October Hauls

[Shockwave]

Bought Skeletor. 2002 flavor. I already have one, but it's nice to pick one up without getting silver paint on my hands. And it was only 7 bucks so it's not gonna stop me from getting a house.

[Dominic]

How was silver paint a problem? Was this a quality-control issue?

Dom
-gets paint on his hands all the time through clumsiness.

[Shockwave]

No, I custom painted the first one with Testors model paint and it apparently isn't chemically compatible with whatever plastic Mattel used. So it never dried properly and still comes off when I pick him up. Evil Lynn suffers from the same problem although much less so now since I've coated the painted parts with super glue. She now looks fabulous and is mostly touchable.

[Mirage]

No, I custom painted the first one with Testors model paint and it apparently isn't chemically compatible with whatever plastic Mattel used. So it never dried properly and still comes off when I pick him up. Evil Lynn suffers from the same problem although much less so now since I've coated the painted parts with super glue. She now looks fabulous and is mostly touchable.

Out of curiosity, what was the custom? Just armor detailing, or did you give him a silver skull to emulate Ghost Rider 2099?

... Why the hell did I just remember that?

[onslaught86]

Box day, box day!

- Galaxy Force Soundwave. I have Soundblaster and Blaster, but never got a Sounds. So this was cheap enough to tempt, and I'm very glad I did. He's purdy, and I like the toy much more now than I did after the initial wow factor wore off.

- 12" Gears of War Marcus Fenix. Yeah, I'm making a game crap display. He's big, he lights up blue, and he has a gun with a chainsaw on it. I like all of these things!

[Onslaught Six]

- 12" Gears of War Marcus Fenix. Yeah, I'm making a game crap display. He's big, he lights up blue, and he has a gun with a chainsaw on it. I like all of these things!

You make me sick. First you get disenfranchised with the franchise (Ha!) and now you buy figures from awful video games that I have a grudge against because they are the cancer that is killing the industry.

If I never see another grizzled space marine in power armour fighting in a bleak post-apocalyptic future that is coloured primarily in shades of gray and--if we're lucky--brown and green, it'll be too soon.

[138 Scourge]

Out of curiosity, what was the custom? Just armor detailing, or did you give him a silver skull to emulate Ghost Rider 2099?

... Why the hell did I just remember that?

I dunno, but I'd buy a Ghost Rider 2099 toy. The early issues of that book were so good.

[Shockwave]

Ok, here's the deal with Skeletor. First thing to note is that if you're going to shoot your action figures with silly string, remove it immediately or else it turns into this icky green goo. Which originally I didn't think was a problem because I have goof off. That also took the paint off. Which again I didn't think was a problem because I have paint and am actually pretty good at applying it. So when I was repainting skeletors chest armour, I got to painting the crossbones and realized that there was all this bone detailing all over the figure that wasn't painted. So I painted it. Then I painted all the bat details black along with his nails (hands and feet) and all of the jewels were painted red. Well what I didn't know is that Mattel uses acrylic plastic on their figures and Testors model paint isn't chemically compatable with acrylic plastic. So it never dried properly and to this day the silver paint still rubs off on my hands. I painted it 5 years ago.

[Onslaught Six]

Got a check from my grandmother, so I blew it:

-Sandman volume 8, via coupon. Yay cheap stuff!
-Custom Robo and Robotech: Battlecry on GameCube, used, which totaled to $15 for games. Robotech is kind of difficult but nothing I can't eventually overcome. Custom Robo is everything the DS game was, but better...except my disc has a loading problem every time it tries to load the robot models, and requires me to open and shut my GameCube to reload the disc. Several times. This is really annoying and heartbreaking--I may take it for a refund and get a different copy down the road.

[BWprowl]

Yesterday I picked up Soulcalibur Broken Destiny for the PSP. It's awesome, this is the game I was encouraging Namco to make when I bought Tekken Maximum Impact way back when. I love Soulcalibur, and having a beautiful, portable version of numero four that DOESN'T have crappy Star Wars cameos mucking it up is awesome. They did weasel Kratos from God of War in there, but he's mostly ignorable, especially since the other new character, Dampierre, is so freaking fantastic. Seriously, the first pictures that surfaced of this guy sold me on this game instantly. Google him. The game itself is totally fine on its own anyway though, and disposes of a lot of the niggles I've had with other recent SoCals, namely that ALL THE DAMN CHARACTERS are unlocked from the get-go. This is the way to do it, guys! I do have to unlock custom character options, but they provide me with a ton at the start, so I'm not limited by that too much. And while they did nix the ability to tweak the body proportions from SoCal 4, they at least put in the ability to move around and adjust certain accessory items, so you've still got a lot of options as far as character creation. Too bad the computer is kind of a sadistic bastard. This is one of the harder SoCals I've played, and as far as I can tell, there is NO option to tweak the difficulty. Ah well, more motivation to get better at the game, I guess. Still awesome.

I also picked up ROTF Thrust tonight! So glad I waited on this one, instead of getting Breakaway. Nice, Thrusty colors look better than that tan. Head can't pop up much, but it's otherwise a pretty cool toy, with odd, but not necessarily bad, proportions. Legs could be more poseable though; I wish they could spread apart more. Especially since he's got those nice side-to-side ankle joints that he COULD use if he could get his legs further apart. And the rotating chaingun is kinda weak. And the paintjob feels a little cheap. Okay as a Deluxe, the mold would've been awesome as a Basic, but overall it's still a fun little figure in a line that hasn't really tempted me with many of it's other offerings. Still want to pick up the Ice Cream Twins though.

Oh, and I got the Destiny of Shrine Maiden Complete Collection. Nothing like a magical lesbian mecha demon-fighting anime to provide a few hours of wholesome entertainment!

Gears of War is okay for a shooter (a genre I generally hate for the most part). The main thing that bugs me is the unlikelyhood of a planet composed almost ENTIRELY of courtyards. Seriously, there's a damn courtyard every three feet in this game. Surely they could've come up with *other* things for the characters to crouch behind and vomit bullets at highly visible white-skinned aliens. Custom Robo sucks.