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Ever had that feeling where your goal seems to be further away even as you get closer to it? I’m there right now with Sheryl! All the parts are painted (OK, the huge bow needs a little more work) but each time I look at her, I keep thinking that I need to do more!!
One thing is for certain though, Doing this kit has given me a real sense of appreciation for clean, well molded kits! Of course, blaming all my problems with this project on the state of the parts when I received her would just be making excuses but I’ll be glad to be working on something which has a better parts fit and won’t need so much sanding and puttying after this. Argh! So close, yet so far!!! I’ve nearly finished painting Sheryl Nome but disaster struck on the final stretch and I’m not happy with how the hair turned out, so I need to formulate a new plan… It also needs a bit of cleanup around certain areas too… You can check her out here and here. Any thoughts or suggestions? But because of that setback, I get the chance to put some words on one of the most interesting titles to come out for this generation of consoles; Heavy Rain!
Now, where to begin? Heavy rain gives people plenty to talk about but it’s incredibly difficult to review. Yet at the same time, it’s not very often where you can distil a review into a single word… First up, here are the facts. Heavy Rain is the new title by David Cage and his team, quantic dream. It can be considered a sort of spiritual successor to their previous title, Fahrenheit/Indigo prophecy (for simplicity sake, I’ll use Fahrenheit to reference the title as opposed to the American title from now on). Fahrenheit received a lot of critical praise when it came out on the PS2 and various other consoles. It was a strongly plot driven interactive story where players took the role of an unwitting killer and the police officers who are trying to catch him. Heavy rain plays very much like Fahrenheit but with the more irritating parts removed or refined but the underlying core of the game is still pretty much the same, which is part of the issue… In heavy rain, you follow 4 characters who are looking for a serial kidnapper/killer who goes by the name of the origami killer. However, the story focuses most on Ethan Mars, a father whose son has become the latest victim of the origami killer. Now, I’m going to avoid all story based spoilers from here on out as without the story, there isn’t much point in going through heavy rain. It works hard to try and squeeze out the most natural choices out of you in various circumstances and adjusts the plot accordingly. As a result, foresight pretty much destroys it as you are no longer making natural decisions but rather ones which you think will get you your desired outcomes. Now, heavy rain is easily one of the most interesting titles for this console generation because there is quite literally, nothing like it out there right now. It doesn’t fit into any of the regular categories and it pretty much does it’s own thing. To it’s credit, it does a lot of it well but it’s not without flaws, and some pretty big ones as well. but lets break it down a little! Well, I did say that I didn’t buy any of the garage kits I liked at the event but that doesn’t mean that I went away completely empty handed! I made a few orders via tokyohunter, before the event and he managed to get me a few items. And here they are!
They’re a little different from my standard purchases. 3 variable action pose kits and the Volks Moekore Fate T Harlawn figure. Overall, the amount spent was similar to previous events but then I did get 4 items this time as opposed to 2 or maybe 3. And since I didn’t go through the auctions, I didn’t have to worry about any massive markups in price (although it was pretty light this time round from what I saw). Commission fees from Tokyohunter were also reasonable. It’s just a shame that I don’t think that he does GK sales too. Or will he? *strokes chin* Anyway, lets have a closer look at the loot.
After suffering the indignity (and inevitability) of the dreaded RROD on my 360 a couple of weeks ago, I have finally got a replacement! Unfortunately, my old machine wasn’t covered by the extended warranty as it was that damn old but on the plus side, I now own a 360 Elite with the only permanent side effect being that I have lost my Mass Effect 2 save, so I need to go back and complete it again when I have the time. In any case, I was a few chapters into Bioshock 2 when the RROD hit so the first thing I did was return to rapture on finally getting my elite sorted with the necessary cables. So we have an old dog with a few new tricks. How did it fare? With all that was shown at Wonder Festival a few weeks back, it was easy to miss a few things in amidst all the clutter of awesome GK and the big companies vying for attention. I posted a slightly blurry pic on my Wonder Festival post a couple of weeks ago and then set out to try and find out some more info on her.
Sporting an incredibly long R-BLADE instead of the usual G-SHOT, I know a few people who were more than a little curious about this little number. But with some help from Johnson over at GKhaven, google and some helpful people over at Volks, I have a pretty good idea of what we have to expect! Firstly, she will be made available at Hobby Round 3, which will be held this year on April 18th (thanks, Johnson!). As for the rest? I recently received an email from Volks customer support who were kind enough to answer my questions. Continue reading Volks prepares to release a new KOS-MOS ver 4! I had planned to do a mini-review of Bioshock 2 for this weeks post, but unfortunately my Xbox 360 decided to do the inevitable and gave me a RROD. Damn… Admittedly, I haven’t been giving Sheryl the time she deserves in order to complete her, but with Bayonetta, Mass Effect 2 and then Bioshock 2 being released in rapid succession, I think I have a valid reason!! There are still a few major sticking points which I will need to address before I can continue anyway. I have several ideas on how to go about them but none are ideal…
The 2 main issues for now are the gaps between the shoulders and the main body. The arms themselves aren’t exactly a great fit either so I’ll need to push them into the correct positions. On top of that, some paint was scratched off the left arm when I tried to put it into the gap in the skirt so that will need to be redone and something will need to be done in order to prevent that from happening a second time.
