Rocket League (PS4)

Rocket League has a simple premise, you control rocket powered vehicles in order to play a game of soccer. This simple to pick up but filled with nuance game has skyrocketed to popularity, spawning e-sports tournaments as well as going free-to-play on all platforms. The controls are very easy. You control a vehicle with typical driving controls that allow you to go forwards and backwards. Your vehicle can perform a double jump and scattered around each arena are boost pads which refills your boost meter. This allows the vehicle to boost in speed (and strategic usage of it will effectively allow your vehicle to fly for short periods of time over a long distance). Boost into an opponent’s car and you will destroy them, forcing them to respawn. In an effort to not hinder the pacing of matches, your car won’t stop when hitting against a wall, instead, you can drive on walls and even parts of the ceiling.

The objective of each match is basic; you try and score as many goals by hitting the ball into your opponent’s goal. While there are various arenas, each one has the exact same layout, with just a different skin on top. The ball is oversized and physics come into play in how you angle and hit the ball. Hit the ball head on using a boost will make it fly, while doing a side flip against the ball will knock it slower into another direction.

What makes things difficult when you first start the game is that the ball bounces, affecting your timing. You will either wait for the ball to hit the ground before running up to it or miss it completely as you misjudge the height. This is where the skill different comes into play. Beginners will play games with the ball mostly on the ground but watch games of higher skilled players and you can see that they play with the ball mostly in the air. It’s really impressive and something to aspire to (hopefully) with practice. This is where the gameplay truly shines at how different it plays once you gain experience, given its simple controls and premise.

The game controls very smoothly. The vehicles move as you’d expect it to and it instantly feels natural. There is an arrow that points to where the ball is at all times or you can press a button that will cause the camera to track the ball. The controls and settings are incredibly customizable; you can play around with things like the field of view, controller dead zones and camera speed. You can remap the controls to whichever buttons you want as well as change the parameters of the gameplay itself. For example, you can increase the speed of the ball, change the ball physics and bounciness, match length, vehicle boost time and more.

This is primarily a multiplayer game but there is still a meaty single player portion. Naturally, there are a variety of tutorials and practice arenas to get you up to speed. Once you’re comfortable, then you can play the Seasons mode, which basically pits you against bots as you play multiple games in a season ranging from a 9 week season season a 52 week season. You can create your own custom private matches as well as local multiplayer and fill it with bots of varying difficulty.

However, the multiplayer aspect is really where it is at. This is where teamwork comes into play a lot more as well given that you cannot just mindlessly go after the ball. You need some sort of strategy to not allow holes in your defense and it is really interesting to see how it has developed and well understood throughout the online community. The game is cross-play too so it is never hard to find a game.

There are a variety of modes. The standard is a 3 vs 3 match that lasts for five minutes. These quick matches are fun and don’t drag on for too long before you move onwards. The replay cams whenever someone scores a goal are fun to watch, given that the ball explodes and pushes all players away (with the option of customizing the type of explosion effect as well). In addition to that, there is a 1 vs 1 and 2 vs 2 mode which is much more reliant on a single player’s skill, as well as the 4 vs 4 mode which is way more chaotic. If you’re tied after the five minutes are up, it goes into overtime (sudden death) where the next goal will win the game.

The additional modes include Hoops, which is a version that instead of scoring goals like soccer, you hit the ball through hoops like basketball. Snow Day replaces the ball with a hockey puck set in a snowy arena. Rumble mode adds in power picks up akin to Mario Kart that replenish on a ten second cooldown system. Dropshot doesn’t have a net to score goals in. Instead, you hit the ball in order to light up the ground and eventually break it to shoot the ball through to score. Heatseeker is weird in that the ball is attracted to the goal so you score goals really quickly… but drags out the match and makes it boring since it is one or two hits before you score a goal.

With the game being free-to-play, there are attempts to monetize the game. However, all the purchase options are cosmetic. If you stick to being only a free player, you can still unlock plenty of cosmetics via completing challenges; it just takes a bit longer. There are also seasonal events for the online portion where you gain experience and rank up.

Overall, Rocket League is surprising at how deep the gameplay can get considering on the surface, it seems so simple. the controls feel great and the fact that you can easily pick up to start playing is a major plus. Once you start playing through a few games and gain experience, it’s a blast to see yourself improve over time. Furthermore, the feeling that you get when making a great shot or save is unparalleled.

