Ektris

I was just thinking of doing this too! Your character are so much more creative though.

Last but absolutely not least, are the three collections I'm probably into most. Star Wars Figuarts were the game changer here. My interest in Hasbro's Black Series line is fizzling, mostly because the figures just seem to keep getting worse from my subjective point of view. But they're still doing things I don't expect Bandai to get to (Rebels figures, Revan) so I probably won't stop. But man, these Figuarts are some of the best action figures I've got. They're great. And unlike Hasbro, Bandai's not afraid to tackle the prequels. I didn't take any dedicate pictures of my books, because I totally do not want to move the loads of things covering them. But if you've followed along with these, you've seen them plenty in the background. I've still got a lot. But the notable thing is I've now started getting new canon books while still expanding my Legends collection. The latter of which I do still hope to finish one day. Transformers The changes here were big. And by "big" I mean physical. Because it was pretty much all combiners and leader class figures. Plus I spread stuff out a bit and moved my Masterpieces from the mantle, so it still looks pretty packed in there. A lot is coming out this year I'm interested in (Oooh Masterpiece Optimus Primal you are looking beautiful), so not expecting to slow down much here. BIONICLE Wide shots: Left | Middle | Right With BIONICLE returning last year, you'd think I'd have a lot of changes here right? You'd be right! ...But not quite in the way predicted. I don't know what happened. The skull guys didn't interst me nearly enough to want to pick them all up (Poor Skull Basher heh). Maybe it was the lacking story that couldn't keep me as invested as when the return was announced. It should be well known how into the old lore I was. I just don't know... But I do still want to try and pick the rest up at some point. And start the 2016 line soon, since those creatures do look cool. The bigger changes are still completely past years. The things I'm happiest to have gotten last year are some 2001 Rahi. Only missing the Manas now. Plus I have all of the Stars now. Oh and duh... Got a WMKK. That's really cool. ~|ET|~

Probably my WMKK. Got some other rarer masks, but don't think any come close to that. ~|ET|~

Not going to count the ammo packs. Otherwise the answer is obvious. But I never considered them "collectibles." So I'll give it to the Rhotuka. Just not interesting at all to me and their colors were utterly pointless. And I'll throw in the Kraata as an honorable mention only. Although their numbers were simply ludicrous, they at least looked pretty cool and had some reason to exist. ~|ET|~

Yes, this year. Believe it's set to be the line for the second half of the year. Also, Masterpiece Primal just keeps on impressing me.

Relax everyone, I'm sure it'll become available in more regions soon enough. At which point I'll probably download it, play for half an hour, and not touch it again despite keeping it installed even after getting a new phone. Just like the last one! ~|ET|~

That is fascinating. But then, the character I'm playing in my current campaign is a fighter named J'hon Cinah, so who am I to talk?

Video Games There were some pretty predictable additions in the past year here. New year means new Assassin's Creed means new statue and hidden blade. Biggest changes here are all Nintendo figures, with most coming from Good Smile Factory and their Figmas and Nendoroids. Always found Nendos a little too stylized for my tastes, but with two new Pokémon releases last year I caved again. There were a few things I repeatedly thought of getting to diversify the shelves here even more. Chief among that being Halo figures. Still held back from those rabbit holes for now though. Plus it would just be another thing making me need another bookshelf again heh. Tokusatsu Might as well call this my "Kamen Rider" collection but there's two things hiding in there that aren't (or... not given how big Godzilla is). I got a lot more Riders in the past year than I had realized. Most are from Gaim; literally doubled the number of Gaim Riders I have. Plus the Drive and Shinkocchou Seihou releases increased the numbers a good deal. So despite the shelf split last year, things are looking quite full again already heh. LEGO My system LEGO collection, also known as "An Ode to Ideas". So it's nothing too expansive or impressive, just a few sets, but it's still filling up quite a bit of my mantle. So I thought it'd be cool to show. ---- There is one more entry planned for this, featuring my three biggest interests - Transformers, Star Wars, and, of course, BIONICLE. ~|ET|~

