Sorting through a few figures from McFarlane's Halo 3 and Halo 4 lines, I thought I'd take a quick look at the differences between the two Master Chief figures from each line.
The most obvious difference between the two when sitting side by side is the scale. For the lines following Halo 3, McFarlane seemed to increase the scale of their figures just a bit. It doesn't actually bother me that much. If anything it just seems a little odd that they'd make the switch.
Like a lot of other people I'm sure, I've a long standing love-hate relationship with Mcfarlane Toys. Early on they were probably the first modern toy company that hooked me into being a completist of sorts when it came to collecting parts of the Spawn line, and though I suffered through a lot of quality issues over the years, I still have a soft spot for them.
The Halo 3 line was fun for me, because most of what I'd bought from it was actually for my son, who at the time was really into Halo, and seemed to love the toys as well. I enjoyed watching him put the new line of highly articulated figures through their paces, and was impressed by how well they stood up to his punishment.
I've never actually been an obsessive Halo fan, so the toys appeal to me on a strictly "play value" sort of level. Halo 3 figures featured a nice bit of articulation, some decent sculpt and paint detail, as well as a lot of weapons and accessories. The system of pegs used to attach weapons to the figures seemed to work well enough, and the variety of weapons that were included with the various figures was nice as well.
I'll admit, I had a lot of fun playing with these figures with my son over the years, and ended up collecting them because I saw how much he was enjoying them.
Halo 4 has seen a little bit of play time in our house, but probably nowhere near the amount that Halo 3 saw. My son has outgrown action figures in general, and that's meant that the relative interest in the Halo 4 toy line is pretty low... in other words, I'm the only one who cares at this point.
And that's fine, because it almost seems that McFarlane has lost most of their enthusiasm for the 6-inch Halo lines as well. It's not that they're bad figures, and it's not that they've declined in quality, it's just that there isn't much variety to choose from these days.
The Master Chief character has gone through some design changes in the game, and so McFarlane has brought some change to their figure line as well. The overall scale is a bit larger, the level of detail is somewhat better, and the paint schemes have gotten a bit less bright, which is probably very much in keeping with the game itself.
The figure features the same great articulation, but with the addition of click-stops to the joints so that they'll hold a pose better. This is a good thing for the most part, but I almost think that it hampers play value. The cool sort of fluidity that the Halo 3 figures had is gone, and it's been replaced with a kind of jerky quality -- but I'm really nitpicking with this observation.
So, in general I'd say that the Halo 4 Master Chief is great. I imagine that your average eight year old would love to play with it as much as the typical adult Halo fan (if there is such a thing) probably does. Ultimately I do find the Halo 3 figure to be a bit more fun -- partly because they're somewhat more colorful, and partly because there's just more variety when it comes to weapons and other figures from the line.
As a Sci-Fi character, Master Chief is really cool, and it's interesting to see how much his design borrows from older ideas and characters, as well as how much he's influenced new ones. Just the same, it's fun to see how McFarlane's approach to designing an action figure has evolved with these lines, and I'd be pretty happy if a few other companies were influenced by them this time around as well.
So, it's obvious that I'm an Alien fan, and though the original film is a sentimental favorite, I'm actually quite fond of them all... yes, even Alien Resurrection.
Posts
