Yup. I got this as a real nice surprise yesterday. After getting the Emile and Carter figure, I was pretty disappointed with their EXTREMELY limited range of motion. It seems like 3A loves shoving them full of joints, but man, they can't use half of them at all. Literally.
On Carter and Emile you can at least bend the hips and stuff, even though you can barely do anything. Here's a list of what is FULLY wasted on Chief.
-hips
-waist
-chest
-toes
Those are literally immoveable once you stop applying force. They WILL slide back into being locked straight, meaning you cannot possibly use these joints unless you have something holding these parts of him the way you want.
He also:
-Cannot hold the guns with his full hand
-Cannot hold the guns with both hands
-Cannot attach the light rifle to his back
-Cannot stand up with his knees bent
-Cannot stand in very wide stances
-Cannot bend his elbows past 45 degrees. Honestly, he can't even get to 45 degrees.
-Only has lights on his helmet (everyone should know this but its still a downside)
-Basically only good for neutral poses, nothing dynamic, yet he doesn't come with a little handheld Cortana Hologram
All in all, he's a downgrade from the Reach figures. Pretty significantly, too. I didn't want to be disappointed, and I'm still not since I knew he would be more of less a statue. But for a lot of you, you're gonna hate him. A lot of these issues would be fixed with a better hand sculpt, since the lip near his thumb is what really prevents the guns from being able to be held. That said, here's some pros:
+Great sculpting
+Great paint on everything but the battlescar on his manboob
+Another improvement on ease of battery insertion and power button placement
+Comes with a cool box
+Is in scale with the other Spartans
I'm sure a lot of you are going to hate this guy, so if anyone wants to sell me their Bamba Exclusive Spartan Recruit I'd be really happy to take it. Please PM me if you have one and think you won't be wanting it, or if you end up disliking it and want to sell it off.