JIN KAZAMA

 Storm Collectibles has been fullfiling the dreams of many fighting games fans by producing high quality action figures of the best fighters, with amazing articulations, sculpt and even combat effects. Thats it if Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter are your favorites, because if you like other games, Storm is an endless pit of frustration, teasing no MK/SF for characters for years and releasing them one by one each 2 or 3 years.

It took me a long looooong time of harrasing Storm on theyr social media accounts about the next Tekken 7 character that was teased like...5 years ago and was launched just this month: Jin Kazama. Jin was my introduction to Tekken back in 1998 soo he wasnt not only my crush, but for me it represent the spirit of Tekken pretty nicelly: a badass character that looks modern while keeping with traditional martial arts roots.

Soo it was a long wait...a very long wait and it will be longer until Storm produce Devil Jin, i wish he was the first to be released instead of Heihachi, but Jin is out and in my hands finally. He is pretty much the same scale as the other characters, same size as Kazuya and Heihachi tough taller than Ryu and unlike Kazuya, Jin can stand perfectly on his own and keep balance all the time.

Of course he is not a "street fighter" soo Storm didnt give him a base at all. He is articulated on the neck, shoulders, biceps, elbows, wrists, chest, wrist, legs, knes, ankles and half feet, with a double articulation on the shoulders. Pretty much everything works perfectly, just like the rest of Storm figures and unlike Kazuya, Jin have a kind of extension on his feet socket soo the feet and the pants have a little empty space. This gap let him move his feet on all directions, fixing the issue Kazuya had.

Thanks to his simple outfit (hes close to be nude) there is nothing that prevent the movement of the articualtions. Also the chest area, gloves with arm pads and red pads on his feet are made with soft rubber plastic soo he can move his arms and feet with absolut freedom. Aesthetically i still dont fully like the piece between his chest and shoulders but i am getting used to it since its better this look than the Play Arts Kai style.

Moving him around is such fun...specially since he can keep his balance all the time. The sculpt is really good, i like a lot the fabric texture on his pants as well as the skin like texture on his skin since they are not overdone and nice for the touch tough i have to say i find him not as curvy as i was expecting. For some reason Storm figure have a wide waist compared to the in game models.

Also, while i like a lot Jin´s hair style and his eyes are relaly good, his nose is actually too thin as well as his jaw line and his mouth is too small. From a distance is easy to recognize him but from a closer look, he looks kinda odd. His jaw whould be stronger deffinetly.

Paint on the face is perfect tough, specially on the eyes tough is difficult to see them thanks to his hair. The skin tone is lighter than Kazuya´s and darker than Heihachi and of course, theres no paint there, the body is cast in skin tone wich gives him a pretty natural look. The tatto is on his shoulder tough is cut in hald thanks to the articulation but both parts match each other perfectly. The flames on his leg are strong and vibrant as well as his arm pads and gloves, i really love his color choice.

His accesorys are a bunch of extra hands, aside of the closed fist he have open hands, claw like hands and an extra pair with two extended fingers. Hands are easy to swap tough thanks to the rubber gloves and pads, its a little tricky to insert the hands. 

The other accesorys are a pair of extra heads. One growling and the other one screaming. They can be exchanged pretty easy and this two portraits looks much more like Jin Kazama than the base head since both have a wider mouth. Again, the level of detail is stuning, since each teeth is sculpted and painted independently.

Lastly, there is an effect part and this one is one of the largest i see on the collection. Its a kind of...meteor thingy that looks like a squid with yellow and read, made with translucent plastic. Of course this thing is supposed to be a red lieghtning coming from his fist soo the entire arm can be inserted between the "bolts of light" to give the effect of a super charged punch. It looks pretty cool and Jin can keep is balance with this accesory on tough it can block the view a lot at certain angles.

Also, one last thing: a printed background with the G Corporation heliport. The print is nice and i dont think if is the best background for Jin but the tones have a nice contrast with Jin in front and at least is not as damn dark as Kazuya´s volcanic landscape.

Overall i am really happy to have Jin. I am really happy Storm is still doint Tekken even if they takes them 5 years between each figure. He is not perfect thanks to the strange thin face on the base head and i still think he have a few extra pounds on that waist, but is a lot of fun to make him play around with his father and grandfather and this guy makes the serires a huge improvement over the failed Taf 2 Play Arts Kai line.

