NATHAN DRAKE

 

It was almost 10 years ago when SquareEnix launched theyr premium toy line Play Arts Kai, working with anime characters and videogame characters beyond Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts. They experimented a lot....a lot...and made some really strange attemots to reach the leverl of quality theyr price represented and it was on its beginings that they pick the Uncharted lisence from Sony to release Nathan Drake from Uncharted 3.

The box of the figure show some amazing artowork but the figure itself was such a mixed bag. To begin with, Drake was a really short Play Arts Kai....i think he was the smallest with Lightning and Sheva towering over him two heads. This was an issue PAKs always had: theyr figures shrink over time while other got bigger and bigger, i never understood this.

Gladlly, Drake can stand on his own perfectly since he had no base at all. He is articulated on the head, chest, waist, shoulders, biceps, elbows, wrists, legs, knes and ankles. All articulations work perfect and gives him a huge range of movement since his outfit is really simplistc and dosnt restrict anything except the ankles. The long pants dosnt allow his ankles to move to much actually but aside of that is very fun to pose this guy.

A side note here, his shoulder articulations are extremelly ugly. This is an issue Play Arts Kai always drag around, the shoulders have a butterfly articulation soo they can move fron and back but that means they leave a huge gap between the arm and the torso and this big discconection is really troublesome for the display of the figure, even when he have his shoudlers straight.

The sculpt is...troublesome. Most of the sculpt is really nice, his muscly chest looks good as well as the texture on his shirt, details on his pants and shoes, i love the shoelace, but i find his face kind of blurry...specially on the eyes and beard texture. The beard texture just....dosnt work at all, and his eyes are a little lost tough i cant really defined if this is thanks to the sculpt of the paint.

The paint....uggggg, this is the big failure of this figure. The shoes have no painted detail at all wich is pretty cheap from Square!! The pants have some dark tones here and there but there no sence where this shadows are placed at all since they dont highlitght any detail. His shirt is the best part since it have this dirty tone all around. Looks actually VERY dirty and almost smelly.

The problem is the face... for some reason they decided to paint dark brown his entire jaw. I dont know if this is meant to be the beard of a dramatic shadow but the result is just jarring....looks almost like a kabuki actor. His eyes have the same dark brown around wich darknes them and its a shame since it hink they are nicelly defiined...under all this brown brush.

The hair is OK, soft plastic and while the sculpt is a little too soft, i am glad they didnt mess it by painting it since it alsready dosnt have the same color Drake´s eyebrows have. 

His accesoryes are a standar small gun. The sculpt of the gund looks kinda...toyish and has no paint soo it looks even more cheap, tough it can be placed on Drake´s hand or the holster under his arm. He also includes the riffle he uses on the cover of the game, black with brown details. This weapons is much better looking than the pistol since the sculpt is sharper, the materials looks more metalic and the paint is stronger.

The other accesory is the sniper riffle wich levitates between the other two in therms of quality since it looks and feels cheaper than the black riffle but much better than the pistol. Alls weapons can be placed on his hands perfectly fine and i cannot forget to also mention the different pair of hands Drake have, from fist to open hands and hands to hold his weapons, the hands exchange is pretty easy and works good.

This figure was pretty odd even 10 years ago, it had amazin articulations and some good sculpt and paint applications but it also had some poor lazy paint ops and the scale pretty much messed things up since he could not be paired with other Play Arts Kai figure. Gladlly, Lara Croft was released on this same tiny scale soo they can be put together for a dream crossover but she is much much much pretyer than Drake is.