Don't know why the love, they still look *****king cheap as hell to me. Sure, there's a bit of articulation now (supposedly - I don't really trust pictures, as 3A DID post pictures of MC doing awesome stuff before unpacking that hot load all over us), but they've implemented it by cutting away large chunks of the rubber suit to reveal ugly articulation. And then the parts of the suit that are still intact look terrible when articulated - the "dynamic" leg poses look terrible without a thigh swivel, the Spartans become very knock kneed suddenly and the suit still bunches up around the knee articulation. Furthermore, these pictures show that the armor is still just being shoddily glued on - the Recruit's knee armor isn't centered properly. The picture of Thorne from behind shows one of his pieces of thigh armor hasn't been set right. My MC figure was full of poor gluing - the codpiece was left of center, the butt pad was lopsided, the foot armor was hanging off the side of the bottom foot armor, etc. If these pictures show 3A's still doing that, I fear for what the retail versions of these will look like. To boot, looks like they're still cheaply washing the rubber suit in that not-game-accurate metallic silver everyone complained about. And the rubber "sleeves" still pull back and reveal the wrist articulation when you bend their arms. It looks very bad in these pictures.
Also, if you pay close attention to how the characters are holding the weapons, it's obvious they're still not gripping them. That picture of Thorne with a Sniper slung over his shoulder and AR in the other hand reveals the AR sitting loosely between his thumb and pointer finger, just like MC. Same with Recruit in one of the pictures - AR is obviously not snug in his hand; it's just hanging there. Side note: Why the hell is the Sniper Rifle's stand thing pointing upwards? It looks terrible. So,yeah, really, I wouldn't count on these figures being super dynamic or even able to hold their weapons properly. We've already seen 3A blatantly bait and switch us with an MC that was incapable of doing what he did in his pictures. Even if these looks to be slightly retooled from that abysmal MC, they look to be made of the similar cheap materials and molds and, to me, they still look incapable of holding their weapons in any real poses. Their armor piece paint app looks nice as hell (the undersuit paint still looks terrible), but that's about it for me. Everything else still doesn't look much better than MC.