NATHAN DRAKE

Uncharted 4 was one of the very first games i got for the PS4, how fast runs time wince we are dealing now with the PS5. But it was also the very last time i get an "special edition" game as well since after that, special editions prices sky rocketed in an extreme way (with RE special editions being more expensive than a console...) and the Special Edition of Uncharted 4 have of course, a figure.

Very different to the Special Edition of Uncharted 3, that had a kind of "mini" statue by Sideshow, Uncharted 4 statue is HUGE.....taller than a Hot Toys and thats really impresive, mostly because the price wasnt that high. Also the quality overall is pretty high compared to the Uncharted 3 statue.

Drake is walking, taking his gun from the hostler at the same time, looking around with a soft smirk. The sence of movement is really good, since he is leaning to the side giving the effect of movement and speed, also he is standing in just one leg. I dont know if the statue could broke eventually or not but after a few years the plastic is still strong.

The base is a circular piece of jungle, with mostly mud, stones and a few plants here and there. The mud texture is really well painted tough....i guess it all depends of the paint since it laks any kind of texture but is actually pretty wet looking. Drake cannot be removed of the base tough.

The sculpt is really good. Drake looks much more older than his Uncharted 3 version tough is easy to decognice his face features. He dosnt have too much of a beard but his lips and blue eyes are nicelly painted tough his hair not much....there is a mess of paint on his forehead sadlly, wich looks worse given how big is the figure.

I dont know wath kind of plastic they used but is soo nice to the touch...soo soft like velvet and yet it keeps the colors pretty strong and vivid. Also it keeps the skin tone pretty realistic and natural looking wich is pretty impresive. 

I specially like his pants....in the lower half they have a dark tone to hos how Drake just came out from a swamp or something and the color is soo nice and natural. Also his pants and shirt have this weird wet look but is not intrusive, is more like humidity from the ambient, like a rain forest.

The shirt huge Drake´s body soo nicelly...and the fabric texture is really soft too. I am glad they keep the textures pretty low as well as the paint to avoid something as outlandish as the Play Arts Kai. Still, the parts that need more detailed paint, like the hostlers and gun, looks really good too.

He is also pretty dirty, aside of his pants there is dust and dirty all over Drake as well as blood and scratches but just the rigth amount soo this figure stands out pretty nicelly on any videogame characters collection.

While the Nendroid is cute i have troubles deciding wich is the best Uncharted 4 Drake, this one of the NECA action figure? But have paint issues deffinetly but they are a huge improvement over the Uncharted 3 statue and action figure tough this is deffinetly inferior to the Sideshow sixth scale Drake i am really glad we got soo many option for this amazing character.

NATHAN DRAKE

Its been a long time since i got  a new figure!!! I really missed it a lot! And its been a while since i got something from NECA. I got A LOT of figures from them, at a time i only buy theyr toys and nothing else but at some point they gravitated much more to movies and super heros and i lost interest in theyr products.

Then they release a hideous and awkard Devilmay Cry Dante that looked like Marylin Mason with a cheap wig, and a great looking Kratos, but when i saw Nathan Drake in the Comicon and i knew i had to get him!!!

I still dont play Uncharted 4 but i am loving this guy a lot. NECA has evolved a lot since the last time i got one of theyr toys. The first evolution came with the box, wich is not a blister of a clamshell, but a window box like a Play Arts KAI. The cover flap is the cover of the game and the back is full of great shots and artwork of Drake. The box make him looks like a cheap version of Play Arts KAI.

He is action figure standar size (same size than other NECA and McFarlane toys and bigger than Figma) and can stand on his pretty food tough thanks to his pants design, he cant move his feet too much limiting a lot his stance position.

He is fully articulated and nothing stop his joints to move nicelly. I still remember the time when NECA toys were like little statues, with a McFarlanesque pose. Now that phase has end and he have full movement freedom.

His face is not plastic with a coat of paint over it, instead the plastic has already the color of his flesh and the texture, wich gives him a much more natural look (and even some transparency to his skin). Ths sculpted wrinkles on his forehead, the blood stain, even the beard (an element that NECA really messed up with the Booker DeWitt figure) is painted in a natural and perfectly defined way. My only complaing here are his eyes…

I got the Dante from Dante´s Inferno figure from NECA and his eyes are amazinglly painted, with shine and the cornea perfecly defined. Drake by the other hand, have only a splotch of blue over pure withe. His eyes looks really dead and sloppy compared to all the work done around them.

