Overlord IV (2022)

Overlord IV is the fourth season based on the light novel series, at 13 episodes long. Ainz continues to miss his former guild members and it becomes ever more apparent. Although given that he is all powerful and surrounded by the most loyal of servants, you might have expected him to be happier. He wants to create a peaceful kingdom although his servants plan otherwise. Albedo and the others seem to want Ainz to dominate the world instead through showcasing his power.

It can be hard to catch up to the events, especially since like previous seasons, the pacing seems to zip by. There are a lot of strategic movements going on as the characters plan and manipulate to get what they want. Yet it can be confusing to keep track of who’s who, where their loyalties lie, and their place in the grand scheme of things.

Ainz is mostly clueless in the customs of how to run a country, so he leaves it to his subordinates. However, no matter how lost he is, he always appears to know his stuff, as everyone else seems to misinterpret his actions are being all knowing. This even works for his enemies, who have complex plots but is constantly “foiled” by Ainz, who seems to be “several steps ahead”. What is not wrong though is how overpowered Ainz is, both in terms of physical and magical strength, plus he is a lot of passive abilities as well as powerful items at his disposal. He is literally a one-man army, even before considering his powerful subordinates.

Ainz has an inner voice and an outer voice. His inner voice is the one from when he was still human, while his outer voice is deeper and more threatening given he’s an undead. His inner voice tends to have good intentions even if it is hard to show on a face that doesn’t express any emotions. His subordinates are crueler and dominating in comparison. However, despite his subordinates being clever in their own right, it is funny when they keep thinking up excuses for Ainz’s confusion and blunders, as it never occurred to them that Ainz isn’t some clever schemer that has plots within plots.

Ainz likes to see himself as a merciful king and is willing to grant it when recruiting more races to his kingdom. However, he isn’t afraid to dominate and show who’s boss first, because most races underestimate him. Ainz ruthlessly kills them to show his power, and there are many scenes where there is bloodshed everywhere, being a massacre. There are a few moments here and there, where the anime shines with making a previously unlikeable character suddenly be deeper and more complex than before. There is a hint of respect, but then it drops that like a fly and continues on with how it has always been.

The plot jumps around a bit, and the pacing is fast. Therefore, you might not grasp the significance of an event, or it cuts one plot point short to reach another one, before returning to the original. This can make the season lack a consistent hook, as you’re not sure where the plot is heading towards. There is a lot of plotting and some politics, but it doesn’t dive too deep into those thanks to the rapid pacing. It’s usually just a lot of talking or musing by characters, which can be melodramatic. Towards the end of the season, you feel that the events happening have huge ramifications. Although since we never get to understand the motivations of many of the underdeveloped characters (as the anime never bothered to flesh them out), it loses a lot of its meaning, and gives a lot of confusion in its place.

There is an interesting development towards the end of the season, that really helps inject some more intrigue back into the plot. After so long with Ainz being the only player that came into this world, we get some references and hints of other players and what they would term NPCs.

One good decision was that the season finishes off a long running arc that also dominated a lot of this season. Princess Renner was an odd character in that she was working in the background against her own kingdom. We know that she is mentally unstable but was holding out hope for the gotcha moment on why she is doing the things she is doing. Unfortunately, in theme with how the anime is, we don’t get to find out because it skips over all the inner dialogue, so we’re left puzzling at the end of the season when we see the results of her scheming.

Overall, Overlord IV is like previous seasons. It is confusing and poorly written if your only exposure is the anime, because not only is it fast paced, but it skips over too much of the rationale that would help explain the motivations of the characters. As it is, every single character is unlikeable, even when you try hard to find a reason. Sure, they may not be a white knight or a righteous character but when it is impossible to understand why they are doing the cruel and harsh things that they are doing, it is too easy to become confused and not caring about what happens at all.

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Toy Review: Transformers Generations Legacy Iguanus (Core)

Review:  #812

Name:  Iguanus

Brand:  Transformers

Allegiance:  Decepticon

Line:  Generations - Legacy

Year of Release:  2022

Size Class:  Core (Wave 1)

Mold Status:  new

VEHICLE MODE:

Iguanus transforms into a purple motorcycle, and looks somewhat retro futuristic.

Due to how thick his wheels are, he can actually remain upright even without a kick stand.

The Core class is already very small but being a motorcycle, Iguanus is even smaller.

While he looks fine at first glance, look at the motorcycle from the side and you can see how insubstantial and how gappy it is.  It's quite disappointing, this is a folded up robot and looks like it.

