DSC_9266
Well we did it.. another week of social distancing and isolation over. It's been another strange week of doing nothing yet doing to much all at once.. life with kids I suppose. A few new trinkets arrived during the week, but as always, I'm playing catch up.
Today, we look at the Nendoroid Atlus and P-Body figures from Good Smile Company, which were purchased during the year end clearance at EB Games.
Atlus and P-Body are both from a game titled "Portal 2" by Valve Software.. the guys who are most famous for Half Life, and of course the who Steam infrastructure itself. I've never played the game, and Wikipedia kind of helped, but it seems to me that they're the characters players take on when playing multiplayer - canonically, they are robots created by GlaDOS, the main antagonist of the series to serve as test subjects in various trials.
Now, strangely enough, unlike other discounted high priced items, it apparently wasn't hard to find these. I say apparently because I had work that day but my wife was able to find them despite showing up to a store an hour after it opened.
I can sort of see why.
So each figure generally comes with the same pack ins. There's the figure itself, a pair of spare hands (one of which is dedicated to holding the Portal gun), the aforementioned gun, a pair of "portals", and the standard Nendoroid base.
That's it.. no face plates or other bits and pieces.
The main selling point is really their quirky good looks.. it's not like the game was ultra violent, or the bots had anything that translated into an action figure. In fact, I was kind of surprised to learn they (Good Smile) even made anything from Portal 2, let alone both Nendoroids and Figmas of these characters.
One "gimmick" exclusive to Atlus is that you can pop open his Core, and slap in the Nendoroid face of your choice.. well, most of them. It only works with the classic Nendoroid face design where the "hair" comes off the top of the head. No idea if this is something they threw in, or if its related to the game.
Articulation is wonky to say the least. If you couldn't tell, while the robots are humanoid, they're definitely not human shaped, which means articulation is going to be weird to begin with.
Generally speaking, the figures have knee, hip, a form of torso twist, shoulders, bicep swivel, elbows, and wrists - Atlus can also rotate its eyeball. I presume due to the overall build of this, most of the joints aren't actually sitting on Nendoroid pegs, and instead are just sized to use the pegs, resulting in two dimensional movement only. All this is to say that the figures may actually be more restricted in movement than your typical Nendoroid release.
From a paint perspective, well.. there isn't much paint at all. All the primary colours on the figure (white, grey, black) are all unpainted. It's really just the streaks of colour and the decals that are applied. The paint IS clean, mind you, but there just isn't very much of it.
Build quality is probably where the figures take the most heat. The finish on the plastic is good - no rough edges or poorly cut parts. Joints do their job, and there are no issues with regards to limb length. The issue is that these figures are both very, very flimsy. A pain in the ass they might be, I've never said a Nendoroid is fragile. In this case, the figures are effectively thin walled, hollow bodies.
The plastic used seems a bit on the brittle side and as such manipulating the limbs can be a bit daunting, particularly if yours is a bit stiff. Then there's the concern with regards to simply chipping the figure if it drops too high or other minor impacts that don't typically bother a Nendoroid or Figma. This material issue also results in the figures being much lighter than they normally would be, and interferes with posing despite there not being an issue with a giant head.
So overall, they're OK action figures, but other than the quality of the finished parts, really don't warrant the full price of a Nendoroid. I'd say even as far as a fan of the Portal games go, unless it's horrible expensive, you're probably better off getting the Figma, unless you're looking for something to add to the cute shelf.
DSC_9266
Well we did it.. another week of social distancing and isolation over. It's been another strange week of doing nothing yet doing to much all at once.. life with kids I suppose. A few new trinkets arrived during the week, but as always, I'm playing catch up.
Today, we look at the Nendoroid Atlus and P-Body figures from Good Smile Company, which were purchased during the year end clearance at EB Games.
Atlus and P-Body are both from a game titled "Portal 2" by Valve Software.. the guys who are most famous for Half Life, and of course the who Steam infrastructure itself. I've never played the game, and Wikipedia kind of helped, but it seems to me that they're the characters players take on when playing multiplayer - canonically, they are robots created by GlaDOS, the main antagonist of the series to serve as test subjects in various trials.
Now, strangely enough, unlike other discounted high priced items, it apparently wasn't hard to find these. I say apparently because I had work that day but my wife was able to find them despite showing up to a store an hour after it opened.
I can sort of see why.
So each figure generally comes with the same pack ins. There's the figure itself, a pair of spare hands (one of which is dedicated to holding the Portal gun), the aforementioned gun, a pair of "portals", and the standard Nendoroid base.
That's it.. no face plates or other bits and pieces.
The main selling point is really their quirky good looks.. it's not like the game was ultra violent, or the bots had anything that translated into an action figure. In fact, I was kind of surprised to learn they (Good Smile) even made anything from Portal 2, let alone both Nendoroids and Figmas of these characters.
One "gimmick" exclusive to Atlus is that you can pop open his Core, and slap in the Nendoroid face of your choice.. well, most of them. It only works with the classic Nendoroid face design where the "hair" comes off the top of the head. No idea if this is something they threw in, or if its related to the game.
Articulation is wonky to say the least. If you couldn't tell, while the robots are humanoid, they're definitely not human shaped, which means articulation is going to be weird to begin with.
Generally speaking, the figures have knee, hip, a form of torso twist, shoulders, bicep swivel, elbows, and wrists - Atlus can also rotate its eyeball. I presume due to the overall build of this, most of the joints aren't actually sitting on Nendoroid pegs, and instead are just sized to use the pegs, resulting in two dimensional movement only. All this is to say that the figures may actually be more restricted in movement than your typical Nendoroid release.
From a paint perspective, well.. there isn't much paint at all. All the primary colours on the figure (white, grey, black) are all unpainted. It's really just the streaks of colour and the decals that are applied. The paint IS clean, mind you, but there just isn't very much of it.
Build quality is probably where the figures take the most heat. The finish on the plastic is good - no rough edges or poorly cut parts. Joints do their job, and there are no issues with regards to limb length. The issue is that these figures are both very, very flimsy. A pain in the ass they might be, I've never said a Nendoroid is fragile. In this case, the figures are effectively thin walled, hollow bodies.
The plastic used seems a bit on the brittle side and as such manipulating the limbs can be a bit daunting, particularly if yours is a bit stiff. Then there's the concern with regards to simply chipping the figure if it drops too high or other minor impacts that don't typically bother a Nendoroid or Figma. This material issue also results in the figures being much lighter than they normally would be, and interferes with posing despite there not being an issue with a giant head.
So overall, they're OK action figures, but other than the quality of the finished parts, really don't warrant the full price of a Nendoroid. I'd say even as far as a fan of the Portal games go, unless it's horrible expensive, you're probably better off getting the Figma, unless you're looking for something to add to the cute shelf.