Book Review: The Creatures from Beyond Beyond

Review:  #490
Title:  The Creatures from Beyond Beyond
Series:  N/A
Author:  R.L. Stine
Read Before:  no
Comments:  One of the best R.L. Stine books; it has a good concept that was executed well.  The things happened made you want to keep reading and learn more.  Twins encounter aliens and it takes an interesting twist.  It satisfies your thirst for more information and it fleshed out the alien quite well.  The ending was also good in that it wasn’t ambiguous or disappointing.

Rating:  6/10

Big Hero 6

The latest from Disney's animation, Big Hero 6 is also the first to use Marvel characters, although the movie is only inspired by the comics.  Big Hero 6 is an origin story of a group of six superheroes and so it spends the first hour setting up the story.  The story is one of loss of a close person and how that person copes with it (by creating a superhero team, apparently).  It focuses on Hiro and an inflatable robot called Baymax.  Baymax was heavily featured in the promotional materials and he is the one that carries the whole movie.  He's lovable and while occasionally predictable, funny as well.  The humor in the movie is good enough to entertain but doesn't bring anything new to the table.  Once the team assembles though, you get that good feeling of a solid teamwork, bringing down the supervillain.  The story showed promise in the beginning but ends up treading on old ground and becoming predictable in the end.  Overall, a good movie that's vibrant, colorful and fun.

Toy Review: NECA Pacific Rim 7" Hong Kong Brawl Gipsy Danger (Gipsy Danger 2.0)

Review:  #239
Name:  Hong Kong Brawl Gipsy Danger
Brand:  Pacific Rim (NECA)
Allegiance:  Jaeger
Year of Release:  2014
Size Class:  7" figure (Series 4)
Variations:  retooled into Series 5 Anchorage Gipsy Danger and Series 6 Reactor Blast Gipsy Danger

FIGURE:

Hong Kong Brawl Gipsy Danger, as his packaging states, or otherwise more commonly known as Gipsy Danger 2.0, is an all-new mold compared to the Series 1 figure, being slightly larger and taller.

Gipsy Danger is predominantly blue with some metallic highlights and some painted details here and there.

The headsculpt is good but I find that they could be sharper and more detailed, especially compared to how well the rest of the figure is.  Nonetheless, it is still recognizable.

The amazing sculpting on this line continues on here, with the back of the figure being more impressive.

There's a fantastic amount of detailing, above and beyond what you would expect.  It is this sort of sculpting that sells the figure and makes Gipsy Danger look like a proper giant robot.

If you haven't realized already, Gipsy Danger is based upon the main character's Jaeger (i.e. giant robot) in the film Pacific Rim.  The figure is designed after the character model used in the movie.

His nuclear reactor in his chest is painted a yellowy orange and is basically the brightest color piece on the figure.  He has "34" tampographed on his shoulders and sports white and red stripes across his body.

Gipsy Danger is roughly 7.25" tall and in Transformers terms, he's approximately the size of a Voyager but much more dense and heavier than you'd expect of something this size.

In comparison to the main cast of Pacific Rim, Gispy Danger is the second tallest, behind Cherno Alpha.

You might notice that Gipsy Danger is also a bit more slim and athletic looking than the rest of the cast.  He makes up for it with additional accessories.  Now, all the stock photos shows him with the boat but what's surprising is that he includes an additional pair of hands (to hold the boat) and a sword.

With the boat, it's based upon the iconic scene seen in the movie and trailers in which Gipsy Danger drags the boat to fight a Kaiju.  Surprisingly, there is a lot of paint applications on this piece of accessory, although the front is warped.

Gipsy Danger can drag the boat behind him to recreate the iconic scene but it is a loose grip.

The warped section of the ship is molded such that the open palms slot in perfectly to grip.  However, this is still a loose grip.

Gipsy Danger can hold it with both hands, which is more secure.  The other hands also slot into the molded grips on the boat.

The hands are on balljoints, so to swap hands you can pull them out and pop them back in.  Sounds good in theory but the actual size of the balljoints are slightly different so once you stretch the slot, one pair of hands will also seem a bit loose.

Next is his sword, which pegs into a slot into the forearm of either hand.  I find that the fists make for a tighter fit, although this isn't to say that pegging it while having the open palm hand was easy either.

The sword is made from a soft rubbery plastic, so you can be rest assured it won't snap easily.

Speaking of plastic, Gipsy Danger himself is made from a type of plastic that's somewhat soft and rubbery to the touch.  I would have preferred a harder smoother type of plastic.

Now, poseability.  The whole point of this line is the touted articulation, which provides the majority of play value.

It boasts something like over 15 points of articulation or something but I find Gipsy Danger to be somewhat lacking.  It's no worse than the other Pacific Rim figures in this line though.

He has a head joint, an upper waist, shoulder joints, elbow joints (including swivels), wrist swivels, hips, double-jointed knees and some ankle tilts.

While this sounds good, in effect they are limited in their range.  The head is hard to turn and the most disappointing of all was the hips which cannot be moved outwards for more than a few degrees.  Considering that it was similar in the Series 1 version, you would have thought they'd improve this.

Despite this, Gipsy Danger can still pull off some decent poses.  Frankly speaking, most of the value of this figure comes from the display angle.

The build of the figure was good and joints were tight.

A great rendition of Gipsy Danger from the movie.

OVERALL:

Considering the skyrocketed price of the Series 1 version, Hong Kong Gipsy Danger is a fantastic and pretty much a superior substitute.  He looks fantastic, carrying immaculate and painstaking detail.  His articulation is average but Gipsy Danger is a superb action figure that'll look great next to all your other Pacific Rim figures.

