Toy Review: Transformers Cyberverse Ratchet & Blizzard Breaker (Spark Armor Battle Class)

Review:  #608
Name:  Ratchet & Blizzard Breaker
Brand:  Transformers
Allegiance:  Autobot
Line:  Cyberverse
Year of Release:  2019
Size Class:  Spark Armor Battle Class (Wave 2)
Mold Status:  new

ALTERNATE MODE:

Ratchet transforms into a white and red ambulance van, and the surprising thing is that all of the windows are painted.

Unfortunately, that means nothing much else are painted and can be look a bit bland despite the rich sculpted details.

The Battle Class figures are approximately Legends / Scout sized, above is a comparison against Beachcomber.

Despite the bland look from some angles, this is still a strong vehicle mode and a unique design.

TRANSFORMATION:

The transformation does nothing new but due to that, it is simple and works well.  The back extends to form the legs, while the arms fold out from the sides of the vehicle's front.

ROBOT MODE:

The robot mode is pretty decent as well and Ratchet has various design elements that are iconic to the character.  The introduction of more red helps break up all the white.

There are a bit of kibble.  There are two panels that fold to form the back which isn't a problem.  The bigger problem are the legs which is formed from the rear of the vehicle... the whole thing so they are definitely too chunky.

The headsculpt is good... but the unpainted plastic makes it hard to make out the details.  Unfortunately, the head is fixed as well so don't expect Ratchet to look anywhere but forward.

In robot mode, Ratchet actually gains quite a bit of height, and as the size comparison above shows, gets taller than Beachcomber.

Apart from the fixed head, the articulation is fairly decent.  Ratchet has joints for his shoulders, elbows, hips and knees.

The chunky legs is a boon in this area as it keeps him well balanced in a lot of situations.

The only thing lacking for this "core" robot is a weapon.  Otherwise, this is an solid robot.

BLIZZARD BREAKER:

As part of the Battle Class line, Ratchet comes with Blizzard Breaker, a snowmobile that will transform into Ratchet's armor.

The snowmobile is okay, although it can look a bit weird with the front being wider than where the treads are placed at the back.

It is bigger than a Legion figure but smaller than a Legends.

It doesn't exactly pair well with a rescue vehicle so that's somewhat odd.  It also lacks wheels underneath to allow it to roll on a smooth surface.

The only paint on it is the windshield.  It's not a bad mode but is very average.

TRANSFORMATION (SPARK ARMOR):

Blizzard Breaker breaks into five pieces to form armor for Ratchet.  The rear treads and the front ski sleds separate and the remainder forms the torso piece.  The pieces than attaches to Ratchet's shoulders, arms and torso.

ROBOT MODE (SPARK ARMOR):

Considering the pieces are mostly only external attachments to the limbs, it does a great job at bulking up Ratchet and making him more impressive.

The biggest flaw with the line is how the torso piece always have a giant piece sticking out the back.

The torso piece also contains a helmet that covers Ratchet's head.  It would have been preferable to have a new head that replaces the original since it is harder to make out the detail like this.

Since none of the additional pieces are on the legs, Ratchet doesn't gain any additional height, but he gains extra bulk and looks wider as a result.  Above is a comparison against Legends Beachcomber and Deluxe Sideswipe.

Thanks to his large legs, all the extra bulk doesn't unbalance him at all and he retains his full articulation.

The lack of a long range weapon hurts, and the sleds used as a blade weapon on his arms is okay and passable, but has nothing on actual blades / swords.

Nevertheless, this is a decent enough powered up mode, although if part of the armor could be placed on the lower body, it would have been more balanced.

OVERALL:

The Spark Armor concept makes for a fun figure.  It massively increases the play value and the core Ratchet figure is already very solid.  The armor pieces makes the figure even better.  While there are a few minor nitpicks, this is a worthwhile figure to get.

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The Emperor's New Groove 2: Kronk's New Groove (2005)

Kronk's New Groove is a direct-to-video sequel to The Emperor's New Groove.  As stated by the title, it focuses on Kronk.  The story is pretty simple, Kronk is retelling the story about his life after the events of the first movie.  By all accounts, his life is pretty satisfactory and he is happy.  However, a spanner is thrown into the works when he receives a letter from his father stating that he is going to visit.  Unfortunately for Kronk, he had lied about owning a big house and having a family.  The plot deviates a bit from this plot in the first 30 minutes, to the point where it felt like two separate stories merged together to get enough time for a movie.  The first part has Yzma showing up again and relies too heavily on the same types of jokes in the first movie, making Kronk's New Groove lose its own identity.  The second half fares better but is a typical story about doing the right thing and finding your one true love.  Everything goes along as you'd expect so there are no surprises to the movie.  The humor is average and on the weaker side, there is nothing original about any of the gags and it just feels like a typical kids cartoon.  Overall, Kronk's New Groove is still worth a watch for fans of the original but comes off as more of a mediocre animation than anything solid.

