sponsors a real racing team in Japan. And their CEO, Shinji Takei, drives this Callaway C7 GT3-R. Sadly, Prime is missing some of the sponsors, like the "Callaway" in the grill, "Pirelli" on the bumpers, "Japan Cup" across the windshield, etc. But I think it's cool that Takara re-engineered a different toy that had a C7 'Vette alt mode into a Prime that turns into a real car with an Optimus-style paint job and Transformers branding. That said, would I actually recommend buying it? Probably not. Like a lot of movie Deluxes, Crosshair's mold isn't that great. And this is still a Deluxe, no matter how remolded or how nicely-painted, carrying a price tag around double a "normal" Deluxe. I'd say most collectors don't really need this one. That said, if you're a more Optimus-focused collector (like me) or you're into cars (like me) it's a pretty interesting bit of Transformers history.

In the case of the 19P I think we're pretty close already. Just repaint all the red as black, replace the Zora Patrol emblems with the UN Spacy kite, and slap some Jolly Rodgers on the vertical stabs. Really hoping the speakers are just pegged in and can be removed easily. It's always bothered me that they're swept forward.

OK, I misunderstood you. I originally read "I'd prefer a figure that looked more like Fortress Maximus and less like a lazy Metroplex retool" as a critique of Big Mac, not a reference to the Has/Tak one. I definitely feel the same way. I part of me wants to replace my Takara Metroplex with the Siyang Vladivostok for a similar Geewunniness. Well, especially if I'm going to have to pay a 145% markup due to tariffs, price is definitely a concern. But after playing with a bunch of big combiners and Titan-class toys, no, bigger isn't always better. I mean, 50cm, 60cm, 70cm, it's all still too small to be in-scale with Has/Tak's mainline figures, let alone any MP-style stuff, so I'd rather they just cap out around 45cm. Big enough to convey that they're big, small enough to still work onto a shelf and handle without a team of assistants.

If you have a Switch, I really loved Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity and Fire Emblem Warriors: The Three Hopes. For a more classical mixup vs Lu Bu Dynasty Warriors 8 is good (9 was TERRIBLE). I haven't played Origins yet. Samurai Warriors 4 is good if you like Sengoku history, and if you're a fan of Dragon Quest both of the Dragon Quest Warriors games were good. For Gundam specifically it's Dynasty Warriors Gundam Reborn, but in the US it was only released as a digital PS3 game. I never got into the Orochi games or the One Piece ones.

If you're talking about the Has/Tak Titan, yeah, but if you mean Big Mac, it already does look more like Fortress Maximus and not a Metroplex repaint. It's even got most of the G1 toy's sticker details. My biggest gripe with Big Mac is that he's too big.

I did, but I've been a fan of Musou games since Dynasty Warriors 3 on the PS2. There are better Musou games than the Gundam ones, and for Gundam hack-n-slash games the Breakers games are better, but if you like Musou games and Gundam then they're still fun.

I get that, and I didn't expect to find three empty M.2 slots, but I figured maybe three with one occupied by the system drive. If you're already advertising that you have bluetooth and wifi 6 just don't count that as an M.2 slot even though it's technically in an M.2s slot, because very few people are willing to give up wifi and bluetooth to add another SSD.

Nice! I never played the Breakers on Vita, just PS3 for the first two, PS4 for the third, and PC for GB4. I did play Gundam Seed Battle Destiny (good, but not as good as Gundam Battle Universe on the PSP) and Gundam Extreme Vs Force, which I seem to recall reviewing poorly but I loved it for the solid single player campaign.