It’s likely that I’ll end up using standard putty to cover the gaps in the shoulders and then airbrush over it to match the rest of the skintone. It means that I’ll have to mask the clothing, which will be a hassle, but it’s probably the easiest option thus far. I’ll have to fix the scratched paintjob first though… But at least with a busted up 360 (which is out of warranty) and Heavy Rain not due for a few more weeks, perhaps I’ll have fewer distractions and can get some serious progress done. And on a completely unrelated note, Wave have just released pics of the Yen Xing kit I took a liking to back at Wonderfestival last Summer!!
Add another kit to my wish list… I think I’ve collected up enough photos now… Surprisingly, there were quite a few good kits on show at this years event. A few of which I might even try to obtain at a later event. Unfortunately, buying a new kit right now would be an impossibility but I did get a few things from WF. Guess that’s something worth looking out for. Tomopop has a large gallery of kits posted up already but for this blog entry, I’m going to focus on the kits which caught my personal interest. Firstly, there were 3 which really caught my attention:
This number is called Kanu 2020 and it’s sculpted by Mr Surprise. Now, normally I hate Ikkitousen kits (unless it involves Ryofu Hosen) but when I first saw this over at Gamera Baenraes forum, I couldn’t take my eyes off it!
This Morrigan kit was made by ooxoo, who also did the taimanin Asagi kit I still need to make. Nothing too fancy about this kit, it simply feels right! Plus Morrigan has always been a fave character of mine since the old darkstalkers games. I have yet to find a Chun Li kit which captures the character and design as well as this Morrigan! (The Chun Li kit of her sitting down and eating a bun comes close tho)
Lastly, we have the SD Nazuna from Cerberus Project. I wasn’t too fussed on the non SD original when she was first released and I also lamented how Cerberus project seemed to be moving away from fixed pose GK and doing poseable action figures instead (tho they did do a Yamamoto sensei from Hanamaru Youchien) but this is just cool! Those are the 3 which I liked the most but there are still others which deserve a mention. Hit the jump on even more GK goodness! (also, I got a request for some ero kits, so I put a couple in at the very end of this post. Consider this your NSFW warning!!) First a bit of backstory may be in order… I’ve been chatting to Joseph Tsai, who runs the TokyoHunter Proxy service (the one which offers to get the really cool event exclusives) for a while on stuff outside of simple purchase requests. He’s a really cool and friendly guy and he even gave me a glimpse of his plans for the future (which are awesome btw) but just today, he landed a bit of a bombshell. For those who don’t know, Dimension diver are the group who are responsible for the likes of Aegis of Persona 3 fame, here:
And Samus Aran from Metroid:
Danny Choo did a post on Aegis when the group gave him a completed one as a gift (first time I was ever jealous of one of his freebies). Their main site is here and you can also see their work on the FG boards (account required) So far, so exciting. But what was really cool is that Joseph is looking for questions to ask DD next week. That’s when you guys come in… The questions can be pretty much about anything. There are no guarantees that they will be able to answer them all, but they will try and get thru as many as they can. Joseph will then post the answers in March to coincide with another little thing he’s working on. (I don’t want to spoil the surprise) To get involved, simply leave your questions in the comments of this blog post. I’ll pick them all up and tidy them up before sending them over to Tokyohunter & Dimension Diver. Now, all I have to do is clear my head and figure out what I want to ask them. Aside from the obligatory “can I get some freebies!” Images taken from the FG boards With wonderfestival set to occur this weekend, I’m preparing myself for my usual custom of going through large numbers of Japanese sites for event coverage and pics to pick out some of the kits which stand out to me. Johnson Huang over at Garage Kit Haven has already written up a few posts regarding kits which have caught his eye so here are some which have done the same to me over at the FG boards. Luckily for me, however, these haven’t quite hit “Must get” status for myself. Though that doesn’t mean that I won’t be buying anything from the event. Curious about what I’m going to get? Well, you’ll just have to wait a little while. Johnsons list is dominated by Touhou kits and they seem to be out in full force this year again but I’ve never found myself particularly drawn to them. My list is dominated by Bakemonogatari kits, specifically of Senjogahara Hitagi. She seems to be a rather popular choice for sculptors this time round. I only counted 3 Hachikuji kits and 1 Kanbaru. I think nadeko had one too… Anyway, here’s a few kits which caught my eye. Bakemonogatari
Senjogahara Hitagi Ah, it finally arrived! Then the game release date came and went, I got my Bayonetta but no scarborough fair. Then, last week, it finally came…
2 things strike you when you first take this thing out of it’s box. 1) it’s really quite heavy for it’s size. You may not be able to pass it off as an actual weapon but if you use it to pistol whip someone, it’ll definitely leave marks!! And… |
The Kombine
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