Toy Review: Transformers BotBots Yule B. Bored (Series 3)

Review:  #607
Name:  Yule B. Bored
Brand:  Transformers
Allegiance:  N/A
Line:  BotBots
Year of Release:  2020
Size Class:  BotBots (Series 3)
Mold Status:  repaint of Goob Toob

ALTERNATE MODE:

Yule B. Bored transforms into an old fashioned CRT TV, complete with an antenna on top.  To fit in with the Seasons Greeters theme, he has a fireplace as the video showing on the screen.

While the front and sides are fairly good, the alternate mode is the weakest part since the robot parts, which are painted a different color, sticks out.

As a BotBot, Yule B. Bored is very small, above is a size comparison against Legion Barricade.

This is a great alternate mode overall and instantly recognizable for what it is.

TRANSFORMATION:

Transformation is very simple and if this was done on a larger figure, one would say lazy.  Anyway, the front of the TV stays the same, with the arms popping out from the sides and the torso and legs folding down from the back.

ROBOT MODE:

The robot mode is decent, although using the TV screen as the face / head is hard to pull off.

As expected, the back is quite hollow since that is where everything is stored in alternate mode.

The face is the picture of the burning log, which doesn't work quite that well.  However, it is easy to imagine the whole screen is his face and so is acceptable.

Yule B. Bored is a bit taller in robot mode but still falls much shorter than a typical Legion figure.

Poseability is only limited to swinging his arms around.  Nevertheless, this is still a decent robot mode, especially with the additional paint on his arms and torso.

OVERALL:

Yule B. Bored is a great BotBot.  The TV alternate mode can be quite nostalgic, and the way the repaint managed to integrate it into the theme of the Seasons Greeters is quite clever.

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FLCL Alternative (2018)

FLCL Alternative is the second part of the sequel series to the original FLCL.  It is six episodes long and contains a different story and cast to FLCL Progressive.  The anime changes art style yet again, opting for a softer look.  Of course, it doesn’t come close to the fluid, ever changing crazy animation of the original FLCL. It follows Koumoto Kana, a middle school student in her sophomore year and on the cusp of adulthood.  Unlike Hidomi from Progressive, Kana is sociable and has a group of close friends that she normally hangs out with.  We instantly see how outgoing she is and at times, an airhead who can’t read the mood.

Kana works at a soba shop and through her job there, meets a few weird characters.  The episodes generally try and focus on her normal everyday life and it feels like something from the typical slice-of-life romantic genre.  That is, until the giant robot that appears at the climax of each episode.  It breaks that trend from time to time since there will be episodes where the robots take up a very small amount of screentime. The main theme of Alternative is young adults wanting to be mature, or at the very least seem mature to their peers.  They want to speed up the process to becoming an actual adult but don’t have the necessary experience to know what that entails.  Kana looks up to one of her friends, Hijiri, who poses as a model, and has a college boyfriend.  However, despite appearances, even Hijiri isn’t quite the mature lady that she wants to portray.  The anime also touches upon what relationships means for these teenagers, from the naïve Kana to the matter-of-fact Hijiri.

We’re shown early on that Kana has feelings for Sasaki.  Over the course of the season, and seeing her friends’ relationships, as well as getting jealous, she starts to wonder whether she should try and ask Sasaki out.  It will circle back to the theme of being ready, and to take things at your own pace.  Alternate is much better rounded in terms of the types of relationships that it explores, even though it all ends up being fairly generic and uninspiring.

Haruko, the series’ staple, pops in from the very first episode, not that you would expect any less.  She’s not as crazy in the beginning as her usual shtick and can seem tame at times.  She’s still on her quest to find Atomsk and will go smashing her guitar at any character to see if they have the potential to generate a large N.O. Channel.  Haruko, in typical fashion, will appear anywhere and everywhere in order to get close to her target.  She will deliberately incite jealously in order to trigger the N.O. Channel.

