[Toy Review] Leon S. Kennedy Resident Evil 6 Play Arts Kai

Resident Evil 6 is like a teenage kid with angst and mood swings. The game is good, then suddenly turns bad or boring, then it gets good again. But that didn't stop me from playing and finishing the game and buying this Play Arts Kai action figure of the babe magnet himself, Leon S. Kennedy. RE6 figures are already hinted to appear because the game have that action figure collecting part, but only two characters are made to be an actual real toy at the moment (by Square-Enix). Oh yeah, men like to be like him too, he's that awesome. Leon is my first male PAK figure.

"I can't believe this is happening again. It's just like Raccoon"

~ Leon S. Kennedy ~

PACKAGING

Frontside and backside of the box

Front cover opened

The box is coffin-type, we get a lot of this type of packaging lately. The front shows Leon, the game's logo and the PAK logo. The velcroed front cover shows the action figure and accessories in the window on the right, and on the left displays the Leon's campaign plot summary and gun descriptions. You can see Leon's different poses at the back and lots of texts and warnings.

Leon's out for some BOW hunting

Packaging includes: Leon figure, Wing Shooter (2 handguns), Assault Rifle RN, Trigger left and right hand, Display stand. The figure's manual can be found at the stand's packaging.

THE FIGURE

Leon is a rookie police officer turned government agent. He still maintains his good looks while doing some zombie, Ganado and other infected and B.O.W.'s killing spree. The same goes for his action figure.

4 viewing sides of awesomeness
(The figure shows different color when the lighting is close)

Leon looks cool and bad-ass! The figure is very detailed and have solid build quality with few veeery tiny problems, mostly in the paint department, which he can get out of. The figure is pretty heavy too.

Mug shot

His face looks OK and almost accurate in some angles, but not that rugged (no rough texture for his thin looking beard) compared to his game counterpart. He's got a little wider jaw, almost squarish, and his hair of awesomeness is pale brown, like he's getting old. The game shows that his hair color is dark brown. His face have that weird eye shadow.

Everyone wants that jacket

This Leon figure wears the first attire for RE6, the one that he wears during the early chapters of his campaign (before he and Helena go to China). His cool leather jacket looks, you know, cool. It's soft and feels like real leather, it's a little thin too. Underneath the jacket is his buttoned shirt which is also soft for easy torso movement.

See all those textures and other details? Cool, huh?

Angry hands!

Leon's hands looks awkwardly large, but they're very detailed with finger nails, bones and veins sculpted.

The knee joints looks good and those shoes looks real!

His wrinkled pants and shiny shoes looks great. The pants is painted and shaded well with kinda worn out pants effect but with very few hidden and barely noticeable two tiny "paint sticks".

Earpiece closer look

Leon's earpiece looks like it's burned, melted or someone just chew the f*ck out of that earpiece.

ACCESSORIES

Leon brought satisfying amount of accessories. He's got two handguns for his left and right trigger hands, he also got an assault rifle.

I want MOAR!

While this is good enough stuff for this figure, I wish they added more to Leon's arsenal, like three different types of grenades or just a survival knife.

Wing Shooter
Great guns for dual-wielding

Wing Shooter dual handguns looks great. They're detailed and textured, and pretty solid too.

Assault Rifle RN
Bayonet style

Assault Rifle RN also looks great with camouflage paint finish and some metal scratches effect. It also features a knife attached to it, too bad it can't be taken off.

The following are the pics where the accessories are being used:

[Left] Alert stance

[Right] Gangster gunning

Aiming the Assault Rifle RN

Because Leon have two types of guns (handguns and a rifle) the amount of poses you can pull off on this action figure are many depending on your creativity and imagination.

Looks fragile...

This display stand needs assembly. It looks like it's a pain to assemble and adjust this stand so I'm not gonna use it.

ARTICULATIONS, POSING AND SCALING

Leon can pull off static and action poses easily thanks to his 26+ points of articulation, and because of his action figure friendly character design.

Leon!

A look on articulations: PAK Leon's head can rotate 360 degrees. The neck can also move so that the head can bow down a bit. The neck articulation is a nice feature, because it helps Leon to actually aim down on the sights of his guns.

Pulling off the poses seen at the back of the box

Leon can aim his gun while holding it with both hands because the shoulders are butterfly hinged. Arms can do a full rotation, and the elbows and wrists have clicky ball-joints.

[Left] Holding the gun on both hands for steady aiming

[Right] Gun on one hand

[Left] Static pose with guns on both hands

[Right] Action pose with two guns (Gun-slinging!)

Dual-wield those hand guns when surrounded by zombies.

Assault rifle ready

Reloading

Torso parts like chest, abs and waist can move and pivot nicely, Leon can still aim a gun while lying down like we see in the game.

Last stand

Leon's leg joints also have excellent movement range. Leon can sit, kneel on one knee (because of its double hinges) and do some kicks. The ball-jointed feet are a little restricted by the pants.

"The Transporter" pose

In case of no ammo... Charge!

Because of the figure's details and color application, the joints looks hidden especially when different lighting angles are applied.

When it comes to scaling accuracy compared to other large PAK's, all I can say is "meh".. Leon action figure belongs to the latest 9-to-10-incher PAK scale category, and we know that the real Leon is kinda tall (5'11"), but when compared to the newest PAK of Lightning (5'7")...

Leon with Lightning

...they're almost the same size, but Leon is still a bit taller than Lightning who wears semi-elevated boots. If the PAK scaling is more accurate, Leon figure will be a bit more taller than that.

With Roxas and Catwoman

For the heck of it, I also compared Leon with other smaller figs. Roxas is obviously shorter and his scaling with Leon is acceptable because Roxas is a kid while Catwoman is awkwardly smaller but can still blend in.

"Uhhhhh..."

See what I mean? :D

QUALITY ISSUES

For the first time, I didn't encounter any major problems on a PAK figure! Trust me, I checked every part of this Leon action figure for anomalies and missing/broken parts to rant about, but no dice... Well, except for the super tight right upper knee joint... but it's not a big  issue, just another reason to complain about.

CONCLUSION

This action figure of Leon Kennedy is almost perfect, he still have some minor problems to mention. But hey, I'm surprised that this PAK figure doesn't have any depressing quality issues. For fans of Resident Evil like myself, pick this one up, totally worth it because this figure is larger and cheaper than other PAKs that doesn't provide enough accessories. I hope to see more Resident Evil PAK figs in the future (*cough* Ada *cough*) and they must have the right scaling with other Resident Evil PAK figs. BTW, I bought this brand new action figure a bit cheaper because of my haggling skills.

Here's a little scenario:

Zombies!

Cheers and Happy Collecting!