TallonMetroid

So I was in the mood for some Star Wars space pews pews (which with the abysmal state of Star Wars gaming today basically means going retro), and started a replay of Rogue Leader. For a game that's older than some of you kids out there, it still holds up really well and I have once again reaffirmed that it's among my top 5 favorite games of all time. But that's not actually what this post is about.

While I was looking up some stuff for Rogue Leader I learned that Factor 5 had finished a Wii compilation of Rogue Squadron 2 & 3, titled Rogue Leaders, but the company got shuttered before the game was released and it ended up disappearing into legal limbo. Pretty much the only thing anyone really knows about it is what was shown in the linked trailer. Highlights include:

• pointer based aiming using the Wii remote
• the return of the co-op and vs multiplayer modes from Rebel Strike
• a new speeder bike racing mode using the Wii remote for steering a la Mario Kart Wii
• a lightsaber dueling mode using Wii Motion Plus controls (!!!)

Honestly, I'm not sure what the last one has to do with Rogue Squadron, but it would have been amazing and I'm sad we never got it.

Build this time is another custom 30MS combining the spotter costume and float unit. Once again, the HGAC Leo FWS provides accessories, in this case the long- and short-type beam rifles and the space-type backpack.

Aider Costume + Dash Unit = rollerblading nurse. I tried to emulate, as much as possible, an action pose that professional speed skaters often take during a race. I think it turned out well enough, even if the left hip ended up kinda goofy looking, since there's no skirt to hide the joint. Also, the bazooka is originally from the HGAC Leo FWS, but I guess it's now a potion launcher or something, I dunno.

Or perhaps Rydira is streetpunk? Nah, I'm gonna say that the sci-fi looking weapon (actually the mega beam cannon from the HGAC Leo Full Weapon Set) makes it cyberpunk. Helmet on, though, because you gotta protect your noggin.

Complete? "Mission complete"? NO! Mission not complete! The hell was that ending?! Send me back, dammit!

Anyway, now that I've unlocked everything in the gallery, thoughts on the game. I have some mixed feelings admittedly, but first, the good:

• Everything that isn't Sol Valley. When you're in first person, it just feels like Metroid Prime, and I say this having played Prime Remastered, so it's not just my memory stewing in 15 years of nostalgia. The environments, the music, the controls, all of it is on point.
• On the subject of controls, special mention to the fact that pointer controls now have a dedicated recenter command. It's such a minor thing to implement, but the QoL improvement is phenomenal. Seriously, my right joycon has major drift, which made pointer controls absolutely unplayable in Prime Remastered. So being able to reset the pointer at will is a godsend. Sure, I could have used twin stick controls instead like a heathen, but why would I do that?
• The GalFed characters. I wasn't expecting to, but I actually liked their inclusion. Yeah, having other people ruins the whole isolation thing, but Prime 3 already put a hole in that anyway. On normal difficulty, they were actually useful in fights, able to dispatch enemies while I drew aggro. The beefier enemies in hard difficulty made that less viable, but I usually still didn't need to babysit them too much.

But now, the bad:

• Sol Valley. Look, I like open world games, okay? I like BotW, which was an excellent open world adventure (as a Zelda game though, it was garbage), I liked the Mad Max game, I've played most of the mainline AssCreed games through Syndicate. So the fact that they stuck a huge open world hub into the game is not the issue. But the key to a good open world is that it's full of stuff. Items to find, activities to do, people to interact with (whether friendly NPCs or not). Sol Valley... doesn't. It's almost entirely sand dunes and green crystals, which is just boring. And since you have to crisscross the region multiple times over the course of the game, you'll get slapped with that bland sameness over and over, especially since there's no fast travel.

All in all, if I were being completely objective I'd put this at maybe 60/100, but on account of being Metroid I bump that up to 75/100.

Aerial is not a Gundam! There was an inquest and everything!

First build of the new year is MGSD Aerial, with the WfM Action Base and WfM weapon display. Sadly, the weapon display does not actually come with enough arms and adapters for all of the Aerial's 11(!) GUND bits, so I improvised using some of the unused arms and adapters from my other Action Base 5s and the God Gundam expansion set. I also didn't use the weapon display arm that actually came with the WfM Action Base, because it's purple and that doesn't go with the clear arms of the WfM weapon display.

