Now for the main man himself, Commander Shepard! He's probably one of my favorite figures of the line, overall. The detail on his suit is fantastic, and the battered look of his armor is nicely done and subtle.
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I'm not in love with his face sculpt though. He looks pretty good here. But it's odd... in some light he almost looks like he's grinning, which is weird. But as you can see he does have a determined look on his face. The 5 o'clock shadow is nicely done. There's a big nick missing from the hairline of mine on the left. At first I thought this was a mistake... but it seems to be there on his pics! I guess it's a scar. I never noticed it before. Pretty cool attention to detail there!
I prefer the helmeted look. Partly because it could be "my" Shepard now. I do wish (perhaps somewhat paradoxically) that the visor of the helmet was a bit see-through. As long as it was still fairly dark, it could have still worked well. But that's a minor complaint. The helmet is nice and snug and it's made of soft enough plastic that is shouldn't scratch the paint on the face underneath AND the chin strap fits under his chin nicely.
Like all the other weapons, Shepard's is very faithfully recreated.
Here's a look at his backside. Again, a huge amount of sculpted and paint detail are present. As far as articulation, Shepard is a bit limited. He can do some great poses standing, but his armor sculpt and the way his hips were engineered really limit his movement in this area. Also, his arm movement is limited by his shoulder pads. I tried to move his left arm too much and the shoulder pad popped right off! It should be pretty easy to fix with glue, but just know his movement is pretty limited there!
And finally, what is probably my favorite figure of the bunch. She's not without problems, mind you, but overall they did so many great things here it's hard to complain.
Tali is very well constructed. The sashes of fabric on the lower part of her outfit attach to her belt and are a separate, soft piece that is then glued to her leg. The effect is that her legs retain a ton of movement no matter what pose you put her into. She also has a fairly well hidden torso twist that really lets her be posed in a ton of great poses.
The stands that come with the figures are just plain black discs but they are functional, which is nice. Tali's bio-amp is cast from a transparent orange material which looks cool in the right lighting. It is a shame they couldn't have made the visor in her helmet semi-transparent with a vague face-shape behind it. Her head turns independent of her cowl, which can either look very cool or weird depending on how you pose it.
Her gun is fantastic, but her fingers are made from soft plastic and it's VERY hard to get it just so that the gun will stay in. The nice part about her fingers being malleable is that you can get her finger on the trigger. The downside is that it's so malleable it starts to lose it's grip on the gun and it's tricky to get to stay in there.
Again, some really fantastic details on the back.
There were some paint imperfections. A circular section of paint is missing on the neck and near the top of her face visor (the latter is pretty well covered by her cowl in these pics) and there is paint slop near the visor as well. It's regrettable such defects are on her face, as most of the rest of her looks great. If you have the chance to get her in the shop (versus online like myself) you may want to double-check this area.
So to recap on all the figures, overall I'm very happy with the figures. There are some serious issues, and I would have preferred all the characters be more "neutrally" stanced. But really Thane is the only figure that's overlly pre-posed, which is a great improvement over DC Direct's offering for World of Warcraft. There are a ton of great choices made for the engineering of the articulation that it makes it a real shame that there are some parts of the figures that let them down. But the quality of the paint apps are superb and the sculpts capture the cool detail and personality of the ME universe perfectly.
What makes me the saddest though is that this line is already over. Garrus, Mordin and Miranda were some of my most-anticipated characters. I wish we'd at least gotten them before the line was cancelled. They had to have been fairly far along. My only hope is that Bioware somehow retains the rights to those sculpts and that if the line moves to another manufacturer (maybe Darkhorse, who are doing the Normandy replica?) we'll get the next series.
My greatest fear is that they'll change the scale, sculpt, or paint quality if they make more toys and I'll be stuck with 4 oddities. Don't get me wrong, they are definitely worth owning for what they are...
But they are also a slightly sad marker for what could have been had things worked out differently.
DC Direct Mass Effect 2 Figures (Pics and Reviews)
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