Book Review: The 39-Storey Treehouse

Review:  #416
Title:  The 39-Storey Treehouse
Series:  Treehouse - 3rd book
Author:  Andy Griffiths
Read Before:  no
My Comments:  A better story compared to The 26-Storey Treehouse but still not spectacular.  It was more coherent and cleverer, still very simple but at least it was more entertaining to read.  It began quite well until near the last third of the book where it went everything.  It just seemed to go overboard and felt like it was padding the book out.  The self-fulfilling prophecy type of plot was what saved the book even though it was blatantly obvious and simple.

Rating:  5.5/10

Toy Review: Transformers Generations Waspinator (IDW Deluxe)

Review:  #170
Name:  Waspinator
Brand:  Transformers
Allegiance:  Predacon
Line:  Generations
Year of Release:  2013
Size Class:  Deluxe (Wave 7)
Variations:  none as of this date

COMIC:

Part of the IDW comic series, Waspinator comes with a comic.  This is Issue 19 of Robots in Disguise.  Obviously this issue was chosen because Waspinator has a relatively prominent role, but unlike the Spotlight issues, Waspinator’s screen time is drastically overshadowed by other characters, particularly the Autobots.  The story can be hard to grasp since it’s a continuation of a bigger plot arc but still understandable and easy enough to know what is going on.  To be fair, it is a bit boring and nothing jumps out at you at being spectacular.  Of course, as a freebie, there are no complaints and the cover as always, is amazing.

WASP MODE:

Based upon and presenting an update to his Beast Wars incarnation, Waspinator transforms into an organic wasp.  There has been a focus to improve the realism of this wasp mode.

This is a well-rounded wasp mode.  All six legs are thin insect-like legs, unlike the original in which one pair was thick and out of place (as it formed the robot legs).  Waspinator has a transparent stinger which is kinda weird.

He stands securely on his thin insect legs.  The stinger can act like a seventh leg, and Waspinator relies mainly on the tightness of the balljoint and swivel joints to keep up.

There is a Predacon symbol on the back, between his wings.

Waspinator is a Deluxe and he's decent sized.  Naturally, being an insect he doesn't have as much mass as a vehicle.  That said, the insect body is pretty bulky.

The head is modeled against the cartoon representation and it's very cartoon accurate.  There are even teeth in the mandibles.  It's surprising but there are a lot of paint apps, from the metallic blue of his eyes to the black stripes to the various dark green paint.

Waspinator looks good from above and that's the angle most photos are shot however, his robot feet form a very bulky underside which does not suit the outline of a wasp.  Furthermore, due to the transformation and higher focus of robot mode, the insect legs are weirdly positioned, being on different planes so it looks weird when viewing from side on or at a level plane.

Here you can see the robot bits squished into insect mode.  Another downside is that his robot hands are easily visible, not much effort has been made to fold them into the body or something.

You can see a lever on the back, this is part of the "flapping wings" gimmick.  The wings are also transparent white with a touch of yellow.

You can recreating the flapping wings by sliding the lever up and down (you need to position your hands to get a proper grip), this will push the wings up and down.  It's not a bad gimmick and the whole mechanism is contained in that small block.

The wings are also on balljoints so you can position it in a way that you like.  A really great wasp mode at first glance but as you fiddle with him more carefully, there are a lot of nuances and he isn't so perfect after all.

TRANSFORMATION:

Transformation is easy, the only "hard" part is how you twist and fold his legs for wasp mode and even then, it's very easy to figure out.  Don't rely too much on the instructions though as they can be confusing and miss out a few steps.  Compared to the original toy, I think I was more impressed with the original as the Generations version doesn't have anything that surprises.  I guess because his robot limbs doesn't have any true integration into wasp mode and basically folds out during transformation, it feels cheaty.  I do like how the wasp head splits apart when you transform the shoulders.

ROBOT MODE:

There is no denying that this is the focus of the toy.  It is a near perfect representation of how Waspinator appeared in the Beast Wars cartoon, bar a few things.  Oh, I guess he's also a good representation in how he appears in the IDW comics.

He features signature kibble such as the abdomen and wings on his back.  The abdomen actually blocks some of the leg's backward movement.

The headsculpt is amazing, hands down one of the best things of the figure.  The detailing is intricate right down to the compound eyes.  The lightpiping is super effective as the eyes are big and the whole back of his head is transparent plastic.

The split wasp head forms his chest and looks great there, but it is a bit big in the sense that it can often partially cover his head.  There are a few different shades of green here.

There's also the green block that houses the flapping gimmick, while it's not obtrusive, if they could have made it collapse a bit more or fill in some other gaps of the robot abdomen by scrapping the gimmick, I wouldn't mind.

In terms of size, he's about right, maybe a bit shorter than the average Deluxe (Rhinox, pictured above, is only a smidgen taller than the average Deluxe).

To make use of the abdomen which is basically kibble, a part of it forms Waspinator's gun, the tip is transparent white plastic.  It looks good though.

Waspinator can hold the gun in either hand and what's cool is that Waspinator features wrist swivels.

Good heelspurs and large feet means he's stable in a wide variety of poses.

