I think I’m safe in saying that behind Spider-man the X-men have been Marvel’s most popular (and profitable) property over time, so it was no surprise that the only other non-Avengers set was X-centric. With a multitude of X-titles to choose from and nearly a hundred different characters who’ve been part of the core X-team alone at one time or another, it must have been really difficult to choose who would headline this set…
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I wanted to love this set because of my life-long love of Spider-man. I am, admittedly, a fully realized and completey self aware Marvel Zombie and probably will be for the rest of my life. Marvel would have to screw something up big time for me to jump ship and they’ve screwed up so many times already I doubt they could really tick me off anymore than they already have over the years (I’m looking at you, Brand New Day!). LEGO’s announcement of the Marvel license was a joyous day in my household and while I did pick up a couple choice sets based on the movies years ago the thought of having more classically themed sets and characters was very exciting. Having the first Spider-man set pop up themed around a cartoon I’d never seen, that I assumed was based on the Ultimate Spider-man comic that I can’t stand was troubling, but I still wanted to love it.
As the man once said “You can’t always get what you want…”
It’s like déjà vu, all over again. Another year, another ridiculous amount of money spent on little plastic bricks and the biggest toy sellng season is officially in full swing. When the Star Wars Advent Calendar came out last year, well, it earned a lot of hate. It seemed to linger on shelves (not here, it sold quite well and cleared out quickly) and I believe is even still available in some places at discounted prices from time to time. It was a farce! An insult to the fans and the children it was aimed at alike! It was obviously a complete and total failure on every conceivable level and a perfect message to LEGO that they were sure to hear loud and clear and never, EVER would they make the same mistake again! Well, they got the message and the answer is… The LEGO Star Wars Advent Calendar 2012 edition! Yay!
It’s back Baby, and so am I to spam your December with a micro review for each and every day. I’m so very, very sorry. Let the fun begin!
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These last couple reviews for 2012 have been sitting on my to-do list for far too long, so I’m going to keep this one brief (Ha!) which should be no problem for what is the second smallest set in the first (and hopefully not last) wave of the LOTR theme. Admittedly, I’m no expert on the Rings trilogy and still haven’t been able to bring myself to crack the books even though I quite enjoyed the films in both theatrical and extended editions. Everytime those books find themselves at the top my reading queue, I find something else of interest and reshuffle until they’re back on the bottom. I’ve nothing against Tolkien, It’s just that I already have a good handle on what happens, have heard a great deal about what was not in the films (my wife is a huge fan) and to be honest fantasy in general is not really my thing. Oh, one more thing I’m not a big fan of… spiders.
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Rounding out the Star Wars: The Old Republic releases for 2012, we get the Republic Strike Fighter… which I don’t remember in the game. How do you write a review for a ship that you don’t recall ever really seeing in a game you played a lot? Unlike the Sith Fury, the Striker was just the little blips you shot down during space missions as Sith (I think… it went fast), not the ship that players end up with.
I’ve played some Republic characters, but only gotten into the mid-20s, and never did the space missions. After breaking my rule about never wandering to Wookiepedia, one of the websites where you can smell the obsession through the screen, it turns out this thing didn’t even show up in The Old Republic explicitly, it was from KoToR (and unnamed in the game). So yeah, I kind of question why it was included in the inaugural line of TOR sets.
Like the Sith Fury, it’s pretty obvious that this was a unique design that was inspired by other Star Wars ships, mostly an A-Wing (or for you EU people, some Z-95 too). It’s also very… dark red. At $45, this set is a niche (SW:TOR players) in a niche (EU Fans), so it’s certainly got some serious stuff stacked against it. So how does the Republic stack up against the pretty amazing Sith Fury? (more…)
The Jedi Starfighter (Delta-7, for the especially nerdy among us) has become some sort of LEGO annual tradition, the Star Wars version of the City Police 4×4 (which shows up in Advent Calendars, polybags, and sets year after year, for those that do not collect City Sets). This year, we get Saesee Tiin’s starfighter, continuing a storied tradition of making up unpronounceable names and rainbow ships. We’ve been nice to Mace Windu’s fighter, released last year and Ahsoka’s Starfighter a few years back. We actually didn’t review Plo Kloon’s fighter from a couple of years back, which is probably for the best, given that it’s far and away one of the worst ships ever made, or Anakin’s Starfighter that kicked off the Clone Wars (though technically, Obi-Wans from the Episode II wave in the long-long ago was the first).