The robot weapon can peg on top of the windshield in this mode.

This is not a great motorcycle.  It may pass a cursory glance but look at it for a bit longer and you can see how terrible it is.

TRANSFORMATION:

Given the motorcycle was a folded up robot, the transformation scheme is self-explanation.  The back are the legs which unfold.  The front are the arms.  While the windshield folds onto his back along with the two wheels.

ROBOT MODE:

Given the compromises in motorcycle mode, the robot mode unsurprisingly comes out to be pretty decent.  Also note that this figure tries for a robot mode that looks like the Pretender shell while the alternate mode was the robot inside the shell.

He carries a lot of kibble, so much that it is overwhelming.  The seat of the motorcycle cleverly doubles as a tail in robot mode though.

The head sculpt is good, and the head is proportionally large compared to normal, which helps in giving this robot mode a beastly look.

He's surprisingly an okay size in robot mode, thanks to larger chunkier limbs.

Articulation mostly comes from balljoints, with joints for his head, shoulders, elbows, hips, knees and even ankles.

He comes with a weapon, which is supposed to be a gun of sorts.  The first wave of Legacy Core figures each came with a piece that can combine into a bigger sword, and Iguanus got stuck with the hilt.

Iguanus can hold the weapon like a gun and when held like that, it's actually not too bad.

The weapon can store in the same place as motorcycle mode, just now that it is on his back.

The biggest thing against him is his small size which can make him a tiny bit fiddly to pose with.

Otherwise, this is a strong robot mode, whether it justifies the poor motorcycle mode is hard to say though.

OVERALL:

Iguanus sacrifices one mode for the other.  The robot mode is really good though, as it is a unique blend of design, such that he stands out amongst the others.

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Dreams (PS4)

Dreams is a game creation game by Media Molecule, the one behind the LittleBigPlanet series. However, this scope of Dreams is much bigger, giving the player more tools to create bigger and more complex games. It puts an emphasis on user generated content, so that players can create, share and play each other’s creations. Sadly, it never gained a big audience or much traction.

The game has a quick tutorial at first to get you to choose your “imp”, an onscreen fluffball that you use to control and interact with things in the game. The default is using the motion sensor in the controller, but thankfully you can change it to the analogue sticks if you want to. The motion control isn’t too bad, but it is still not the ideal way to do it and it can get awkward at times. After that, you can decide whether to play levels that others have already created or start creating your own. You’ll get a quick tutorial the first time you get into either of those two modes.

To give you a taste of what can be done with the creation tools, Media Molecule created a “game” that you can play, Art’s Dream. In it, you follow Art, who had left his band, but you can tell that he is having issues moving past it. He keeps thinking towards the past and missing the support of the other band members. You end up playing through his dreams.

Art’s Dream is split up into different sections, or levels. There is a platformer where you control one of two teddy bears. One can shoot discs while the other uses a hammer. You traverse the environments jumping around and dodging obstacles to get to the other. Another is also a platformer where you control a robot that lights things up. While the last section is Art himself, as he goes through this weird dream-like area and is trying to make sense of what is happening. To be honest, the whole game is kind of weird and too fantastical and whimsical.

Even in Art’s Dream, you use the imp to interact with things. It does tend to slow things down and make it awkward at times. The graphics are heavily stylized, so they are an acquired taste. It lacks the charm of the LittleBigPlanet series and of course, the length and game is nowhere near as meaty since you can finish it in around three hours or less. There are prize bubbles scattered around each level which you collect to unlock more things to use when you’re in the creation mode.

Art’s Dreams was designed to be short, describe as a movie length interactive musical. The change in different game genres can be annoying, particularly as it doesn’t do any specific one of them perfectly. There are niggling control issues, such as the platforming or combat not being as tight as it should, so it can feel floaty and wonky. Yes, they are not supposed to be as polished or developed as a proper full game, but it’s still little bit disappointing.

After spending most of its time in the three genres, it does another big genre change in the end, including the final boss battle. It was fun as it trended towards being more action based, however, the constant trial and error gameplay was not great design. Being forced to repeat sections as the sections were designed clearly enough is sloppy. The constant flip flop between slow and fast pacing is inconsistent either. The story is too much like the game’s name, being too dreamy and abstract. It had a good and meaningful concept, but can be too pretentious, or maybe just unfocused, at times, due to it taking place within a dream.