Medical Mechanica continues to dwell in the background.  They have apparently put their plan of flattening the Earth in motion and it has something to do with all the giant pins that have been turning up.  Their presence looms closer and closer as the season approaches the end, leading to some of their clearest actions yet (which makes them lose some of their mysteriousness and appeal).

Overall, FLCL Alternative is less out there compared to its predecessors.  Its higher focus on a slice-of-life type of story, along with less of the wacky stuff makes it a lot more easily understandable and coherent.  The flipside is that it loses much of its identity and feels like another generic anime.  That said, the finale which focused on the theme of Kana’s life, her actions and her beliefs lead to a more meaningful ending than you would expect.

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The Order: 1886 (PS4)

The Order:  1886 is a third person shooter taking place in an alternate London during the year 1886.  It is heavy on the story elements.  A large chunk of the game will be spent watching cutscenes, and another large chunk involving walking, interacting with objects, and QTEs.

The shooting elements are fun in their own right.  The game is a cover shooter and the mechanics works well.  You use the left trigger to aim and the right trigger to shoot.  You’re able to equip two weapons at once, a one handed pistol and a dual handed heavy weapon like shotguns and rifles.  While there are a variety of weapons in the game, each chapter limits you to whatever the enemy drops.  There are some additional special abilities that are pretty stock standard in shooters these days.  You’re able to throw grenades, as well as the blacksight ability, which slows down time while it auto-aims at the enemy.

Your enemies are normally humans, but there are also half-breeds.  Half-breeds are the supernatural element of the game; these are effectively werewolves and require slightly different strategies.  They move faster and can take more bullets.  Unfortunately, they’re only fun at first as each encounter with them does not change from the first.  You just shoot, dodge, and then a QTE to kill them.  The game has you controlling Galahad and from time to time, it disables the ability to run.  This is extremely annoying since the default walking speed is slow and there is no reason for them to do this.  You’ll constantly lose control of your character as it splits off into a cutscene, which can be frustrating especially since the gameplay feels so light as a result.

The game tries to shove in a few gameplay elements that do not gel well together.  The constant QTEs to open doors and interact with objects is irritating.  The slow walk is unbearable, and the simple platforming (such as climbing a ledge) is clunky and boring.  The best parts are the larger gunfights and even then, it doesn’t try anything groundbreaking.  The stealth sections are laughably easy.  Each guard has a predictable path that they will dutifully walk on.  No two guards ever cross paths so you can safely kill each one without fear of being discovered.

The biggest thing going for the game is the graphics.  Upon its release, it is not an exaggeration to say that it was the best looking game on the PS4.  However, having only good graphics does not make a good game and it was heavily criticized for it.  The reason for the weaker gameplay and focus on graphics is due to its emphasis on the story.  Galahad is part of The Order of Knights that helps keep London safe.  The half-breeds are surging in numbers and their attacks have become more frequent.  Galahad suspects something is afoot and investigates this along with the increase in anti-government attacks by the rebels.  The game has a slow prologue which introduces the controls.

There are whole chapters of the game which are only comprised of cutscenes.  It seems to get worse at the game goes on, grating on your nerves.  For a game with so many cutscenes, it is good that the story is semi-decent.  It captures your attention and the alternate London, with a higher sci-fi element, is intriguing.  The plot transforms from a “hunt down the enemy rebels and monsters” into something a bit more political as Galahad starts to quest The Order to which he belongs in.  To emphasize the story heavy nature, the game doesn’t play in a typical 16:9 aspect ratio.  It plays in a ratio that is more like a movie, so there are black borders above and below the image.  This is distracting and unnecessarily restricts your visibility.

The ending is weak.  The final boss ends up being yet another lazy QTE event while the story doesn’t wrap up very well.  It could have gone more deeply into the consequences of what Galahad had discovered and what it meant for The Order.  Instead, the whole game felt like Galahad investigated the rebels and half-breeds, found out that this involved something within The Order, and then he eliminated them.  The game takes 6-8 hours to finish and it isn’t really as short as you would have feared.  Granted, there is a lot of filler content like making Galahad walk slow, and the various QTEs to advance.  There are collectibles but annoyingly, there is no tracker which defeats the purpose of them, unless you’re going for the Trophy achievement.

Overall, for full price upon its release, The Order:  1886 is not worth it.  On sale, or the discounted price years after its release, the game still has something to offer.  The graphics remain stellar and the story is intriguing if ultimately unsatisfying.

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