Alpha OTS

Did anybody else here send in for that Xbox360 HD DVD free movies offer? It's been over 4 weeks since I sent in for it. I'm getting antsy.

It was ok. There was one thing I didn't like about it. The way last season ended, it had some weight because there was sacrifice, there was cost, there was courage while facing the unknown. Now we find out that everyone survived the finale(even Sylar is most likely alive) so it feels like what I liked about last season's ending has been undone. That might be too harsh, but that was my impression immediately after watching the episode and particularly Peter's reveal. That said, there were things to like. HRG guy working at a copy store, putting up with the resident Napolean, and then after using up way more patience than I would have expected so deliciously putting him in his place. Did you notice that it was Nathan that bumped into Ando? I wonder if Nathan's doing the delivery of the marked pictures. Speaking of which, I was happy to see Ando again. I hope he gets back to sidekicking with Hiro. I'm kind of glad they're exploring Hiro's messing with a time line too. Future Hiro warned of the risks, but they never did specify the costs of him being wreckless with a timeline. So will the Hondurans be our new present day Wonder Twins? I think/hope there's much more to this than just "plague girl".

Yes. I don't know how/when they were originally released, but when I owned a G1 Predaking, my Divebomb was certainly made out of a chunk of die-cast.

It might be new news here, but these have been around for quite a while. There are upcoming "Starscream" (red and black Megatron) and "Magnus" (white and blue Optimus) repaints. The quirky thing I like about them the most is that they're wearing the sneakers they become. The only difference between the two are the heads. Although a neat feature that I think most people miss is that you can mount the rifle upside down on the right forearm which does a decent job of giving Megatron a fusion cannon which further differentiates the two. My MP Skywarp arrived today. I gawked at him for a good 15 minutes before trying to transform him. The jet mode just looks that nice. The transformation was involved, but I did figure it out without instructions. Definitely easier than MP Megatron. My favorite step was pulling the jet nose through the chest to the other side which is a signature seeker transformation step. Bot mode is equally as sharp. I've decided against applying the stickers. He just looks that sleek without them and there's already Decepticon logos on him, but much less pronounced, which is how I prefer them on my alternator themed collection. I didn't see any real QC problems except for where the cockpit opening tabs attach. The one side of the plastic tab is clear. I can't tell if it's a stress mark, or if the yellow plastic is missing pigment there, or if there was a black paint app that didn't apply properly there, which judging by looking at the parallel tab the last scenario is probably the case. I might apply a little dab of paint to fix it, but I'm definitely going to have to paint that Dr. Archeville. My hope now is that the carbon scarring on Walmart MP Screamer is going to be easy to remove.

My Target quickly sold out of their first shipment of G1 deco Jazz a few weeks back. Screamer didn't show up until the second shipment, and both him and Jazz are somewhat healthy in supply at the moment. The deluxe pegs for the 'in demand" figures are still unfortunately barren. I did however pick up Robot Replica Frenzy(even the robot replicas are few) and a couple of Titaniums today. I swear I've seen more Titaniums on store shelves in the last month or so than I've seen in the entirety of its actual run. RR Frenzy's in dire need of extra ball joints, especially for the ankles and the elbows. He only has ball joints on his shoulders, hips, and neck, but the arms themselves don't have much poseability for all the extra moving limb bits he should have. I guess he's decent, but these robot replicas don't seem to be the be-all-end-all of articulation that they're advertised as. Each Frenzy does offer something the others lack though. FAB Frenzy has a nice alt mode and a real interesting layered transformation which is pretty complicated for the FAB line. Robot proportions suffer, but being as good as he is for an FAB, I think its forgiveable. A trick I do to get a more dynamic pose is by reversing the right leg which is almost a mirror of itself. Barricade Frenzy is in scale with the deluxe bots and does have decent proportions. He's also kind of a cassette tape for Barricade, which I thought is a nice tribute albeit probably unintentional.

Awww crap. That was one of the HD titles I was considering picking up.

Snippets from the 1up review that I found very interesting: "New modes like the zombie-survival Infestation and twists on old favorites --" and "Co-op play starts off as another known quantity, but turn on a new feature called campaign scoring, and all of a sudden, the main story-driven game becomes an arcade-like experience. Campaign scoring lets players work together and pool points from kills (with bonuses for headshots, grenade sticks, etc.), or they can compete by going for individual high scores (but they still must work together since team kills deduct points)." I wish I wouldn't have read those snippets. I could have waited for the Halo 3 hype to die down before buying, but now I'm really interested. Sounds like they really paid some attention to the non deathmatch co-op aspects.