New PC arrived. Asus ought to step up their QC... Out of the box it kept giving me errors about being unable to continue the Windows installation. Fortunately I used to fix computers for a living, so it wasn't difficult to get into Windows Recovery, run a factory reset, and then get it setup. Another minor complaint is that Best Buy advertises it as having three M.2 slots and two 2.5" bays. Well, the only way you're getting three m.2 slots is if you pull out the Bluetooth/Wi-Fi module; there's only one free slot. As for the 2.5" bays, there's room in front of the PSU but no mounting hardware- no cages, no sleds, no caddies, nada. I put my 2TB game drive in the M.2, and for now I installed my 3TB 3.5" bulk storage drive by screwing it into the bottom of the case with a single screw. Down the roads I'll probably get a PCIe NVME card and a 4TB SSD to replace it, but I'm kind of irritated that a case that's probably 20-25% bigger than my old one can't properly fit a 3.5" drive. On the plus side, I went from 45-50fps on a medium-low mix and minimal ray tracing on AC Shadows to 60-65fps on High with the ray tracing cranked all the way up. So once I get all my stuff reinstalled and my settings tweaked the way I like I'll be quite happy. EDIT: tried Ultra High and was in the high 50s, so I dialed back a few things like fog, shadows, and clutter and was able to get over 60 with with good stuff still maxed.

I ordered this today at Best Buy. https://www.bestbuy.com/site/asus-rog-g700-gaming-desktop-intel-core-ultra-7-32gb-memory-nvidia-geforce-rtx-5080-2tb-ssd-black/6613426.p?skuId=6613426

And finally, we wrap up the new Studio Series molds with Deluxe-class 86 Bonecrusher. OK... there's no getting around it. We all saw the photos before he was even released... Bonecrusher is one dumpy dude. He's a solid block of a bot, and it's unfortunately exacerbated by the fact that his head's a little too small, his legs are a little too short, and his arms are significantly too short. I criticized SS86 Scrapper hard for being too similar to the Combiner Wars toy, but in terms of overall proportions SS86 Bonecrusher is actually a downgrade from the Combiner Wars toy. It's not really any better from other angles, either, where you can see that Bonecrusher isn't just too wide left-to-right, he's too thick back-to-front. What's more, despite knowing that Devastator will be more of a partsformer than the Combiner Wars toy, SS86 Bonecrusher still has what appears to be a chunk of the combined forearm on his back. I don't want to be entirely negative, so let's talk about the positive changes. Well, they ditched the silver on his arms and chest. How you feel about that is subjective, but objectively it's more cartoon accurate. And while he might have benefitted from longer legs, the lack of skinny gap that the CW toy has where his legs extend does look better. I think I might even go so far as to say that, while the forearm backpack is disappointing, it's not as long or obtrusive as the one on the CW toy. Another improvement is that he has a gun! Sure, it's a fairly small, fairly simple one, but it's cartoon accurate and certainly better than no gun. 86 Bonecrusher's articulation is pretty similar to the CW toy, because they use rather similar joints. His head swivels (same), with minimal up/down tilt (same) and no sideways tilt (same). Shoulders are ball joints (same) that swivel and move laterally 90 degrees (same). There's no dedicated wrist swivel (same), instead the swivel is the ball joint in his elbow (same). Said ball joint also gives him 90 degrees of elbow bend (kind of wash, CW has a hinge for transformation that'll allow him to bend his elbow 180 degrees, but only if the elbow isn't swiveled. No wrist articulation (same). He does technically have a waist swivel, which you could consider an improvement... if the shovel on his chest didn't tab into his abdomen and negate it. Hips are ball joints (same), with 90 degrees of forward range (worse) due to his shovel kibble, over 90 degrees backward (better) due to not having backpack kibble in the way, and cutouts that allow 90 degrees of lateral spread (same). His thighs swivel (same, though it's a proper mushroom swivel and not another ball joint like the CW toy), and his knees bend 90 degrees (same, though I'll note that it's a proper hinge in a more anatomically-correct spot instead of using the same ball joint that was the thigh swivel on the CW toy). His toes can tilt down, not up (same), and his ankles pivot 90 degrees (technically less range than CW, but 90 is plenty). So, yeah, no real improvements on articulation and only minor improvements on the types of joints... but in the interest of fairness, SS86 Bonecrusher feels a lot better. The tolerances on his joints are tighter, his shovel actually pegs in, and his pelvis isn't splitting in half every time you manipulate the legs. Oh, and there's the gun again. He can hold it without issue in either of his fists. There's a 5mm port on his backpack if you want to give him bot mode storage, which is nice. And for what it's worth, he's got a 5mm port under each foot, too. Bonecrusher's transformation has some broad similarities in that part of his torso with his head has to move back to leave a gap for his arms to fold into, and his backpack ends up underneath so his tread legs have something to attach to. The differences are more where and how things fold. For instance, the front of the bulldozer isn't his chest like the CW version, it's his abdomen. That means that his pelvis doesn't have to split apart to shift his hips upward, they're already in the right place. His chest and arms come away from his abdomen with his head. That section of the torso winds up rotating backward 90 degrees, so the back of the bulldozer is the top of his torso (and his head has to fold 180 degrees), rather than staying upright. The differences in engineering are a trade off; they're why his torso ends up so thick and his limbs so short in bot mode, however, they're also why he's more solid in bot mode and, I'm happy to report, in bulldozer mode, too. Aesthetically, I don't have a lot to complain about with the alt mode. The purple bands on the front, the lack of teeth on the shovel, and the open canopy with no actual driver's seat or wheel are more cartoon accurate than the CW toy. The mechanical details on the engine compartment and the splashes of silver paint in the treads aren't so cartoon accurate, but I think they help break up the monotony of all that green. While the shovel is attached via multiple hinges, they're really there for transformation and are mostly locked into place. So the shovel can tilt up (which isn't actually how a shovel on a bulldozer works), and that's about it. He does have a pair of 5mm ports on top (which are technically the back sides of his fists) where you can plug in his gun. It's hard not to feel a bit underwhelmed by Bonecrusher. He's a tad more accurate in some ways, he has a gun, and he's a lot more solid, sure, but his articulation is largely the same and he's got far worse proportions than a version of the character from a decade ago. Too be fair, Bonecrusher was arguably one of the best of the CW Constructicons with better-than-average articulation for the time, and CW Bonecrusher is technically a Voyager while SS86 Bonecrusher is only a Deluxe, but still, if SS86 Scrapper hasn't sold you on the SS86 Constructicons I don't think Bonecrusher will, either. However, it's a safe bet that most of us will care less about the individual Constructicons and more about the combined Devastator. Now, neither Scrapper nor Bonecrusher's instructions mention their combined modes, but I can make some educated guesses. And based on those guesses I expect that Devastator will be significantly more solid than the CW toy. So if a more solid Devastator that isn't oddly huge compared to your other combiners sounds appealing it's probably a good idea to pick up Bonecrusher (and Scrapper), despite his bot mode flaws.