--------------------------------------------------

For other game reviews, have a look at this page.

Toy Review: Transformers Generations War for Cybertron Kingdom Huffer (Deluxe)

Review:  #677

Name:  Huffer

Brand:  Transformers

Allegiance:  Autobot

Line:  Generations - War for Cybertron:  Kingdom

Year of Release:  2021

Size Class:  Deluxe (Wave 2)

Mold Status:  new

VEHICLE MODE:

Huffer, based upon his G1 incarnation, transforms into a orange truck.

With all the weapons attached, he is a dump truck.  It's quite a clever way to hide the gun, since it splits into two and form the sides, while the shield forms the truck bed.

Detach the weapons and there is still sculpting underneath, including the grey plastic, to show off that he can tow a trailer.

In terms of size, while Huffer is sold as a Deluxe, he is very small (as befitting of his small stature).  Above is a comparison against TLK Bumblebee.

This is a good looking vehicle mode, and while small, this does suit the character, even if you still feel that he may not be worth the pricing.

TRANSFORMATION:

Huffer has a simple transformation.  The cab effectively doesn't do anything and sits behind the torso in robot mode.  The torso hides underneath the cab, and the arms are from the smokestacks behind the cab.  The back splits into two to form the legs and you're done.

ROBOT MODE:

Huffer has a really good looking robot mode and is spot on for the character.  This is the best Huffer we've gotten yet.

He wears the truck cab on his back.  It is a gigantic piece of kibble and while the animation model has it, you also think if the designer could have found a more elegant way so that it isn't as big and in the way.

The head sculpt may be simple but captures the character's face well.

Once again, Huffer is small.  Above is a comparison against Siege Sideswipe and Huffer is a good head shorter than him.

Huffer has great articulation, with joints for his head, shoulders, elbows, waist, hips, knees and ankles.  So in line with the rest of the War for Cybertron line, Huffer can pull off many poses.

To make up for his small size, there are some decent paint apps, like how his arms are completely in silver, and the lilac on his chest.

Huffer's two weapons are a shield and a gun.  As the gun is combined from two halves, it feels really solid and doesn't have that hollow feel that plague a lot of weaponry nowadays.

The shield pegs onto either arm, and he can hold the gun in either hand.

That being said, the shield doesn't attach as well as it could to the arm.  The designer could have either a longer peg or using another peg, since it is easy to knock it loose.

The shield is also sculpted and painted in such a way that it looks like it has claws / teeth at the end, making it suitable as a melee weapon.

This is a fantastic robot mode, albeit feels like it is playing it too safe at times.

OVERALL:

Huffer is a solid toy but feels overly safe.  It doesn't dare to do anything new or inventive, so can feel too simplistic as a result.  Despite that, it is a great update to the character that's long overdue.

---------------------------------------------------

For other Transformers reviews, have a look at this page.

Purchase from Amazon using this link.

(As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases)

I Want to Eat Your Pancreas (2018)

I Want to Eat Your Pancreas is an anime film based on a novel.  It has a deeply moving story that will surprise you at how emotionally impactful it will be.  It gives away the fate of one of the characters at the very beginning of the film yet this only serves to make the ending even more powerful.  It stars an introverted high school boy who by coincidence finds out that one of his classmates, Yamauchi Sakura, has a terminal illness involving her pancreas.  No one else knows and using this as an excuse, Sakura spends time with him as they experience the things that she would like to do before she dies.    She has an energetic and optimistic personality, pretty much the complete opposite of him.  While you know that this is a set up in order to build the bond between the characters before the emotional bombshell hits, you can't help but still fall for it.  He is antisocial and is fine with being alone with his books but bit by bit, he reaches out to Sakura.  While you know what is going to happen, no matter what you expected, the story developments will surprise you.  That moment comes way quicker than you would expect but the biggest emotional moments come afterwards and it was perfectly delivered.  Little bits of foreshadowing throughout the film culminated into this moment where you feel how important several seemingly inconsequential moments were to the characters.  The last fifteen minutes of the film is emotionally intense and draining but extremely satisfying and rewarding at the same time.  Overall, I Want to Eat Your Pancreas is a standout film that perfectly balances the playfulness and seriousness of its characters.  Its story arc is rewarding and depressing, the foregone conclusion is sad, but it also provides a spark of hope among it all.