Both is shirt and hips piece are made with pretty suft plastic soo the arms and legs can move with total freedom. I have to say, he have a really really good V shape body, with a thing waist and big shoulders and those round and delicious pecs covered by the thin shirt. I cant understand who a piece of plastic can be this hunky?

He have an extra face with an angry expresion. The head can be changed in an easy way, but i dont like too much his face sculpt. Each teeth is sculpted and painted perfectly, but i dont think the face looks as much as Drake as the “calm” face.

He also comes with a pair of extra hands to hold his other accesoryes, a pistol and an AK. He can hold the handgun perfectly and put it back into the holster on his left side but he cant hold tigthly the AK. This weapons instead can be placed on his shoulder thanks to the suft plastic strap it have.

His other accesory is a rope with a closed hook that can be attached to his waist and an “open” climb hook with a real rope. The rope is really slippery and short and the hook, while nicelly sculpted and painted, i am afraid it cant hold him by too long before breaking. Before that happened i made a little fixture with a metal piece.

He looks really neat inside his box but thanks to this rope accesory, i now have Drake climbing down my videogames and in this way i save a little space on the shelf for other figure.

Overall, this figure is both impresive looking and a lot of fun to play with. The paint job on his face dosnt looks always good under certain light, but in natural light and with a certain distance he looks impresive and realistic. For his size and price, he is a geat deal and even with the cheap paint on his eyes and “small” size, he is much much better than the Nathan Drake from Play Arts KAI.

NATHAN DRAKE

Even if i am not a big fan of Nendroids, this was no brainer for me. Just by watching the prototype of Nathan Drake´s Nendroid i was sure i was going to get him. I really wanted him to play with Chris Nendroid.

Uncharted has been one of my most favorite games (even if i still dont play the fourth one) and soo far i been able to buy all action figures of the series - except that crazy expensive Sideshows statue - and i am really glad they continue to release merchadise of it even if its been a year since the last game.

Nate is tiny, really tiny. The same size of other Nendroids and in there is born my frustration: my big sausage fingers really strugle with this guy. Taking this pictures was a huge challengue for me actually, since put his gun on his hand is really tricky. But even if functionality is debatable, this guy is undenayable cute and cool at the same time.

He can stand on his own perfectly (something great considering his huge head and tiny feet) but still he comes with the elegant and usefull base with the mechanical arm that Good Smile Com always gives. His articulations works really good and allows all kind of poseability (with the design restriction of the small legs) soo he is a lot of fun.

He is probablly my favorite Nendroid given how easy to the eye and simplistic is his design. He dosnt have all those belts, puches, wires and incrediblle details the Snakes and Raiden have, soo not only he is more colorfull than them, but hes much more resistant and easy to move too.

The buttons on his shirt, the way his collar falls down from one side, his watch (the damn little thing is perfectly painted and sculpted!!!!!), the level of detail in this dude is really astonishing and in perfect match with adult Nate. You can even remove the pistol from his holster under his arm…and this pistol is cut in half!! This is only for the moments when Drake have his gun on his hand, soo his holster is empty instead of having “two guns”.

The paint is clean and vibrant, and his eye brows have small little hairs painted on them. I am soo glad they give each of this Nendroids theyr own face soo they dont share the same face features (even if its not that evident at first), like his eyes, they are totally different than Snake´s eyes.

He is really handsome for such a cartoony design and he comes with a second face with a lusty look. With some scars and a mischevious grin showing his fangs (BOTH sculpted and painted) and one of his eye brows down, i find this extra face to be more sexy than anything and is my favorite deffinetly.

Aside of his basic gun (and the cut in half fake gun on his holster) he also comes with a riffle. While the Snake´s and Raiden have black riffles, this one comes with brown tones and is basically the weapon they always gives him on all action figures.

He also comes with a little golden coin with nothing sculpted on it but that is obviouslly the engine of his adventure on the last game. I find this item to be the most interesting one that is soo unique to this figure (even if it dosnt have sculpt).

And he also comes with a hook and a rope, tough the rope is just hard plastic… soo its only to be posed hanging from something. This means if he dosnt have something to make the “hanging illusion” he looks really strange, like if hes fliying with an invisible balloon. This item is soo bizarre but once you find a way to pose him he looks really spectacular.

The little rope with hook on the side of his pants can be removed as well but i just forgot about it when i took the pics.

I really love this guy in the end, and he looks like he cames from another dimension when he is side by side with adult Nthan Drake. I am starting to feel a little adicted to this guys.