The insect legs on his arms can get in the way of the backpack when posing since they stick out so much.  The other pair of insect legs rests close to his legs but they stick out there, particularly since they weren't there on the original toy nor the cartoon.

Waspinator's knees range of motion are restricted, going only about 45 degrees backwards (and forwards), which is disappointing.  You also can't fold the abdomen further back to get more range, which kinda sucks.

A strong robot mode who's main gimmick is the poseability and cartoon-accuracy.

OVERALL:

While I've read a few opinions that state that this new Generations figure doesn't drastically improve upon the original figure, I agree to a certain extent.  There are still plenty of improvements here such as the streamlined robot mode and better proportioned wasp mode.  The abundance of paint applications are just right, there's an unobtrusive gimmick and he's just so photogenic, Waspinator is highly recommended.

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Garfield: The Movie

I like the Garfield comic strips and I quite enjoyed this movie.  It still retains most of Garfield's world such that it feels familiar.  The use of CGI for Garfield is inevitable and it can look fake at times, but the model and animation was well done.  It must be more than a slight annoyance for the actors in having to pretend and move as though Garfield is physically there.  Anyway, the story is simple, but it actually adds to the charm.  It's nice that most of the movie focuses on the everyday life of Garfield and only near the end where we get an antagonist.  Garfield retains his sarcasm with his remarks, and there are a lot of puns.  While it's not the funniest dialogue around, it enough to make it amusing.  It's good that the length is only 77 minutes long as it was already starting to get a little bit stale by the end of it.  Overall, it's not a horrible movie and was actually quite fun if you can get over the fact that it's not going to have a complex plot.

Book Review: The 26-Storey Treehouse

Review:  #415
Title:  The 26-Storey Treehouse
Series:  Treehouse - 2nd book
Author:  Andy Griffiths
Read Before:  no
My Comments:  A book whose humor mostly succeeds.  However, one huge negative is that there is too much repetition.  There is too many times where it pads out the book by repeating the same thing again and again, it’s fine when it’s used the first time but when a few pages later, the same style is used again, it gets annoying.  It feels as if the author has run out of ideas.  You could guess what is going to happen in the last one-third of the book fairly easily.  The illustrations do add to the enjoyment though, as they are often amusing.  There’s the trademark stupidness (in a good way) which makes it easier to stomach.  The plot is fairly non-existent and very weak.

Rating:  5.5/10

Cars

Despite the negative reception during it's release (and regarded at that time as the worst Disney Pixar film), I enjoyed this one a lot.  Sure, it's not as emotional, deep or imaginative as the other films before it, but it was still fun.  The plot was predictable in that you knew what would happen.  The arrogant protagonist will mature and grow after he spends some time in a forgotten town, making a bunch of friends.  They also had to add in a "moral of the story" at the climax, so it kinda felt cheap there (since you want Lightning McQueen to win).  Mater as a character also wasn't the best, I don't know why they went with the whole "a bit less intelligent than everyone" angle, but Mater was frequently annoying and the humour around him occasionally not working.  At the ending, you do get that warm fuzzy feeling of a happily-ever-after.  The credits roll was amusing, and it was really funny seeing familiar scenes from previous Pixar films with characters done in Cars fashion.  Although it drags at time in the middle of the film (they could have cut out a few scenes), the movie is a lot of fun.

Book Review: Ottoline at Sea

Review:  #414
Title:  Ottoline at Sea
Series:  Ottoline - 3rd book
Author:  Chris Riddell
Read Before:  no
My Comments:  The story and characters lack charm, and it is overly reliant on a gimmick.  What’s the gimmick?  The book comes with some glasses and you need to wear them to see some hidden stuff scattered in the illustrations throughout the book.  This is also the reason why the illustrations only have green as a colour.  Without the glasses… you lose the ability to understand the motivations of one of the main characters.  The story itself wasn’t that captivating or amazing.  It was fairly boring, random and at times, just does not flow from one page to the other.

Rating:  5/10

Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception (PS3)

The third in the PS3 trilogy, once again Uncharted blows you away with its graphics.  Although like Drake's Fortune, it seems to take on a shiny gleam and makes it look a bit less realistic than it could.  The environments are super detailed... which makes it fairly hard (even harder than previous games) to quickly scout out the enemies' positions to fire, and also makes it harder to figure out which way to go when platforming.  There seems to be a lot of white jagged edges around objects and its easy to get motion sickness when scouting an area where all the sunlight and reflections shine back to you.  Going into the game play, Uncharted 3 keeps the combination of shooting, platforming and puzzle-solving.  The shooting mechanic seems a little bit more slippery and not as tight as Uncharted 2.  It seems less... responsive.  The firing of a shot doesn't feel as satisfying but it's hard to pinpoint the exact reason as to why this is.  In order to spice things up a bit, Naughty Dog has put a higher emphasis on melee combat and fleshed it out more.  Although I find that the camera likes to swing wildly to give you dramatic angles, but it gets in the way.  Melee combat also doesn't feel terribly satisfying, it feels like it tries to be much more complex but it's stuck in the limbo between a satisfying but basic system, and a complex system.