A Certain Magical Index III (2018-19)

After a long long wait, A Certain Magical Index III brings the third season of the anime adaptation of the light novel series. It is a little bit lengthier at 26 episodes long. It is set in a world filled with people with magical powers, although they are separated into two main factions: Science and Religion. The science users are known as Espers, while the religion users are Magicians. Most of the abilities that we see tend to be offensive based and has the potential for huge amounts of destruction. Academy City is the headquarters of science, with the current situation being that the Roman Church is effectively waging war upon them.

One of the main protagonists is Toma, who has the ability to cancel out any magic or other special powers with his right hand. He calls it the Imagine Breaker. He’s a typical anime protagonist who is selfless and will jump to any situation to “save” or “protect” anyone without asking. He was bland and generic in the previous two seasons, and he’s still bland and generic now. All too frequently he yells out that he has such misfortune whenever he encounters some sort of fan service event. It was overused before, and it is overused now.

Joining Toma is Index, a young nun who memorized 103,000 grimoires in her head. She’s not very important now and she ends up being an annoying character anyway. She’s not portrayed in a very good light since she’s always sitting around doing nothing, waiting for Toma to bring her lunch. Then when Toma doesn’t because he had a legitimate reason, she’ll bite him. Index feels sidelined pretty hard ever since she was introduced, and she slow fades more and more into the background these days.

Like in previous seasons, the focus steps away from Toma during periods of time. Instead, we’ll have a look at Accelerator and Misaka. Although Misaka is now regulated to only being one of the love interests of Toma. She is constantly fawing over him which is a sad regression of the character who had so much potential. Accelerator on the other hand is supposedly balanced by having to rely on a device that helps him process his ability as a handicap. This means nothing since the plot will dictate when he is an overpowered character and when it is needed to temporarily curb him back to show how “exposed” he is.

There is the introduction of another viewpoint character, Hamazura. He is effectively a clone of Toma in terms of personality, the situations he finds himself in, and he even physically looks similar. He has a similar thing going on with the female characters in his team. The end result is that he is equally bland to watch due to his one-note personalty and constant righteous drivel. The season opens up with Toma unexpectedly getting involved in the tensions between Academy City and the Roman Church. As a result he is tasked with disrupting an artifact that the church is using to brainwash the masses against the City. In the beginning, you actually have hope that the storytelling would be better, but you’ll soon lose that hope.

After so long, Toma’s amnesia comes back to being slightly relevant as he supposedly had more of an idea of his Imagine Breaker before. There is apparently something more significant about it than being just a unique ability, not that it was teased in the first season or anything. It’s still quite a limited ability in that it’s predictable and Toma only uses it in one way: punching the villains no matter what they throw at him. It’s becoming less effective in the sense that all the villains now know about the ability and aren’t surprised about it at all. They even had preparations beforehand on how they planned to deal with it.

This is seemingly a trademark of the anime but even so, the disjointed storytelling and the transition between each story arc is jarring. The abundance of characters doesn’t help anything as we are bombarded with numerous groups, characters and abilities. Espers with more powerful abilities make frequent appearances and their powers are borderline overpowered, at times defying logic. The season tries to adapt too much into too little episodes and despite the short amount of time, manages to waste that with exposition dialogue that doesn’t help your understanding of what is going on. It expects you to already know some things so that what it then tells you is supposed to make you feel amazed or surprised at its cleverness. Obviously that attempt fails and you’re just left being confused or indifferent about it all.

The various perspectives wouldn’t be a problem if not for the constant and confusing skips. It’s like the anime is trolling you when an episode ends with some supposedly crazy cliffhanger, but it is something you probably don’t know what the big deal is because of half the things the anime had left out. This makes every episode a huge drag and very tasteless to watch.

It does tone down the fan service and harem nature of Toma. Since that was a tedious and repetitive mess in the previous season, it’s not missed. Although this season prefers to waste time on having the girls fawn over Toma, rather than explaining the plot properly and actually telling us in a better fashion on why we should care about things happening, why they are happening, and what the groups are after. Instead, things just happen, either Toma or Accelerator gets involved, which then gets resolved. It’s downright terrible storytelling.

