After making their way into the Kenner Predator franchise, revisiting the AVP franchise, and tearing though just about every other cinematic version there is, NECA has turned its triangular red dot sights on one of the best video game outings the beasts have ever had: Concrete Jungle for the X-Box and Play Station 2.
In that game, you obviously do the thing that separates the good Predator games from the bad, and that is, of course, to play as the damn Predator. While the game offers the skins of many famous Preds as unlockable perks in-game, so you can be Scar or Jungle Hunter or which ever you prefer, they also did a damn fine job on designing their own version. Known as “Scarface” as well as the “New Way Devil,” he has a pretty interesting look that reflects his fairly unique backstory. So as far as Predators to make figures of, this was always going to be a cool choice.
I’m not interested in packaging much, but if I were, I would probably favor these great window boxes NECA uses. While not quite a retro game, or at least not as retro as the others, the packaging emulates the game box art perfectly, and I like the little touches like the game background and health meter.
The game is really a simple open-world-ish 3rd-person fighter like a lot of other games in its generation, but it benefits from interesting embellishments added to the formula, like a Warren Ellis plot, some fun takes on the usual search/destroy missions, and things like that. The figure sort of does that as well — it benefits from the now tried-and-true base bodies of the AVP Preds and adds in some unique variances on their armor to give him his own look.
Initially, I had thought that Scarface and Celtic might have shared mask sculpts with just the added spikes for Celtic. Well, in person, they’re still similar, but the eyes and mandibles are a little different, so they do look distinctive enough for me.
He wears some of the same armor, but obviously Scarface dispenses with a lot of it in favor of chain mail, spikes and skulls. Most the armor actually ends up being new sculpts, possibly even the gauntlets.
The shin armor pieces are new as well, and that seems to give him a slight bit more height than the movie Preds, near as I can can tell anyway.
Now, Scarface does come with some embellishments, but I can’t help feel like there’s more they could have given him to give him that deluxe feel:
Included are the Speargun and Maul from the game, an unmasked head, as well as the standard extra hand, wrist blades, and plasma caster. It’s not bad by any means, but a spear or a glaive, especially one of the distinctive versions from the game, would have been just that little extra “umph.”
The caster is definitely an upgraded version over the AVP standard, but unfortunately I cant seem to get one of the accessory pack blast effects to fit it. The game weapons are really nice, with good metallic effects on the maul, and some nice details like a readout on the speargun.
The unmasked head is also a lot better than I expected, and while it is a little hard to tell in photos, he does have a unique sculpt, with his missing eye.
Overall, this is a Predator with some personality. The game, while now over a decade old, was one that I enjoyed immensely and got some significant replay value out of it. The figure will definitely stand out among the growing NECA crowd, and hopefully, I’ll find myself picking this one up after the newness has worn off.