I suppose what I’m trying to say is that this version of the Jedi Starfighter, mostly inspired from the Clone Wars cartoons, has been absolutely done to death. What can possibly be done to make this ship unique and different at this point? It’s kind of a given that consumers are desensitized to paying for the same thing over and over wrapped up in some new package each year (see Madden Football, iPhones, Call of Duty games, all of popular television, and the McRibb sandwich), so obviously, LEGO realizes that they can get in on that game. How does our new $30 starfighter stack up?
Once upon a time (okay, until like a week ago), I was a Star Wars: The Old Republic (TOR) player. But life has a funny way of getting in the way of things (baby, work, other games), and I was never really able to devote the time I’d like to the game. I played it in beta, and for months after launch. I even got a couple of characters up to 50, including a Sith Warrior, which flew around in the Sith Fury.
Okay, fly is kind of a misnomer… space is a minor and insignificant portion of the game. The “missions” you do in this ship are on-rails affairs that feel like a Facebook or iOS game more than something in an MMO, but hey, at least the ships look cool I was very excited to see Old Republic stuff hitting the lineup, if for no other reason than giving us some new minifigure variety and a break from Clone Wars.
Bioware did a good job establishing the setting around the game, including a look and feel that was a good mix of Knights of the Old Republic and The Old Republic. There’s also a lot more potentially untapped resources in the game, assuming it can actually regain some subscribers and survive long enough to spawn a few more sets.
So how does the Sith Fury stack up in the mix of so many other EU sets? At $90, it obviously is continuing LEGO’s disturbing habits of escalating prices and shrinking sets, but there’s something about this set that merits a deeper look.
The B-wing fighter is one of the last few remaining original trilogy and one of my favorites. I don’t think there are many space ships in science fiction that boasts a design where the ship revolves around the cockpit. It sounds completely off the wall and wholly unnecessary considering the size and shape of the ship that would do said revolutions. I didn’t care, it was a fascinating concept with an equally fascinating design. It wasn’t on screen for more than a few seconds during Return of the Jedi; it probably had the least amount of screen time compared to the other Rebel fighters. No matter, I still liked it. And I was absolutely giddy when I found out it was getting the UCS treatment. My affection, however, may have set me up for disappointment.
I hadn’t originally signed up to review of Hulk’s Helicarrier Breakout for two reasons, pricing and the uncertainty of how the Hulk would look in LEGO form. I volunteered for the Loki’s Cosmic Cube Escape set with a certain expectation of what that set would be and then the first pictures surfaced. I jumped ship and swam for the Helicarrier as fast as I could and I’ve never looked back. Other than a decent assortment of dark blue parts and an exclusive Iron Man print variant (circular ARC reactor FTW), I’ve found nothing of redeeming value in that set that couldn’t be found elsewhere. This set on the other hand piqued my interest instantly and became the only ‘must have’ of the super hero line. Don’t get me wrong I wanted all of the Marvel sets for one reason or another, but I had to own this set if it meant saddling up my polar bear, riding all the way down to the US of A and laying seige to the nearest LEGO store. I opted to order it online, then I waited to see if the nine year old in me would get to revel in the realization of Marvel and LEGO coming together or be as crushed as he was when they cancelled The A-Team…
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The second half releases for Star Wars served to remind AFOLs of a few things. First, it’s that LEGO has absolutely no regard for us and our wallets. Second, that Star Wars Episode I exists, now in 3D, and it featured a lot of terrible, terrible things. For those of you that have blocked Episode I out of your brains (and I can’t blame you for that), the Gungan Sub was from a completely forgettable middle section where a Young Ed Bloom and Ra’s al Ghul visit the Snorks and have to borrow a car in order to get Jar-Jar to the prom to make sure that his dad punches the bully and rescues his mom through a series of imaginative stories and flashbacks. I’m pretty sure I’m remembering that right, but those blocks I put in place for Episode I were very, very strong.
The new Gungan sub presents something kind of unique for me… a set that’s a rehash that I never picked up (the only other set with that distinction is the original Gunship… anything else I’ve got the original, the rehash, and sometimes the rehash of the rehash). It’s not that I had any more disdain for it than for the other Episode I sets… I was just a poor college student.
When it came down to the choice between LEGO or beer, the Gungan sub could not inspire sobriety like the X-Wing could. And back then, the sub was just a $25 set, so how does the new one stack up at almost triple the price and less than a hundred more pieces? $50 set… so how does the new one stack up at 50% more and less than a hundred new pieces
[Edit: Thanks to forum member ytjedi for pointing out that the brickpedia entry for the price was incorrect... like I said, I didn't buy it, so never knew]
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