Let me just say I'd pick ANYONE over NECA. Their QC is awful, every figure I've ever bought from them has broken multiple times. They also tend to only do one or two characters, instead of an entire series, meaning that Queve would only get his oh-so-beloved Scorpion and Sub Zero

Aren't those rad figurines, queve!

The nose of Shao Kahn's helmet seems a bit off and rushed to me. In fact, pretty much the whole helmet does. What's with the curvy hammer?

The accessories that come with these figures are made of a soft, rubbery plastic and always seem to come out bent.

Now, here's the thing; their past figures were okay on the whole, but they too suffered from some serious flaws. A lot of them were packaged with weapons they'd never even used or had (got a pair of hookswords from Sub-Zero that I'm waiting to give to Kabal, whenever he comes around), or sometimes couldn't even hold due to being sculpted with closed or 'karate-chop' positioned hands. Kano's boot sheathes are far too loose for the knives he was packed with. And let's not forget that they too suffered from the occasional bad paint job; my own MKD Cage's pants just look too light, my Reptile seems 'dirty' due to the paint wash on him, and the whole fiasco with 'Grey Noob Saibot' are some examples. In fact, Scorpion and Sub were probably the greatest ones out of the bunch.

And then there's poseability, something the new figures have in spades over most of the past ones. For martial arts action figures, that should be a top priority. A lot of the old guys were glorified statues, only somewhat more poseable than a DC Direct figure.

I can grant that the 2011 line can appear somewhat blocky and cartoonish, but I find that they're mostly accurate to their game models (barring Cage's face), and that the stock photos don't do the figures enough justice, especially when you get them into just the right position (I'm about to start a review thread to try and illustrate that point a bit). I agree that they're by no means excellent figures, but I don't think they're any worse than, say, SOTA's Street Fighter line (which also started relatively weak until we got some truly impressive figures further down the road).

They should have made weapons from a harder plastic, shouldn't they?

Of all the NECA figures I've bought, only one has broken (one of my Dead Space Isaac Clarke figures), Maybe I've been lucky, or maybe you've been unlucky. You do have a point on the number of figures they make for each franchise, though. Apart from BioShock and Gears of War, I can't think of any video game series they've got the rights to that has gotten more than a few figures.

Resident Evil 4!!!! NECA made a ton of characters, good and evil.