P-Bandai variant of the Spinatia, distinguished by a new color palette and a set of wings. Interestingly, the wings attach to the waist and not the back. Also, the "default" configuration for this kit, judging by the box and manual, appears to be as a swordswoman, but I like the visual of using the staff to fire off a spell circle more.

Incidentally, I was quite surprised by how simple the torso was compared to 30MS kits. I guess when you're not constrained by the need to try to replicate an actual human torso you can get away with simple ball joints.

Unlike some other model kits, this one has an English accent!

Anyway, my first foray into 30MF. The line has some sort of lore about the world getting wrecked by meteors and the human survivors creating robots to reclaim the world, but honestly no one really cares about that. The core of this kit is the gray silhouette body, over which you stick all the armor pieces. The archer line doesn't appear to have any upgrade kits, although you can swap out the armor with any other humanoid 30MF kit.

The bowstring is a strip of PET, which was an unexpected choice (I was half-expecting wire or something), but it makes sense in practice, since the string needs to keep tension to look good, and the PET works in that regard. Also, the quiver is technically supposed to attach to the back, but as someone who actually dabbled with archery in the past I always found hip quivers to be way better, so onto the side skirt it goes.

The base kit is, of course, the Ecopla MG Aile Strike ver RM, with the Launcher/Sword Striker pack addon. The recycled plastic feels a lot softer than with regular kits when using nippers (I'd say they're about the same as normal ABS runners, maybe a little softer, when normally PS runners are a lot more snappy when snipping the gates). If you've ever done anything with kits from Chinese plamo companies like MS General or Eastern Model, it's a pretty similar experience.

Strictly speaking, the pink I mixed up for the addon highlights unfortunately isn't neon, but I wasn't willing to shell out money getting fluorescent pigment just for this. Fortunately, it is still close enough to pass at first glance, so I'm satisfied on that front.

One complaint I do have about the Perfect Strike is that the equipment gets super crowded. When the giant sword is stashed on the Aile Striker pack, it gets in the way of the Launcher Striker shoulder armor, so the right shoulder has to be hunched forward.

Also, this will literally never come up again, but in keeping with the lore the pilot minifig in the cockpit is Mu la Flaga, not Kira Yamato (MG Aile Strike ver RM comes with sitting and standing minifigs for both characters, and the sitting Mu is in fact slightly larger than the sitting Kira). I ended up hacking apart the sitting Kira minifig and gluing it back together to provide a pilot for the extra core block I want to make for the MG 2.0 Gundam American Type I did awhile back.

So I built a stegosaurus model kit, which included some factoids in the instructions. One of these factoids was that stegosaurs are not believed to have had a secondary brain in the hips to help them control their rear half after all. That was wild to me, since the whole stegosaurs and sauropods with their tiny heads needing a secondary brain for their huge bodies was commonly accepted back when I was a kid. So I looked it up, and indeed, the current hypothesis is that the cavity that the second brain was thought to occupy is used for a thing called a glycogen body. But what exactly does a glycogen body do? We'll get back to you on that, apparently.

~~Ah-ah! Savior of the universe!~~

Ahem, wrong theme song. Anyway, behold the G Generation F Char Custom MS Collection, which is literally 5 SD kits thrown into a single box with a consolidated sticker sheet and instruction booklet. From left to right:

1. Char's Zaku 2
2. Char's Z'Gok
3. Casval's Gundam (not to be confused with Red Gundam!)
4. Char's Rick Dom
5. Char's Gelgoog

Also pictured are a Fanfan and Core Booster, which came with the Z'Gok and Gundam, respectively.

I'll say this about Char, though. His preferred color scheme is so simple that technically you don't even need to paint anything for color separation, because aside from the feet there are generally no colors to separate. It won't be fully accurate, but it also won't look terrible either unlike, say, the Strike Gundam. The accessories are a different story, though, of course. All the yellow weapon bits are painted.

Other than that, and the feet, the biggest bit of painting I did was for the Z'Gok, where the limbs and waist are supposed to be a different color from the torso. I could have painted the torso and left everything else as is, which technically would have given a closer color scheme, except then I still would have needed to paint the hands and claws, because they were on the dark blue runner. So I decided to leave the torso alone and go for a darker shading overall.

So, I missed the first round of voting, but the second round is up, to pick from the top 20 from the first round. Top picks from this round get a re-release (in Japan, obviously, but hopefully that'll trickle overseas). Rules are that you can give one vote a day from Bandai Hobby, and one vote a day from Builders Note, but the latter seems to require a Bamco ID.