Halo Toy Review: Mattel Build-A-Figure Alpha Crawler

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Build-A-Figure Alpha Crawler

Technical Specifications:
Articulation:
• Ball Joint Head
• Ball Joint Shoulders
• Hinged Elbows/Knees
• Swivel Torso
Cost: As this figure is made up from parts of each of the series 1 Mattel Halo figures, to get it, you either have to buy one of each figure OR you can try your luck at buying pieces through sites such as eBay. If you buy the set of figures the total cost of them is $90 for 6 figures. Each figure has one or two pieces of the Crawler, depending on which figure it is. So to nail down an actual cost to this specific figure is a little bit different. I will say it’s worth is about $15. However, the complexity by which you have to obtain the individual pieces makes this more valuable. So I put that amount at around $40.
Availability: Mass Retail

And on with the pics! (Click pics to make BIGGER)

FIrst up, you have to have all the parts. Here I’ve laid them out to show them in reference as to how they are assembled (top left). Subsequent steps at assemble show how the Crawler comes together. It’s not difficult to attach parts. However, be sure to get them put on correctly. I at first mistakingly put the rear legs on backwards….

Crawler Assembly Continue reading

Night of the Mantis!

I’ve had a chance to play this new COMMUNITY-MADE minigame over the past several days. Let me say it is FANTASTIC! Honestly, I didn’t think something like this was possible in Forge. It just shows the absolute POWER of scripting in Halo 5’s Forge!

The following is a partial repost from Waypoint, with my commentary in BLUE as usual.

NIGHT OF THE MANTIS

A game mode that’s been taking the Forge world by storm, Night of the Mantis, caught our attention as well. In this minigame made by Julianoz1224, the only objective is to protect your base from waves of Mantises. While taking down Mantises, you earn points to purchase new weapons, grenades, and power ups that will in turn help fight off future waves. Julianoz recommends playing with four or fewer players, but the difficulty does scale for five to nine players, and then gets even more difficult with ten or more players.

HFFL: Folks, I can tell you for a fact, the difficulty DOES increase. I’ve played this with as few as 4 people and as many as 8. It gets a lot harder with 8, especially when you play it on harder difficulties!

MANTIS TYPES
The different types of Mantis you will face. Each type will reward your team with different points, as seen on the table below.notm-mantises-21188436d7fc44788c9e7a9fc0705ce8

HFFL: The fact that Julianoz was able to script each Mantis differently speaks not only to what you can do with Forge, but his mastery of scritping it as well! Continue reading

Halo Wars 2 Blitz Beta

A few qords from Dan Ayoub, Studio Head of Strategy Games at 343 Industries
This is a repost from halo Waypoint: 

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Hi everyone –

Last June we invited our fan community to jump in and get hands-on with a slice of Halo Wars 2 with our first multiplayer beta. As discussed, we received a tremendous amount of valuable feedback on both the technical and gameplay side that has helped the team continue to refine and improve the overall Halo Wars 2 experience as we march towards launch on Feb. 21, 2017. Continue reading

The Month of Master Chief January 2017 (1/17) Feature 6: My history with Master Chief in the games.

It’s hard to encompass 16 yeasrs of gaming with one franchise in one blog post. This article is in no way all encompassing, but does give you a synopsis of my history and experience with Master Chief from the video games. Novels and other media have not been included (with rare exception) so that any who just follow the games can read along and not be lost in further discussion.

Fair warning, this article is a long read and there will be no TL;DR.

Pre-Master Chief History:
I was a Nintendo then Playstation guy. I hadn’t even considered an XBOX until a friend of mine had me try out theirs one day while I was visiting. The game I played? Yep, HALO! And so starts my journey.

Halo 1 CE Cover
Halo CE/Master Chief

The ever so brief time I had playing Halo on my friend’s console was just enopugh to convince me to by it. It wasn’t really the console itself, but rather the game. I was enamored by this green armored super solider. The super hero-esque look of him was a big draw. I’m a HUGE Iron Man fan, so Master Chief was akin to him, insofar as te armor was concerned, to me. Continue reading