These are going to be pretty photo-intensive entries. I took more close-up shots than wide ones this time around in order to see things better. (And I'm not quite done yet so there's going to be some delay between updates.) Marvel Now here's one I didn't have much to speak of before. One year later, my Marvel collection has septupled. I truly love Figuarts. Bandai now doing so many franchises I love isn't helping that addiction haha. I'm pretty sure I've mentioned before that I never had many Marvel toys as a kid even though I liked all of the cartoons and watched them a lot. So having these now just kind of makes me happy. Plus it's just going to keep growing; they're already teasing quite a lot of future releases. Anime Not much has changed here at all. I think there's only three additions (would've been four but I didn't feel like delaying these blog entries any more). Meh, quantity's not everything though as those were very solid figures and I'm still content with what I've got. Don't need to being going overboard after all. Amiibo ...Because I may have gone overboard here. Oops... It's just so cool to have these characters alongside one another though. I keep saying this, but I mean it that I'll be done when Smash is done unless they do Pokémon (plus Wolf Link because I wanted the game anyway..). Also because wow do these take up so much space. ---- That's it this time. Thinking of doing three parts this go-around. Next up: games/game figures, toku, and system LEGO. ~|ET|~

Yayy!

Really no idea what else it might fit. :/ But yeah, it's Shockwave. So I really wanted it to. The way it was/is being handled still bugs me too. Sorry you had to cancel.

Yes... But it's basically useless except by a combiner hand. It has a square peg in front of the round 5mm peg that means it won't go in most hands.

S.H. Figuarts Kamen Rider Knuckle Kurumi Arms S.H. Figuarts Battle Droid S.H. Figuarts Clone Trooper Phase 1 S.H. Figuarts Kamen Rider Kurokage Mastubokkuri Arms Transformers Combiner Wars Shockwave Funko Pop! BB-8 LEGO Ideas Doctor Who The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask 3D A Song of Ice and Fire: A Feast for Crows Star Wars: A New Dawn Doctor Who Monopoly Doctor Who t-shirt (not pictured) Star Wars clock Nintendo Amiibo Lucas S.H. Figuarts First Order Stormtrooper S.H. Figuarts Kylo Ren (BB-8 through the clock are from Christmas.) Figuarts dominated my purchases this month, with Star Wars being very prominent throughout everything really. But let's talk Kamen Rider first. With Knuckle and Kurokage in my hands, I finally have all Gaim Riders!! Yes! There's still Lord Baron to look forward to, but otherwise I'm done and I freaking love looking at them all together. The Star Wars Figuarts are a mixed bag of mostly good. The one I don't like is the Clone Trooper. While it looks great, it suffers immensely in the articulation department. Hips are as rubbish as the Stormtrooper's (I'm serious when I say they may be the worst I've had from a Figuart) and I just can't seem to get him to hold his gun closer to his body. Thankfully the First Order Stormtrooper absolutely blows them out of the water. The hips in particular are great; they're a brand new design for the entire line and I think are only the second Figuart to use something like it. I haven't had as much time to mess with it, but it's great. Kylo Ren I also only picked up yesterday, but so far I'm liking him. Not much to say there other than he's cool. The real standout - which is odd even to me - is the Battle Droid. Wow. This Battle Droid... is perfect. Anything I want to do, it can, and looks great doing so. Lucas I ordered from AmiAmi to be sent with my December order as a very last minute thing before it shipped since he randomly came back in stock. At least now I don't have to worry about him next month and can take an Amiibo break for a while until the next two come out. I think I like him more than Ness's Amiibo to be honest. Shockwave was the first Transformer I picked up in a long while and I love the little guy. Just such a good figure. Finally, I really need to find a place to display my Pop! vinyls now with BB-8 joining the party. That was an early Christmas gift from my fiancée and I simply adore it. Plus he's a bobblehead, which is super fun. Got some new forms of media entertainment for the first time in a while. Was holding off on a few purchases explicitly for the holidays, so I'll probably be getting the rest of those soon now. Anyways, got another A Song of Ice and Fire book that I'll get to eventually. Good news is I'm almost done with other book so I can start reading the one before it soon haha. Also have my second new canon Star Wars book, which I only realized as I started to write this that it's the same size as all of the others........ When Tarkin wasn't and I swear copies of A New Dawn I saw in the bookstore before were the same as it..... So much for that excitement I had over the easily noticeable split between Legends and canon on my shelves haha. Oh, and I got Majora's Mask like I figured. I've only played it a little but wow I can see this one taking me a good long while. I didn't make a dedicated Christmas haul post this year since I really just didn't feel like it. But the miscellaneous things remaining in my list come from there. The clock I included because it's cool; it came from my sister, as well as the silverware I mentioned elsewhere that she'd be getting me. Sorry, no pictures of that. I also didn't think to take pictures of the Doctor Who Monopoly or t-shirt, and they're still in the process of being shipped to Texas right now. But they, and the Ideas Doctor Who set (also in the mail so haven't built it yet but ohhh how I want to!), came from my fiancée's side of the family. There was definitely a noticeable theme there haha. So yeah. That's this month and thus 2015 over. I plan to do a collection update once my Christmas packages arrive so I can include those things. A lot has changed since just May. ~|ET|~

