ALBERT WESKER & HUNTER II

 Palisades Marketing was a brand that, in its pretty short life span, developed a lot of fantastic afction figure series and reached almost perfection pretty quickly. Even after 20 years some of theyr series are selling at pretty high price and are treasure among collectors. One of those series was Resident Evil and with the movie on teathers, comic books in stores and the hype of a remake of the first game, Resident Evil was on its more popular point back then, when Palisades took the torch from ToyBiz and Moby Dick Toys.

But unlike ToyBiz and Moby Dick Toys, Palisades would release figures individually and in serires of fours: a human character, a monster and two individual boss creatures. Also, since back in 2002 the last Resident Evil game was CODE: Veronica, Palisades would focus mostly into that game but it would also release a few characters from the other games in a pretty weird mix.

Series 3 started with Chris Redfield from CODE: Veronica and i still regret not getting him since Chris is my favorite character and i love his uniform in that particular game. The second figure, the monster, was non other but his rival Albert Wesker along side a Hunter II from the same game. Size wise Plisades figures were bigger than Toy Biz but smaller than Moby Dick´s soo he fits perfectly with modern figues of NECA or McFarlane.

Wesker can stand on his own perfectly And this time around theres no base at all....He is articulated on the head, shoulders, biceps, elbows, wrists, legs, tigths, knes and ankles. All cut articulations that move in only one direction except for the head and shoulders that are ball jointed and aside of those sections, the rest feel really limited in movement soo Wesker dosnt have too many movement options, and thats a shame considering he is much more dynamic at this point of the series.

The articulation is not bad but not great either tough the sculpt is really good. The wrinkles on his shirt and pants looks good as well as the vest with the tiny pockets around it. He is actually a pretty basic design soo theres not much to see here and most of the sculpting details goes to his face, with his chiseled face features and cool looking hair, he is Wesker for sure and looks pretty close to his in game model.

Paint is also extremelly simple. He is just black plastic with only small detailes painted here and there: some silver buttons on the pocket or the brown laces on his boots, he is just blacknes. His skin tone can be seen only on his foreamrs and head and he is just pale, but with some darker shades on his face to give him volume, dark skin tone son his lips and brownish eyebrows. The blonde hair is perfectly painted as well as his black shades.

He have an accesory tough: an extra head with no shades. Change the head is not that easy but the sculpt and paint are just as good as the normal head, and while the face expression is the same, of course, cold and empty, the painting on his red and yellow pupil eyes is pretty amazing for such small scale. I actually think he looks more handsome with his red eyes but he is much more iconic with the black shades.

His companion piece is the Hunter II he uses in the Rockford Island to hunt Chris in CODE: Veronica and this is easy the most impresive companion monster in the collection! This guy would be the size of a human if not for the shape of his body and legs, soo he ends being a little bit smaller than Wesker and is articulated on the shoulders, elbows, legs and knes as well as his jaw.

Articulations are cut joints soo they are very limited and also he is preposed based on an artwork of the game soo he have not many display options but still he looks damn impresive and the articulated jaw is such a good detail. This is a big improvement over the Cerberus and the Licker form series 1 and 2.

The sculpt is soo amazing!! You cna see each scale and each wrinkles wraping around the monster weird bone structure. The texture on his reptilian skin is fantastic and an exact copy of the artwork of the game. The lips wraping up and down and showing the gum and the eyes on the side of the face make this the less human Hunter to date and looks more like a creature from Lovecraft lore.

The paint is just as good as the sculpt, with a intense green covering him but daerker greens higtlighting the scales and a silver belly that mix with the greens in a pretty natural way. Again his face is the best part with the yellow fangs and yellow eyes. Those eyes are incrediblly realistic and looks like the eye from the Resident Evil 2 main menu.

Its weird how Wesker is soo incrediblly simple and forgetable looking while the Hunter II looks soo amazing and stand out soo much, but still, the main atraction here is Wesker since this is pretty much one of the only two figures the character have in 25 years, giving him an important status for the Palisades collector.