I mean, yeah, kinda? Certainly not in the food/clothing/shelter sense, but my PC just isn't performing at the level I want anymore. The Core i7-9700K is just too old; urban areas in games like any Assassin's Creed or Baldur's Gate III (when you actually get to the city) grind to a crawl as it tries to manage all the NPCs. And while adding more RAM and upgrading from an RTX 2080 to an RTX 4070 helped keep things going for awhile, with mandatory ray tracing becoming a thing I'm turning down so many settings I might as well be playing on a console. What it really comes down to is priorities. Like I said, I wanted to upgrade my laptop, too, but I'm putting that off for the present to grab a desktop with an RTX 5080 instead of an RTX 5070 or 5070 TI. I was also thinking about getting the Switch 2 at launch, but after the Nintendo Direct I'm going to hold off on that, too.

Normally I'd agree 100%, but with the chaos that is GPU pricing (and to a lesser extent CPU) even before adding tariffs to the mix I gotta take what I can find. As is, my original plan was to buy a new laptop and replace my desktop later, but the laptop i'd been eyeing went up by $200 before even being released. Since I haven't even traveled in awhile I decided I'm better off upgrading my desktop now before things get worse, and putting off the laptop until things get better.

That'd narrow the gap between the MSI at Costco and the Asus at Best Buy to $80, so yeah, Asus it is.