BBTS has a preorder up for Battlestar Galactica - Series 2 - Set of 4 which are the 6" figures line and this time includes a new Cylon! Funny how they hide it in the background of the picture though. Bummer that it's not coming out until January either.

If it weren't for the "animated" head, I'd be ok with it. As is, I'll await the inevitable G1 redeco and pray it gets a less exaggerated noggin as well for my Starscream assortment.

I did these pictures really quick, so I apologize for the lousy quality, but it does show what I was talking about. I hope they came across in order. All you have to do is pull the arms outward, you'll see the arm bar they're on will pull out. The first time you do it, it probably will be pretty tight. Edit: Cool, they came across in the right order. The first picture is how you have it transformed. I tried to highlight the arm bar in the second picture which you can kind of see. The third picture is the result with much better aesthetic shoulders.

Try to sample some 7 episodes before buying a large amount of it. It's not everyone's cup of tea. DYRL is a must-have though, as is Zero and Plus.

The lights totally make that piece. What price does one of these typically go for?

Nice! I'd like to own one, but man they're pricey. Anyone ever own/see one of those MicroMachines Sulaco Drop Ships? I haven't been able to find a picture of one out of the box.

Are wireless headsets any good though? I've read some reviews(on ebworld, I believe) that say they're problematic, that people on the other end sometimes get a persistent loud annoying hiss, and so on. I was considering getting one for a while some time back but the online concensus kind of scared me away. Are the Halo ones any better?

Maybe you're already aware and you want the paint to dry, but I'll point it out anyway because this seems to be a common Titanium Seeker problem(which incidentally happened much much earlier in this thread too). There's a transformation step you're missing with the arms that allows for a much more aesthetically pleasing arm placement. The arms pull outwards, then downwards and then back inwards, which lowers the arms. Nice custom! I was late with my MP Skywarp pre-order, so BBTS hasn't shipped it out yet. I'm still debating whether I'll apply any of the stickers. I really do think it looks great with and without them, so it's making it difficult. I'm just really happy MP Skywarp doesn't give me the "Why the hell did they color it like that?" vibe that MP Starscream did.

The guide really does help for those first couple of transformations though. This is a good topic to keep bumped.

I'm pasting this from a different board with some edits because I'm interested in what the forum people here think. I picked up Star Trek Legacy for the 360 over a week ago. I think I had avoided it before because I had thought that it was the Star Trek Robotron title everyone was talking about at release time. After recently watching Trek 6 I thought I'd try out the 360 demo anyway because I was in a Trek mood. Boy, how did I miss this title? It's the complete opposite of 2d Robotron(not that Robotron's bad, it's just not what I was in the mood for). If you go in expecting Wing Commander, Colony Wars or even Ace Combat, you're going to hate every second of this. The combat's set up like pre-industrial navy warships in space, which is pretty much what the battles in the movies and most of the shows were, and what I was in the mood for playing. You get your ships to circle a target and only when your ship is at the proper angle and range can it acquire a weapons lock and fire, just as if it were an old wooden ship with cannons on each side. The strategy seems to come in where you issue commands to each of the ships in your fleet, as to what their target is and management of their energy and repair systems to compensate for damage taken. You can pilot any ship, but like I said above, the control's nothing like Colony Wars. The ships turn slow and sometimes facing a foe directly isn't always the best angle of combat for that ship. The battles play out a lot like what you would see in an episode or movie, which I really like, but isn't going to be many gamer's cup of tea. I'm over 2/3's of the way through the game, and it seems the better you are at knowing where and what each ship in your fleet is doing, the easier it is to complete the mission. The default AI left on it's own isn't too bad, but I've had times where I lost track of a ship, so I toggled to it to see what it was doing and found it was just sitting there away from the battle twiddling its thumbs. Have I mentioned the ships look fantastic? Because they do. They're all well represented, and the way the missions play out, they give you new(later era) ones to buy/fly as you progress. The planets could look a little better, but are adequate. Sound and music effects are typical Trek. Yeah, there's some wonky physics going on with ships bouncing off of each other or off of planets instead of crashing, but after playing most of this, I think it'd be really frustrating if they did crash or take damage from impact. Especially with the scout class ships which zip around pretty quickly and require really close range for weapons lock. The biggest surprise was going through the extras. I guess this had a proper story with cinematics at one point. The story's still here, just without the cinematics and I'm kind of glad they dropped it because the stills with dialogue don't gel very well with the graphics in the gameplay. You never see any characters , but you do hear the actual captain's voice of your Trek ship and the character that is talking always has their ship is in frame. Most missions open just like your typical Trek episode with the blue Trek font mission name in quotes. Anyway, the big surprise is that V'ger created the Borg. Yep, you heard it. I had to do a double take to make sure I heard and saw what I did. Is this canon? It was worth the $40 to me, although I'm sure I could have found it far cheaper on ebay but wasn't in the mood for waiting after playing the demo(a fool and his money and what not). Anyway, what are everyone's thoughts on it now that we're well outside the game release and most people have either tried or finished it?

