Review – Halo Reach Jorge
Back at the New York Toy Fair in February the Square Enix Halo action figure series (NYTF post here) really grabbed me. Massive, impressive action figures that just begged to come home with me. But as cool as those toys look, it’s the McFarlane Toys Halo action figure series that gets the attention and distribution; with lower price points and sales through major retailers it’s no surprise that the McFarlene Toys Halo series* is everywhere. And now it’s even here at battlegrip.com as I review the first figure in the series that I’ve ever purchased.
An Excellent Sculpt
McFarlane Toys has been known for great sculpts throughout the company’s life, and this Halo Reach Jorge* does not disappoint at all when it comes to the sculpting work. After ripping open the package — sorry I didn’t get packaging pics posted — I then spent time looking over the armor’s details. Every plate, every layer, and every detail looks incredible, with a sculpt that’s every bit as impressive as the KIllzone Helghast Sniper (review here) and Helghast Assault Infantry (review here) toys that we looked at over the last week. And that’s saying something, because those two action figures feature some superior sculpting work.
And Great Paint
The weathering effects on this Halo Reach action figure may not be at the same level as Ashley Wood’s action figures, but keeping in mind that this toy cost me $11 I think you can see why I was so impressed with the paint applications. And there’s a lot of paint, with reds, yellows, silvers, various shades of gray, and more applied heavily across every inch of the toy’s surface. And rotating the joints back as far as possible shows that they didn’t skimp on the paint; the work goes up into the details. With so much effort put into the paint — and so many details — I assume the paintwork was done before the toy was assembled, but since I wasn’t actually at the factory I can’t be sure what happened.
To give you a better look at the toy’s sculpt and paint I zoomed in on a couple of spots; click the photos above and take a close look at the details and you’ll see why I’m very happy with the work McFarlane Toys put into sculpting and painting this action figure. The Halo Reach Jorge* is really cool and has me thinking I should buy a couple more action figures in the series.
But as great as the work on the sculpt and paint are, there’s one area where the action figure falls terribly flat.
Flawed Articulation
The package for the Halo Reach Jorge* action figure proudly states “26 Moving Parts,” but what they neglect to mention is that those parts don’t move all that great. As with most armored action figures most of the toy’s joints are obstructed by the armored layers, and even the joints that work fairly smoothly aren’t the best joints we’ve ever seen on an action figure.
Searching online for reviews of the figure didn’t reveal any, so I guess it’s up to me to puzzle my way through these questionable, near-useless points of articulation. Looks like swivel-hinge joints on the shoulders, elbows, knees, ankles, and wrists (though the hinge movement on the wrist is almost zero), maybe a swivel-hinge neck (it’s not a ball joint from what I can tell by trying to rip the head off), some sort of limited ab-crunch/ball joint, and hips that are either swivel-hinge or ball joints connected to a swivel.
The Halo Reach Kat review at Infinite Hollywood compares a lot of these joints to the Revoltech joint and I can see the similarity, but the Revoltech version is much, much better.
In general the articulation is a disappointment and the one major strike against an otherwise fun and neat action figure.
Closing Thoughts
A great, but not perfect, action figure, the Halo Reach Jorge* may have been my first purchase in the series but it will not be my last. The articulation is really frustrating (as is the gun’s lack of any real handle at the operator’s end of the weapon), but the sculpt and paint are both impressive enough that the toy looks extremely cool on display. And the $11 really helps me overlook those articulation problems.
While not as remarkable as the Square Enix Halo action figures, the McFarlane Toys figures are about 1/4 the cost of those larger Square Enix pieces — and McFarlane’s Halo figures can be found almost everywhere — so I can say that if you’re a Halo fan looking for a series to collect give these a shot before looking into the Square Enix works.
Not highly recommended, but recommended for those who buy action figures to display.
Philip Reed should review the Halo Jun action figure from Square Enix so that he can demonstrate just why that series is work the extra $40 or so.
Great review. There were so many figures released for the Halo franchise that I limited my collecting to just the Master Chief figures, but seeing this guy makes me want to stray a bit.
I’m not a fan of Halo, but I had thought about buying this figure solely based on his Boba Fett-inspired color scheme.
@Cool & Collected – Have you got any of the Square Enix figures?
@Mario! – Take away my geek license! I hadn’t even connected the color scheme to Boba Fett. Man, that makes the paint even better than it was before you pointed it out to me.
I picked up a few of these figures and I came to the same conclusion. They look great, but I really couldn’t get past their wrists and hands. They had a hard time holding the weapons they came with; and the wrists make the hand look like it is extending away from the forearm.
My biggest problem with these figures is the placement of their knees. The pin in the joint is higher than the sculpted knee, so they end up looking weird. However, I may just be nitpicking that too much. Other figure from the reach line seemed to have a little better movement than Jorge, but the Halo 3 figures still beat all of the Reach counterparts in that area.
I picked up Emile from this series too, and found him to be a little disappointing too. I’ve been meaning to sell all of my Halo figures, just haven’t gotten around to it yet.