NATHAN DRAKE

After the odd attempt of SquareEnix to bring Nathan Drake to the action figure realm and the kind of boring statue from the collectors edition of Uncharted 3, Sideshow took the torch once more to bring Nathan Drake to life this time in theyr sicth scale deluxe serires, made with nop notch quality and a pretty high price.

I remember how broke i was when i got this figure years ago but i also remember how excited was i and i had no doubts to get him. He was one of the mst expensve items on my collection...."was" because for today standars he was a bargain and he deffinetly was a jack pot considering his quality.

The box is actually really discrete and simple tough the figure is not and it even comes with a background of the desert behind the blister tough the background is too small to display it with the figure. Drake is big, really big, is one of the biggest figures i have since Sideshow figures are usually an entire head taller than Hot Toys, but despite of that he can stand on his own perfectly.

Where to start? He is incrediblly articulated: on the neck, chest, waits, shoulders, biceps, elbows, wrists, legs, knes and ankles tough i cant be sure since the articulations are under the clothes soo aside of the wrists they are all hiden. All the articulations works really good and are really sturdy and strong, this is mostly why he can stand on balance despite how tall he is.

Of course, the pants stop the legs to move too far and the shoudlers sometimes get stuck with the shirt but that can be fixed easy. Thanks to Drake´s simple outfit nothing stop his range of movement and he can achive an awfull lot of poses. Another reason is of course the material since his entire body is made with softish rubber material.

The sculpt is fantastic; the strong jaw, the nose, the eyebrows, everything is perfectly done and the material match the quality since the plastic is a little bit translucent and have this...super realistic skin texture. Up close look you can see Drake´s wrinkles on his forehed and lips as well as the soft texture of the beard. A HUGE improvement over the Play Arts Kai.

Of course, despite his serious expression his eyes are full of life. I am not sure but i think his eyeballs are separate pieces or maybe the sculpt is way too deep because his eyelids and eye balls looks separate. His blue eyes are full of life and wisdom...they even shine under the light.

 The rest of his body is as perfect as the face because his arms have some hair sculpted and his hands are made with the same rubber material they are soft and fleshy, almost creppy. And under his shirt he have a hairy and muscly torso with sculpted nipples....you cans ee the articulations but its extremelly nice looking and even from behind, his ass looks form and athletic....

Uhhmmm anyway, this is deffinetly one of the most handsome figures i ever seen. The tailoring on his outfit is really nice too, with his green cargo pants, each pocket and section is made perfectly and the pants looks soo used and old and even have stains on the lower half. His shirt is made with a pretty fresh fabric but looks as used as the pants, anyone would expect it to stick.

The boots are perfect too and he even have small sock under them, Sideshow attention to details is trully stuning. But my favorite part of the outfit is deffinetly the blue scarf, looks soo dirty but adds a lot of movement to the display. Then it comes the weapons holster and the bandolier that fits over his torso by joining tiny belts on each side. In one side he have bullets, in the back theres a lot of pockets.

This are the most delicate pieces since they are made with leather imitation plastic and with the time the material is peeling and cracking. I try to add some shoes oild to keep deteroration at bay but the end result dosnt looks too bad considering how old and used the rest of the outfit is.

And a couple of spectacular details: a wrist watch and Sir Francis Drake´s ring as necklace, both are mede perfectly and specially the watch have a lot of details.

He dosnt have too many accespyes aside of a bunch of softish hands, his pistol and the riffle. The hand change is pretty easy tough the material is soo soft the hands have problems holding down the riffle. The gun is pretty simple and small, done with a metalic silver paint and fits no problem on the holdster under Drake´s armpit.

The riffle looks great and have an articulated arm section as well as removable bullets pin and there is one more single accesory: the map to Ubar, the City of Sand. This map have a great quality impression and in one side have the map and in the other have some sketches that help to solve certain puzzle on the game. Deffinetly this accesory works really good to improve the display.

Also, he comes with a big black base with the logo of the game. Is not neccesary for him to stand but its better than dont have any base and it makes him taller than he already is.

Overall, after having this guy on my collection for soo many years i think he is one of my favorites sixth scale figures i have, mostly because the big range of movement and how sturdy he is combined with the great quality of textures and materials used. Time flys and he still looks as cool and aesome as the first time, standing out from the rest of the figures. This is deffinetly the best Uncharted figure produced.