CabooseBM

Eurobricks Knights
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Posts posted by CabooseBM

  1. Posted · Edited by CabooseBM

    I am very happy to see that the grievous misstep of the Uniters was indeed a Misstep and that the Winter 2016 wave is a return to form in comparison.

    I absolutely love Umarak the Destroyer, looking either charged with energy or wilted by corruption, and avoiding the red/orange/black cliche for villains handily. He also has a gear function in his claws, swank!

    Moe trans yellow and dark blue are very, very welcome additions to CCBS's color pallete, and I like the new spiky shell parts.

  2. Posted

    Got Uxar last night, and she's pretty cute and great! The gimmick is fun and on par with 2015's gimmicks, fun but not intrusive. I do wish the wings were on balljoints like Ikir's are. I mean, I know some insects don't fold their wings up but this is kinda unwieldy as is. The color scheme works pretty well too, the silvers and greys and trans-lime-green, with hints of yellow is a nice combo.

    I like how you can fold the back legs up to beef up the abdomen, making Uxar very streamlined. The antennae were a nice touch, but I wish they were a bit longer.

  4. Posted

    I'll be writing my own review of the entire wave, but I want to own them all before I tear into them like I did Gali.

    I will try to be more constructive when I do it. I mean, assuming anyone cares at that point, but it's as much to gather my own thoughts as it is to talk with other people, so. =)

  8. Posted

    So, having bought and put together Gali Uniter of Water, I can't help but feel like this set is flawed on a fundamental level. No amount of fiddling with the parts provided enables me to make a figure that's even passable, let alone good. She's gangly in the legs and scrunched up in the shoulders, just overall an slightly unpleasant experience. While I am glad for the recolors provided, I feel like 5M Medium Azure shells would have been a great service here. as well as a revised shoulder design that not only avoids using Hordika necks but also widens her shoulders and gives that whole area room to breathe. Her weapon is boring and indistinct, and a huge step down from the fantastic weapon of her 2015 incarnation. Ultimately, these faults leave her design incoherent and bizarre, with no sense of character or art to the figure.

    Fortunately, while the design of the set is flawed on several levels, she contains several nice pieces, discordant textures aside. The crystal add-ons, weapons, and mask all tie together fairly well, and their textures do not feel overly complex for what they're meant to represent. The weapon and add-on parts feel fairly versatile and useful.

    Unfortunately, the orange Vorox shells and torso armor clash with the seemingly established aesthetic of this year, forgiveable in an old piece, but the torso is both bizarrely complex and incongruous and also exceedingly useless. It's a mess of pistons and greebling that forgo the crystal textures on the other new parts. With only one connection point and extremely specific texturing and printing, it's not going to make for a useful building part either. The printing is excellent, but the absence of the Superhero Chestplate cuts this compliment down at the knees.

    Ultimately, I feel this figure is a crushing failure compared to the smart build and thoughtful character design of Gali Master of Water, from the weak proportions, poor coherency, to the messy blend of textures. I really hope we can remember the lessons learned in 2015 before we continue with the mistakes of 2007.

  9. Posted · Edited by CabooseBM

    So, I was kinda bleh on Terak for the most part, getting him mostly for pieces, but putting him on all fours brings his design up so much, he really pulls off the mole look, which separates him from Melum really well.

    The parts work together well and offer a fine selection of new colors and parts, the decision to go with clear transparent crystals is a head scratcher, but they don't detract much from the look.

    So, good stuff, LEGO.

  12. Posted · Edited by CabooseBM

    A friend mentioned this and I think it really holds true, 2015's sets had parts that came together to create a whole, while 2016 just has... Parts. They don't work together to create solid silhouettes or shapes, they just kinda exist in a collection of homogenized designs and greebly chunks, losing a lot of what made the first wave so good.

  13. Posted · Edited by CabooseBM

    Not a huge fan of this, keeps the problems of his 2015 incarnation while ditching all the best parts of the design. Dark tan was not a stellar choice to use on it's own, and might have looked much better with a stronger Dark Orange presence. There's also an overall feeling of just being a collection of parts rather than parts that come together as a whole that's endemic to this wave.

    also

    Pohatu is back for his second round in Bionicle G2, and thankfully we still haven't resorted back to the awful idea of propellor arms.

    Why don't you come over here and say that! These propellor arms aren't just for attractin' mates! >=(

  22. Posted

    I used to really enjoy the G1 aesthetic, and I still do to an extent, but after BIONICLE returned and showed me how perfectly a meld between a clean and detailed aesthetic could be executed, these new sets look vastly inferior. I appreciate the existence of the parts for the options they'll present to MoCists, but the appearance of the sets end up suffering from their inclusion.

    Seriously, every time I look at these comparisons it makes me pretty upset. They don't even look like they're from the same line. Thankfully, Tahu and Kopaka are the worst offenders and the others don't suffer from it as much (but they have their own sets of issues to balance the scales), but still...

    Like, I look at Tahu 2015 and okay, fine, he could have possibly used a few more details in his lower legs or his torso plate or something, that's perfectly fine. Completely independent of whether you prefer highly detailed or smooth aesthetics, though, Tahu looked consistent. Everything in his design flowed and evoked a pretty cool look for the figure. Tahu 2016... not only is he ridiculously overly detailed and his color scheme so radically different, but he has four conflicting kinds of armor on his limbs! The smooth shell, the piston add-on, the new, blocky armor piece with holes everywhere, and the organic crystalline add-on. It looks absolutely ridiculous.

    The sets are still cool, and I still enjoy them for the positives they do bring to the table, but eh.

    Wow, those comparison images really do not do the 2016 wave any favors at all.

    Just. Wow.

  24. Posted

    No need to fear, for I am here!

    ...to present consistently negative opinions about the Winter 2016 wave of Bionicle!

    The Uniters are still uniformly terrible, from the addition of greebly, ugly parts, to the overabundance of technic, to the slavish adherence to a gimmick, and to the genericization of their profiles and designs. Fortunately they still have new colors of parts and new parts that are worth while, or it'd really suck buying them this winter. That torso doesn't look completely useless, for one. And NUVA SYMBOLS.

    The Creatures are all still pretty cool, I appreciate the gimmicks they have a lot more, but I appreciate Akida a bit less. Akida doesn't look like it has much going on aside from the gimmick for its Uniter figure.

    Umarak is... Pretty neat, I guess? Not as outright bad as the Uniters, but nowhere near the level of the 2015 wave.