It takes away from the game when you end up using it to fight off some damage soaking enemies.  You have no choice when these enemies like to charge at you with a shotgun.  Melee combat also plays a big role in the final boss battle (which is extremely disappointing) and this clunky system does not satisfy.  The gunfights, in the middle of the game (where it starts to get numerous, throwing wave after wave at you), gets annoying when the developer chucks snipers, rocket launchers and armored guys at you.  The intention is to make the fights more varied but it just gets frustrating.  It feels like Uncharted 3 had more frustrating battles one after another than the first two games (I'm playing on the same difficulty for all three games).  It isn't fun and I swear that the armored enemies soak up even more damage than before, such that it feels useless shooting at them.  If you thought Drake's Fortune had bullet sponges for enemies, then Uncharted 3 can feel worse at times.  What's even more infuriating is that the developers know this, they have Nathan spout out lines that I have been thinking all the time, such as "where do these guys come from" and "not again".  There are some difficulty spikes towards the end of the game where the gunfights feel very unfair and a cheap way to extend the game.

What's even worse is that you get these enemies that are so much more powerful than anything you have encountered.  SPOILER ALERT:  Not only can these enemies teleport, they soak up insane amounts of bullets, constantly rushing at you, flanking you, coming in at great numbers, chucks bloody exploding fireballs that are one-shot kills AND the developers thought it was great idea to arm them with powerful weapons.  It was frustrating and to beat them, you have to follow what the developer wants you to do, since they made these enemies weak to a few specific weapons.  Be prepared to rage in those final moments as you die again and again.  SPOILERS END.  In terms of the other types of gameplay, the puzzles are more varied and slightly tougher but sometimes they can be a little bit abstract which breaks the flow.  However, the game does give you an option to reveal the solution for you if you take too long.  Some of the puzzles still feel arbitrary, especially when Drake finds some super hidden area (that has been hidden for hundreds to thousands of years), but a few minutes later, all the bad guys does too and another shoot out begins.  The series is starting to get stale, since it feels like when Drake is platforming, they're using the "Drake nearly falls off as the thing he is holding onto starts to detach" method, which was great in the first game and now it just gets repetitive and predictable.  Drake also does a lot of running away while the platforms are collapsing, and this is not a good thing.

The platforming feels clunky compared to its contemporaries, easier to ignore in the first two games but now, Naughty Dog should really refine the mechanics such as the jumps and speeding things up during those sections.  It doesn't feel as smooth and fluid as it could, I found myself all too often having Drake jump up and down when hanging off a wall just because it couldn't detect the ledge I wanted him to jump to.  The cover system also gets in the way at times, when you want to get out of cover and roll somewhere, now, since the same button includes even more functions such as grabbing an enemy, you might take cover when you don't want to, or you might want to roll out of the way fast but end up grappling an enemy.  It gets too messy.  Now, finally, onto the story component, which is traditionally one of the stronger elements.  The story is very intriguing and it sucks you in right from the start, and although in terms of gameplay, the first two or three chapters weren't the most exciting, it's worthwhile just to see how the story is set up.  The story feels different in tone to what had come before it and considering that Nathan is now searching for treasure that is related to his ancestor, Francis Drake, again, it feels surprising that he's only onto something this big, this late.  This is especially considering the events of Uncharted where he found Drake's treasure already.

The story then stalls during the middle, as they always do but nothing of interest or dramatic gets revealed, Nathan meets another bad guy and now must get out trouble, la-di-da.  They seriously need to ramp things up a bit.  The middle chapters can be taken out and still wouldn't affect the story overall, the ending was disappointing.  Basically, Uncharted 3 started out great but it dropped the ball very soon after.  Marlowe and Talbot cannot even compare to Uncharted 2's Lazarevic, they were very cardboard and feel more like douches that just feel like stuffing Drake for the sake of it.  They also never explained many things that they brought up earlier in the game.  The story and environments also feel similar to the past games, such that it does not surprise you anymore.  All the twists remain familiar, there's no novelty factor here anymore.  What's sad is that the characters' interactions with each other at the beginning of the game were great, and definitely the highlight, but then they take it away and this dulls the game a lot.  I loved Cutter's one-liners, which were extremely funny.  They were gold and it made each scene definitely more interesting and fun to watch.

While the supernatural element has been toned down, the developers still found a way to put some supernatural enemies in here.  It wasn't fun when Nathan was in that state he was in.  There were a lot of sections where you experience Nathan being woozy and drugged, they weren't fun.  They also put in a whole chapter with Nathan wondering around in the desert, it went on for far too long.  That's what Uncharted 3 felt like, it went for too long.  The story is not gripping and you lose your interest quickly.  They had some great side characters at the start but then shoves them away in favour of only Nathan and Sully, who aren't the most interesting pair of characters in the game.  They were also noticeably more minor bugs than in previous games.  A disappointing game and I personally think it is the worst of the current trilogy, with cheap and infuriating gunfights, unsatisfying melee combat, clunky cover and platforming sections and a dull story.  I had never loved the Uncharted series, but Uncharted 3 just made me become more wary of the series in the future.  It feels like they tried too hard to top the second one, to wow the players and create intense moments, but improving some aspects just made many more worse.

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