Oh yeah, the lip syncing... Yes that was horrible and distracted me more than a few times. Completely forgot about that.

At least Takara is giving us Masterpiece Optimus Primal. Which looks fantastic to me... in robot mode. I want to see an actual prototype before judging that beast mode. But I'm excited for that! ~|ET|~

Just went and bought RWBY: Grimm Eclipse last night so I guess we can count that too lol.

So ends my year in gaming. Episodic titles were really the standouts, with one in particular really standing out among all those even just released this year: Life is Strange. Life is Strange stars Max, a young girl attending high school in her home town of Arcadia Bay, Oregon, having returned there after several years away, and discovers one day that she has the power to rewind time. It should be obvious already how that will transition into a tale of love, drugs, murder, and rampant photography, right? No? Well, I guess you should play the game then! Seriously, I do urge you to check this out. So much so that I don't even want to talk much about the plot here because I want you to experience it firsthand (unless anyone would like to, in which case comment away, but please do use spoiler tags). I will say that, from where it started, I never expected it to end the way it did nor go down many of the paths it took. There were significant psychological issues shown here, and I was honestly a little disturbed at times. But it was such a fun ride, one my fiancée and I enjoyed together. The mechanic that makes Life is Strange different from other point-and-click adventures is the rewind ability. You could use it to choose better dialogue options (maybe you made a mistake and upset somebody you didn't want to, or they let slip something that might have been more useful earlier in a conversation to lead it to where you wanted) or stop simple events from happening by intervening. I feel that it was handled well; Max wasn't an all-powerful Time Lord bending time to her will. In fact, she barely had control over it and you weren't able to use it in some critical moments because of that. Probably the only thing that I disliked about the game was the ending - and that's not even much of a "dislike." The game just unfortunately fell into the trap of your choices not really mattering. You basically have two endings, and I chose the less destructive of the two. But that didn't mean your adventure went to waste, because you still have your memories of the week and... Well, that's starting to get into spoiler territory, but it just wasn't generally a bad ending to me. I'd totally understand why somebody might disagree though. What made this game were the characters. There were so many, perfectly capturing, sometimes rather annoyingly, a lot of familiar personality types you could probably easily associate with somebody you know in real life. They weren't caricatures, but certainly diverse and made for some interesting interactions. Plus some were just plain fun people. Dontnod Entertainment did something really great here. Just in terms of making a game that looks good and functioned well, but also with an episodic game that generally had a good release schedule. Every episode had plenty of content to boot. Life is Strange may well be my game of the year. This somewhat mundane slice of life simulator turned into a deeper mystery thriller that I loved every step of the way. ~|ET|~

Before the finale, I wanted to at least list all of the other stuff. Halo: The Master Chief CollectionHalo: Combat Evolved Anniversary Halo 2 Halo 3 Halo 3: ODST Halo 4 Halo 4: Spartan Ops [*]Assassin's Creed Rogue [*]Assassin's Creed Unity: Dead Kings [*]Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag (Xbox One) [*]Assassin's Creed Syndicate: Jack the Ripper (Came out right after I wrote the entry on the game..) [*]Super Smash Bros. WiiU [*]Forza Horizon 2: Fast & Furious (Gotta get dem Achievements yo) [*]#IDARB [*]Threes! [*]Project Spark [*]Worms Battlegrounds [*]Smite (Xbox One) [*]Microsoft Solitaire Collection [*]Microsoft Majong (These are here because why not lol.) As well as a couple mobile games and of course continued occasional training in Omega Ruby. Of those, I put a ton of hours into MCC just from sheer content and achievement hunting and Smite. Really, really got back into that after it came to console; became somewhat decent with a few gods too when I was just garbage during the original PC beta. Just wish the friends I played with then would have moved to console with me (a few even have Xbox Ones, but oh well). One more entry left and it's for a game I simply adored. Stay tuned! ~|ET|~

