Battle
Ravage
Beast mode is a robotic
puma. Or... cougar... Well, some big cat. Anyways, even though this mode
has a few oddities, it's otherwise excellent. The overall look and feel
of Battle Ravage is that he's about ready to tear you a new one before
you can even lift a finger. The superb mold detailing on the face shows
through- there's a small camera on top of his head, hydraulic cylinders
connecting the two halves of his jaw, and little gears to boot. Really
spiffy. His tail also has several gears on it, and a big spiked mace at
the end. The rest of Battle Ravage has relatively little mold detailing,
although that's not saying it's bad- just not spectactular. His paint detailing
is also of similar quality levels. Battle Ravage's color scheme is fitting,
and similar to the other Terrorcons'- White, green, and with some darker
colors (in this case, purple and black) mixed in. Pretty nice. His Energon
weapons on his backside give this bad boy some needed firepower, and one
of them can fire a missile if you press down on the appropriate trigger.
The same weapon has a Minicon port, but otherwise you won't find any ports
on Ravage. Battle Ravage's Energon star and Decepticon spark crystal are
on his back in this mode. As for extras, it baffles me why Battle Ravage's
robot heels don't fold in in this mode- I mean, there's enough room for
them. As it is, they stick out. Also, the backside of his robot head is
kind of obvious on the hunch on his back, although this isn't THAT bad
of an extra because at least it's facing downwards.
Battle Ravage's robot
mode is... less great, but still decent. My main beef with it is that it's
too similar to his beast mode, there isn't enough real transformation involved-
basically it's the all-too-familiar "stand me up, do a head flip, and position
my appendages" transformation. His head also looks rather- well, ugly.
The forehead is too big, and he's snarling so much where he just looks
all wrinkled and bleh. The puma paws also hang off rather unceremoniously
from the fists. That's about it for the extras, though- the beast head
is a little visible from his backside, but it fits into his overall shape
rather nicely. Battle Ravage's articulation is pretty decent- he can move
at the head, shoulders, elbows, hips, waist, and knees, and ankles. It
should be noted that most of this movement is just forwards and backwards,
however- not much side-to-side movement at all. Still, you can get him
into a fair number of poses. (Although whenever you try to position his
arms, his auto-transformation tends to kick in a little, making you hold
his main body while you do it.) As for weapons, Battle Ravage is covered-
his tail mace fits perfectly into one of his fists, and his two Energon
weapons from beast mode combine to form a big gun with a sniper scope,
which can also be used by larger Energon Transformers. Very nice.
Battle Ravage is a pretty
decent Transformer, albeit pretty unimaginative. He suffers from a few
flaws, but overall he's worth plunking down $7 for- the beast mode is nearly
worth the price of admission all by itself. Mildly recommended.
Review by Beastbot
* A running change turned up a few months after Battle Ravage was initially released, in which there was an extra tab installed under the robot head so that the auto-transformation wouldn't kick in when you moved his arms. A needed change, as it bumps the rating up to 8.2.