There is forced logic in terms of how some characters uses their abilities or how one overcomes another. The worse cases are where one character has supposedly little or no power, and through sheer coincidence which is near impossible, will manage to manipulate events to their advantage as though they had (and could) planned it all along. “BS main character power” is an apt description for everything that happens. This is because Toma or Hamazura will pull some power out of nowhere to trump over his opponent. Then they will spout some righteous nonsense and it just gets sickenining when it is repeated so often.

Overall, A Certain Magical Index III is an absolutely terrible adaptation. If you thought the earlier seasons were confusing with its rushed nature, then this third season will be near incomprehensible. There are things happening to characters but before it follows that through to its end, it will jump to another scene. The season finale felt just like an ending to a normal episode. You wouldn’t be able to understand why the series has such popularity from just watching the anime, and it’s a shame that it did such a terrible job to allow that thought in the first place.

---------------------------------------------

For other anime reviews, have a look at this page.

Gravity Rush 2 (PS4)

Gravity Rush 2 is a sequel to one of the more imaginative games on the Vita. This time, it is exclusively for the PS4. This does mean a massive upgrade in graphics though and it retains the awesome unique aesthetic from the first game. The beginning of the game is slow as the game spaces out the tutorial fairly far apart. You’ll spend the first two hours or so waiting for the game to unlock most of Kat’s moves.

If you have played the first game (and you should), then you’ll naturally get used to the controls quickly. Kat has the power to control how gravity affects her and this allows her to effectively fly everywhere. It’s a fun system but the swinging camera can cause some queasiness if you’re not expecting it.

Using the R1 button will cause Kat to float. You can then aim where Kat falls towards, or to aim her signature gravity kick. She can also use her powers to pick up loose items to fling them against enemies. The automatic lock-on theoretically means that you don’t have to worry about pinpoint precision. Kat also has her gravity slide which is quite fun to use if you manage to find a decent amount of space.

Scattered all over are red gems. These are used to improve Kat’s abilities. These aren’t collectibles per se since they are so numerous and it is infeasible to collect them all. Despite that, since it is tied to unlocking new combat abilities, you’ll spend hours scouring the environment for them. Increasing Kat’s health and her gravity bar though is done by completing missions so you don’t feel the same sense of gradual improvement. Maxing Kat’s powers takes a ridiculous amount of grinding for the gems, way in excess of what you would get over the course of the story, even if you have diligent in spending a few hours on getting everything in the environment. It follows the philosophy of the rest of the game: put more filler in, waste more of the player’s time.

There are two extra styles unlocked as part of the story where Kat controls differently. Lunar Style has Kat feeling a lot more floaty and weightless, with her failing speed drastically reduced. Jupiter Style has Kat with increased weight so she cannot kick as fair but the benefit is that her attacks are much greater in power and has an area-of-effect. Unfortunately, you’ll probably stick with the normal style most of the time unless the game forces you to use one particular style.

The first game had Nevi as the enemy, which are black shadowy monsters with glowing red orbs that serves as their weak points. You're immediately shown larger and more complex Nevi in this game, only for them to fall into the background and most of the game having Kat fight against other humans and their giant machines.

In terms of story, Kat and Syd has been sucked into a gravity storm and put into the void where they are staying with miners. These miners go into the rift planes in order to mine ores to sell. This means that a rudimentary village in the rift is the initial replacement and it is not fun to explore. It takes two to three hours before the game really opens up with a huge area that is much larger than what was available in the original game. There are a lot of people roaming around the streets, giving life to the city. Just when you thought you have explored most of it, it suddenly reveals another huge area. 

The game focuses on quantity rather than quality. There are a lot of side missions. In an effort to spice up the variety since there’s really only so much you can do with the gravity shifting, the side missions have stealth missions, time limits and other restrictions which suck out a lot of the fun of having those powers in the first place. These are instant fail missions, so having the game restrict your abilities, and in essence the very reason you are playing this game, is a horrible idea.

If it is not a stealth game, then stealth missions should never exist. Gravity Rush 2 gets that point across when the side missions are filled with them. The abundance of enemies that spot you, the inability to use your powers forcing you to stay on the ground and the lack of proper stealth abilities all combine into a terrible experience that continually ours the game. You are forced to do trial and error until you find the one correct path the developers wanted you to take. This is some pretty hefty BS in a game where any sort of stealth doesn’t belong in it at all.