Nevertheless, even if Art’s Dream is not to your liking, there are plenty of other creations to play, which is the whole point. After its release, Media Molecule has a few other additions too that you can try. Otherwise, you can play through other players’ creations, but that means you will have to sift out the good from the bad. It’s not too hard as you can just use the filters to get the most liked or most played first. You can play platformers or a racing game, and some of them are genuinely impressive.

Some of Media Molecules other creations include A Long Time Ago... which is a puzzler, but perhaps the other more interesting game is Ancient Dangers: A Bat’s Tale, which is a dungeon crawler. It gives you two difficulties, easy and hard, with the latter giving you access to a scoreboard. It’s got a cartoony aesthetic and it’s a basic dungeon crawler where you can play solo or coop, with your character fighting through three chapters. There’s a big swing attack and combo, block, dodge and some light puzzles, but it’s still very fun.

Tren is another puzzle type game, where you control a miniature / toy train and go through tracks to beat each level within a time limit. It starts off easy enough but gets substantially harder. It’s cute and has a fun aesthetics, but you can’t help but feel that all these “games” by Media Molecule are just too bite-sized and not substantial enough. Their gameplay is simple, and they can all be finished in around two hours, if it captures enough of your interest that it. Given that there are several of these, it does add up to around six to ten hours of content, so it eventually justifies the cost of the game.

Just like LittleBigPlanet, the user generated content is a blessing and curse. There are some amazing designs, and you can tell a lot of effort has been put into it. Then there are mostly the dregs. However, one thing is that a lot of the content has weird physics. Like a driving game where the handling isn’t tight, or a remake of Sonic or Crash Bandicoot, where the jumping just doesn’t feel quite right. There’s always something that feels off, no matter how much effort the user put into it.

On the game creation side, it’s a whole other mode and you can spend hours if it is something that interests you. There are plenty of tutorials within the game to get you started, and the controls are designed to be used by a controller, so they don’t feel too awkward or tough to use. The tutorials even have levels which gives you great ideas on what you can do and what is possible.

Overall, Dreams is an ambitious project, much more so than LittleBigPlanet. It holds a great promise, being able to create, share and play an unlimited amount of full length games is amazing. Unfortunately, the reality is that it takes too much effort for other players to pump out truly good content. There is quality stuff, but those end up being short, taking less than ten minutes to complete. However, Media Molecule has managed to create and share a number of “games”, so that it can still justify the asking price.

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Toy Review: Transformers Earthspark Optimus Prime (Deluxe)

Review:  #811

Name:  Optimus Prime

Brand:  Transformers

Allegiance:  Decepticon

Line:  Earthspark

Year of Release:  2023

Size Class:  Deluxe (Wave 2)

Mold Status:  retool of Cyberverse Optimus Prime

VEHICLE MODE:

Optimus Prime, as you'd expect, transforms into a red and blue long nosed truck.  This is based upon his appearance in the Earthspark show.

The back isn't as good though since you can see the robot feet, and the unsightly gap above it.  The robot gun slots in nicely behind the cab.

Optimus Prime is a little bit small, especially given that he's a truck.

Otherwise, this isn't a horrible vehicle, in fact, it's quite decent, especially for Earthspark.

He comes with the left leg of Mandroid.

There's no gimmicks in vehicle mode, apart from rolling him on a flat surface.

TRANSFORMATION:

The transformation is simple.  The front section is kibble that will eventually fold onto his back.  The back of the cab are the arms, the front windows the torso, and the back are the legs.  It's a typical Optimus Prime transformation.

ROBOT MODE:

Robot mode isn't too shabby either, but there are some proportion issues, or maybe just having the figure highly stylized.

He carries the truck hood on his back, and it is a large piece.  It is hollow though so it doesn't affect his balance.

The head sculpt is okay, it's a stylized version of Optimus, with a huge face plate.

In robot mode, he is around a similar height to most Deluxes, although he is slimmer too.

You wouldn't be able to tell but he is a massive retool of Cyberverse Optimus Prime.  You can see some shared parts but effectively, this version feels like a brand new figure anyway.

Articulation is okay with joints for his head, shoulders, elbows, hips, knees and ankles.

He comes with two weapons, a gun and an axe.

Both of the weapons he can hold in either hand.  The axe is a bright "Allspark" blue though, so it's quite striking in the flesh.

The weapons can store behind his waist in robot mode when not in use.

Otherwise Optimus has quite a bit of poseability and flexibility.  He has a fair few hollow areas, so can feel light.

It's a nice looking figure and definitely better than the Cyberverse version.

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