Aw, both Yodas in the same poll? I really like both. Entry #3's use of the Kraata as ears is both hilarious and genius. Oh, and Watto. That one looks great. Hmm... I think, though, I'll go with Entry #3. ~|ET|~

There's some nice diversity here, with even some vehicles. That's cool to see. Honestly really torn here. Ahsoka looks fantastic, the torture droid is very unique, Kylo Ren is cool, and the Battle Droid on the STAP looks really good. But I think I'll go with Ahsoka. It's so clearly her (and I love the head tails) and I like seeing something from The Clone Wars entered. ~|ET|~

Went with Darth Maul; I was really impressed by the head construction on it. I'm glad to see not one but two Darth Revans entered (shame they're in the same poll), so props to those guys too. Best of luck to all in here, I rather liked every entry. ~|ET|~

You're not alone there, buddy. I almost cried from sheer excitement! JJ Abrams, Disney, you dun good. It really feels like I'm discovering Star Wars for the first time with this movie. Glad that you also enjoyed it. Heh it is nice knowing there were a lot out there feeling the same way. Have to agree, they did a good job.

Still need to wrap this series up, and I decided I wanted there to be at least 10 entries. With the last one picked from the start, I had quite a few to pick from still. (The rest of which will be showing up in their own leftovers entry.) Then I realized after scrolling my list up, that another of the very first games I played this year was probably notable enough to talk about. Grand Theft Auto is kind of a big deal, right? Grand Theft Auto V was my first GTA game. I think I understand the hype now, even if I hadn't bought into it fully. The big open world was a blast to explore, especially on a motorcycle as Franklin. Despite its size, I felt the map wasn't too hard to get used to and remember, which made navigating easier and not the utter frustration it could have been. This was the kind of world I hadn't experienced since Just Cause 2 (where I spent far too many hours in, and yes I'm hoping to get the next one soon), so that was just an overall welcomed thing to play in. The character switching in the campaign was something I really enjoyed. It let me play the game very differently depending on who I was at any given time without having to play it again. My Franklin was a down to earth guy who just wanted to get out of his bad lot in life. He wasn't about to kill somebody if he didn't have to, like in that ending. Trevor was the maniac he was so clearly written as. Michael wasn't much better, having lived a lie for years to pretend he was a better man but knowing the truth deep down. That's what I was telling myself anyway. It's GTA though and regardless of that it's all really played the same lol. But it still made for an interesting mechanic. The plot of the game isn't anything to write home about; it's the antics surrounding it that made the game. The character interactions were great. I especially liked Steven Ogg's work as Trevor. He did a fantastic job. What's probably the biggest attraction to most for a GTA game seems to be the eclectic multiplayer. Unfortunately, I can't comment on it a whole lot. I only barely dabbled in it, and just didn't find it interesting enough to return. Maybe with a group of friends to mess around with I might have reconsidered, but alone, there just wasn't much I wanted to do. Never even got around to trying out a heist, even though I did want to.. Grand Theft Auto V was a good game that I enjoyed while I played it, but I just wasn't one of those it gripped fully and hung onto it tight for a while. ~|ET|~

It's very likely I'll just get the remake, but nonetheless you have me intrigued. What do you mean when you say they ruined the bosses?

Star Wars: The Force Awakens was a beautiful movie. I just got back from it, so I still need to digest a lot. There's so much I want to talk about already, but I want to keep this short by saying it's great, it's a wonderful addition to this franchise, and you need to go see it as soon as you can. Also I may have cried. Just... twice. Maybe thrice. Definitely during the opening crawl, so that was a great start (heh). ~|ET|~