Review date: 10/9/2003
Revised 11/13/2004

Manufacturer: Joyride Studios

Released: 2003

Availability: HARD

Type: Action Figure

Sculpt:
Excellent. This figure of Master Chief looks just like his video game counterpart. Everything about the sculpt is dead on. His helmet and armor are wonderfully done. Everything is intricately sculpted. They even included dents and scrapes on his armor to indicate battle damage. Very cool. Master Chief's proportions are good. I'm glad they didn't give him an oversize head or oversize hands/feet. Pretty much everything you saw in the game has been sculpted here. No shortcuts were taken. I really wish I can tell you more but all I can say is that he looks just like his video game counterpart.

But there's a problem. What bothered me is his right hand. The index finger is pointed out way too much. When you place a gun on his hand, the trigger finger isn't on the trigger! Sucks. If only his index finger actually touched the trigger then this sculpt would be perfect. I think if they gave him interchangeable hands, that would solve the problem. One hand with the finger on the trigger and the default one I mentioned. Ah well.

This particular Master Chief also includes three weapons. They include his assault rifle, pistol and sniper rifle. They are very well made. The sculpt looks just as accurate as the Master Chief himself. I wish you could change magazines but that's asking too much for a figure of this type. They look great overall.

Master Chief features lots of articulation. You can pose him in pretty much every single pose that you saw in the game. Excellent. His head turns and his arms and legs can be posed in every which way. Fun. I wish his wrists and ankles were ball jointed though. That would give him even MORE articulation and potential poses. But I'm happy with what they were able to do. Also, his waist is too loose but that's not a huge problem. Anyways, Master Chief looks great and plays great. Good job Joyride.

Paint:
Now the paint isn't as great as the sculpt. While the overall paint job is very clean and nice, it's the colors that bugged the hell out of me. I think Joyride messed up in this department. First of all, Master Chief's green armor is too dark compared to the source. I know it makes him slightly more realistic but accuracy was far more important. I've read other reviews where people complained about the green and I agree with them. What's great is that they added some glitter to the mixture so it gives Master Chief's armor a sense of being metal. There's also a bit of airbrushing to help accentuate the battle damage. Those were good ideas. But the overly dark green color was not.

Another problem with the color accuracy is with the guns. The pistol is perfectly colored. The silver and black are perfect. BUT, the problem is with the assault rifle and sniper rifle. For some reason the black paint that was used for the pistol wasn't used here. Don't look at the photo (below) for accuracy. Look at the main photo of Master Chief with assault rifle (above) to see what I mean. The cameras don't seem to be able to capture the weird dark brown/purplish color sometimes. All the parts that were supposed to be black was painted with the weird dark brown/purplish color instead. I have no idea why they did this. The assault rifle should've had a dark gray and the sniper rifle should've had black in place of that weird color. But for unknown reasons, Joyride messed up on the rifles' paint job.

There's also a problem with the Master Chief holding his weapon in the packaging. It seems they packaged him with the gun before the paint fully dried. Some bits of the gun's paint transferred over to Master Chief's hands/arms and vice versa. It's pretty minor but it adds to my disgust with the paint job department. What a disappointment. ><

I'd also like to mention the visor. If you noticed, it's not some dull paint. Joyride decided to give it the same copper chrome look he had in the game. Sweet. It actually reflects his surroundings just like in the game. I saw prototypes of this figure and I was worried they would keep the nasty dull orange paint for the visor. I'm glad they didn't. It's an awesome detail.

Where can I find this?
Insanely hard. He is super popular due to the huge amount of fans out there so finding him is a pain. You can try Ebay but I'd advise against that. As of this review, you can wait for Series 2 which includes the same green Master Chief. The only difference is that the Series 2 version will have new weapons.

UPDATE: Joyride rereleased the figure so it's actually a lot easier to find now.

The figure in its packaging. Pretty nice design. They incorporated many elements of the video game's designs into the packaging. I like how they preposed Master Chief in there.

"I R TEH 1337!!!"

The weapons. Great sculpt but the colors...

The back. Nice details...