Series: Duke Nukem

Craftsmanship: 8.0 out of 10

- Excellent sculpt and articulation of the big alien menace

- Who can't stand

- Some nice "working" accessories and armor

Playability: 5.5 out of 10

- Great articulation for play

- Gattling Gun spins!

- Not durable for heavy play

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BattleLord (Duke Nukem)

by Resaurus

The package for the BattleLord describes him as "The Deadliest of all the Aliens!", completely ignoring the other boss characters from the game Duke Nukem 3D, and also ignoring the fact that Duke could simply duck and fire his Shrinker into the alien's genitals to kill him instantly. And also, that there were a dozen-odd clones of the big guy later in the game, all weaker than the first. But, ignoring all that, we'll say that the BattleLord is probably a rather tough alien cookie, and this action figure from Resaurus does a nice job of getting the toughness across.

Wearing his thick armor, the BattleLord stands a menacing 6 1/2" tall, completely out of scale with the other figures in the line. This isn't a problem, though - with his wonderfully detailed skin and armor, he stands right at home posed with the other figs in the line. The level of detail on him is great, which goes with the awesome sculpt – both the details and likeness are dead on to the game – the package even has a little screenshot for comparison. With long looming arms, two tiny legs and a massive, strong body, the Battlelord seems to be able to crush anything. The paint apps and detail go hand in hand with the great sculpt - Battlelord is quite beautiful, with nice rough and dry brushed skin, metallic highlighted armor, and coarsely rough claws. The paint scheme is decisively simple, but effective, with little overspray. Even more impressive is that Resaurus have given BattleLord an actual-fabric loincloth, which is splashed with a realistic bloodstain – this little detail could have just been sculpted plastic or avoided altogether, but instead Resaurus have made a nice realistic little feature to add to the detail. It's great!

BattleLord also comes with his weight worth of accessories. To begin with, he has with two pieces of armor, a set of shoulder pads and a "helmet" of sorts, that can be attached to his body to arm him or removed to make him look naked. They fit on him easily, will stay on while he's posed but will fall off with heavy play. For some reason, these come with a bunch of rubber tubing, which can be attached to the shoulder pads to help hold them on as well as adding some detail – I found these useless and disposed of them. Secondly, he comes with three weapons to feed his violence addiction, because, by video gaming rule, every alien in the universe has an addiction to violence and death. He comes with two large blades, one 

shaped like a sharpened knuckleduster, the other in the shape of an alien skull. He can hold both of these and look threatening, but to really have him packing heat he has his big gattling gun, straight from the game. It features the rotating mini-gun base, with attached grenade launcher below, a nice big chunky ammo-storage unit and handle, with an attached skull-thing at the back, which can spin to make the mini-gun base spin. The BattleLord holds it in both hands, and it makes him look great, like straight out of the game and imposingly scary. The accessories on the BattleLord are impressive and detailed, and are nice additions to a nice figure.

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The playability is where the BattleLord suffers; despite excellent articulation, with joints at the waist, legs, midsection, arms, forearms, wrists, jaw, a ball-jointed head and a peg joint in the right arm, the BattleLord isn't very durable and will break under heavy play – particularly the peg joint in the right arm. The articulation is quite good for poseability, as he can use all of his weapons and get into a few great poses, but the playability is still not great due to the looseness and fragility of the joints. Also, as a large monster figure, he really needs ball-jointed shoulders, and flatter feet, because it's hard to get him to stand without leaning him against a wall or on his gattling gun. This is irritating to no end.

Overall, the BattleLord is a decent figure for the collectors more than the players. His problem lies in his poor durability, which, strangely enough, isn't like the other figures in the line. His accessories and detail are great, as is the articulation, but it leaves him as more a display piece than anything else. Players would be best to look elsewhere, though MOC collectors will be happy with the figure.

- Shocka

(July 31, 2002)