Side missions can be frustrating and overly long. The game is filled with early PS2 open world design. The amount of bland fetch quests is lazy and they stretch them out for much longer than necessary by having the quest giver request another and another and then another item. Then there are the missions with no objectives and just tasks you to find the person or the item by flying around. It’s not hard but it is a massive waste of time when so many missions do it. The game overall just feels like fluff and the majority of it is filler that is neither fun nor relevant to the plot.

The overly restriction mission designs rears it ugly head again and again. For every five or so missions you play, four or five of them will leave you frustrated and annoyed at how they gimped your abilities for no good reason. These restrictions are your typical crappy and lazy ideas such as time limits, being chased, tailing missions, escort missions, no damage runs and being relentlessly attacked. If the side missions actually reward something worthwhile then it wouldn’t be so bad. However, they don’t so it just feels tedious and pointless.

The story missions are equally horrendous in that you are forced into tight corridors so it is hard to get your bearings. Coupled with a camera that constantly get in the way due to the tight space and it is a nightmare to get through. Several story missions require you to do things in a very very specific order. It becomes tedious when you have to keep repeating the same section. It manages to keep surprising you at how it continues to get worse and worse, even when you thought it had already hit rock bottom. When it hits rock bottom, it will manage to go even lower with its annoying gimmicks to make it artificially harder than it should be. The controls and speed of Kat is not designed for those specific objectives and yet it keeps forcing you on ot, it is infuriating.

Even boss battles somehow manage to become really bad. The first game had different stages of the boss that you progress though, with a tiny bit of pattern recognition. Here, they’re all messes where you just smash the weak points without the boss really doing anything meaningful. When they do their attacks, it expects Kat to be able to dodge but she does not have the proper range and moves to pull it off. The constant encounters with small quick enemies that like to zip around causes the camera to be your biggest enemy. You’ll struggle to keep them in frame. Then you have to worry about the wonky aiming, which fits well with the rest of the poorly designed game to be honest.

The story ends up just being like the gameplay: filled with filler. It’s split into three separate story arcs that are little more than side stories. They add nothing to the lore of the game and all the events feel disjointed and unrelated. Each section is bursting with mundane tasks and events; it’s as if the game itself had no idea what story it is trying to tell.

The fourth part, which is the finale, sets about answering all the questions raised by the first game. The developers should have really done this from the beginning and fleshed it out because what we get is bare-bones, filled with even more tedious activities and is rushed as a result. Block puzzles come out of nowhere and then quickly disappear. You get sections where Kat does little more than walking. We don’t even get the satisfaction of an exposition dump because it’s so poorly paced.

The ending is as disjointed as the rest of the game. It explains some things but doesn’t explain others. Naturally, it has a series of bosses but continues to restrict your abilities until the very end. You end up just wanting the game to end but it keeps on going and going. The game takes around 15-35 hours to complete depending if you go for the sidequests or not, the sidequests actually takes more time than the story itself.

As an apology for the delay of the release of the game, the DLC was made free for everyone. Another Story - Raven’s Choice have you controlling Raven as it follows a plot thread from the first game. In it, we finally get to find out what happened to the Ark and the lost children. While it is marginally better than the main game, it’s still shockingly poorly designed. We continue to get crippled in terms of powers with a heavy reliance on boring events such as running around through areas without trying to be seen, escort missions or battles that involve tedious gimmicks. It only takes around 1.5 hours to complete and the story is equally disappointing in that it’s filled with filler and the ending leaves a lot to be desired.

Overall, Gravity Rush 2 lost everything on what made the first game good. It has disgusting game design as if the developers had never played what they were making. It is simply not fun and not what you play the game for. Everything negative about the gameplay and mission design, which is around 90% of the game, overwhelmingly drowns out all the positives of the aesthetics and charm of the characters. They have somehow managed to pick up the first game, which had its flows but was still fun, and ruined absolutely everything. The idiotic fixation on crippling your powers and having instant fail stealth missions justifies why this game bombed so badly and killed the whole franchise. This is one of the worst first-party games by Sony, and one of the worst games in general. To be honest, it would have been better if the game was never made, so that the memories of the fun and lost potential of the first game would not have been tarnished like this.

---------------------------------------------------

For other game reviews, have a look at this page.