Qaztab - Alpha OTS The guy who said he'd dl Puzzle Fighter to play with me chickened out after the demo AI ate him for lunch, so I'd really like to play this with someone else and try the 3-4 player modes.

I've had mine since chrimmas of last year and it's been nothing but vertical. About three months back I did buy one of those bottom clinging fans as a small bit of preventive maintenance because of all of the ring of death stories floating around. I don't know how much of a difference it makes, but I've been conscious to make sure it's well ventilated.

I really really like this movie, but I can't entirely disagree with the above statement. The setup's there, but the follow through just doesn't quite gel like it should. I can understand why it didn't do well in the theater. The Shoveller lines are usually my favorites: "God's given me a gift. I shovel well. I shovel very well." "We've got a blind date with Destiny - and it looks like she's ordered the lobster." " [after leaving the bar] The Shoveller is hammered!" That said, I think it's aged well. I find I enjoy it much more on subsequent viewings. If you like this, you should probably check out "The Specials". It has the same basic premise(loser superheroes), but it has more of the follow through Mystery Men lacks. Unfortunately, it doesn't have the budget Mystery Men had. Still, you need to see Thomas Hayden Church as The Great Strobe, and hear all about Stretchy Boy.

Which is why I avoided the Primes like the plague, the chest windows are hideous. The Megatron is pretty nice though.

As true as that statement is, the sad truth is that they're flying off the store pegs too just because people want deluxe sized transformers product.

When are we going to get a 6" or deluxe sized updated robot cylon figure anyway? I have no interest in the upcoming oversized one.

Heh, well you can fold them so they look like a giant pair of breasts too. I finally found her today after a long search, and she was the last of three deluxes on the pegs at an out of the way Kohl's that's in the process of becoming a Walmart. The other two deluxes were Payloads, sadly no new Bees. She's gorgeous. They took the basics of the Energon Arcee mold, which was a decent mold on its own, and converted it into the movie aesthetic. The result simply works.

RoboCop 2 has its moments. I liked that they followed through a little with Robo literally haunting his wife. Some of the parody commercials and media bits are ok, but not near as good as the ones in the previous movie. Cain's the primary problem in human and robot mode though. There just something "cheap" about the casting and some of the set pieces, and Cain's bits dominate that feeling. Unlike ED-209, the RoboCop 2 design is just too busy, so it's difficult to focus on and appreciate the mecha scenes during initial viewings. RoboCop 3 has a good idea at summing up the whole OCP storyline. That's the only nice thing I can say about it because it does it in such a longwinded way that it's painful to sit through especially when the title character is not the main character. Everything that was wrong with the previous movie is in full force here: poor casting with the budget being obviously low to non-existent. They even managed to make ED-209 look like the giant piece of plastic he is in real life. I can still watch RoboCop 2 after RoboCop 1 and be entertained. It's not the classic that 1 is, but I find it watchable. In fact, I kind of caught on to what the ideas were for Robocop 2 that are difficult to understand due to bad storytelling. The thing that always bugged me about the movie was the wreckless motivation they gave for RoboCop 2 who was designed to completely eliminate the nuke drug problem in Old Detroit. This is why the leniency in it being "fueled" by nuke, which the corporate big wigs assumed was an energy convertor, but the developing scientists did because they knew that it was just a junkie's craving. RoboCop 3, OTOH, is pure cheap crap. Maybe a fan editor could remove an hour's worth of film from it and have something watchable. Anyone have any comments on the Prime Directive series that was on sci-fi quite a whiles back? I remember it looked somewhat decent for a tv production and seemed to go back to RoboCop 1's roots.