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Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA F 2nd (PS3)

The sequel to Project DIVA F, this contains 40 songs which includes returning classics and some new ones.  Although if you had supported the Project DIVA series since its inception, then every song is basically a rehash with updated graphics.  Project DIVA F 2nd is a rhythm game.  You tap the face buttons in time with the song and the note symbols on screen.  Other inputs include flicking the analogue sticks.  As you would expect, the gameplay remains very similar but with some minor additional mechanics.  The main one being that there is a note which requires you to flick both analogue sticks at the same time.

Calibration is essential in order to combat the potential display lag (i.e. notes not syncing in time with your button presses, being slightly early or slightly later).  It's hard to believe that it makes such a large difference, even if you change it by three one-thousandth of a second.  The game includes an auto calibration but it's still best to tweak it until it feels right to you.  It is worth the time to do this as any lag will ruin the enjoyment of the game.  The gameplay boils down to while you're busy tapping the buttons to the song, it'll try and distract you by having symbols fly from all over the screen, coupled with scenes playing in the background.

Things can get hectic and confusing very fast, causing you to miss some notes as you overlook them.  This is particularly true in some songs where neon colors flash all over the place (look at you, 2D Dream Fever) and it takes all your attention to not miss any notes on the higher difficulties.  Doing well in a song requires not only quick reflexes and timing but also familiarity with the song.  Once you have the melody in your head, it makes the game much easier.  There are some songs where the notes don't seem to correspond to any type of melody though and they can be the more challenging ones.

There are four difficulties:  Easy, Normal, Hard and Extreme.  Easy ad Normal mode are available right away but you need to complete one song on Normal in order to unlock the Hard version of it.  Once you've cleared the Hard version, then the Extreme version becomes available.  Four songs are available right from the beginning and for each song you clear, one more is unlocked until you've unlocked the whole roster.  Clearing a song is not that hard, it only requires you to tap approximately 80% of the buttons with correct timing.  Getting a higher rank requires 90% (Great), 95% (Excellent) or 100% (Perfect).  It's a good feeling when you get a Perfect score but conversely, it really sucks when you stuff up one or two notes and you have to replay the song again to try and aim for that elusive rank.

Extreme mode, as the name implies, can get very crazy.  There will be sections where you feel it is near impossible to complete it perfectly.  Rest assured, it is possible... just maybe for those elite few.  The game plays into the mentality of getting you to try one more time in order to get a higher score.  Although it can get frustrating at times.  Project DIVA F 2nd overall feels harder than the first game.  Two songs in particular, "The Intense Voice of Hatsune Miku" and "2D Dream Fever" were insane in Normal difficulty when you first try it out.

Check out YouTube for Perfect runs of those two songs on Extreme mode and I shudder to think how much practice must have have gone into the game in order to get that rank.  It is possible to fail a song either by failing to press enough buttons with the correct timing (the song will end prematurely) or you finish the song, but didn't get enough points to get the Standard rank.  To spice things up a bit more, there are Technical Sections in the game which requires you to perfectly time all buttons to get bonus points.

Chance Time sections have you pressing buttons with the correct timing to fill up a star gauge, which will give you bonus points on complete too.  You cannot fail a song during Chance Time (hence the name).  The vocaloids featured are Hatsune Miku, Kagamine Rin, Kagamine Len, Megurine Luka, Kaito and Meiko.  That is, your standard six.  The selection of songs are great, containing some classic ones such as World is Mine, Romeo and Cinderella and Canterella.  The majority of the songs are for Hatsune Miku, it kinda sucks that you cannot change the vocaloid singing the song (although you can change the character model).

During localization, all the menus are translated into English.  In addition, there are now English subtitles which translate the lyrics.  This is really cool when watching it in Video Mode as you can understand what they are singing about.  Don't worry though, you can still have Japanese romaji if you prefer.  Fan artwork continues to be shown during loading screens, some of them can be really good.  Loading time sare short if you opted for installing data into the hard drive.  There are various different modes, Network Mode allows you to download user generated content.  Studio Mode shows off the Live Stage and Photo sections.  Live Stage just means a song is played as if you were watching from a concert.

Live Stage only provides eight songs to choose from and not all of them are playable in the rhythm game.  The Photo Mode allows you to pose the vocaloids and take screenshots, which isn't anything too special.  Edit Mode allows you to create your own video and rhythm track but it takes a bit of skill and patience to create anything good.  The Rhythm Mode is where the bulk of the game is and the place you go to play the songs.  The Diva Room is a kind of simulation game, which is where you can interact with the vocaloids.  You can give gifts such as food, meddle with the look of their room and furniture, and play minigames.

Unlike the first game, there is a limit on how many times you can give gifts and interact with them to increase affection level per set periods of time.  This means you can only give them something and interact with them twice every fifteen minutes or so.  This makes the game much more grindy compared to Project DIVA F.  In order to unlock everything (and get the Platinum Trophy), you have to play each song multiple times, and keep going in and out of the Diva Room.  It takes a while to level each vocaloid up.  Furthermore, to unlock events, you have to give vocaloids gifts (and some of the events are randomized), so it feels like it's dragging the game out.

You can purchase those gifts from shops, which also include outfits for the vocaloids to wear during the songs.  You use Diva Points which are earned when clearing the songs.  To unlock more things int he shop, each song has various challenges, called Unlockables.  These could be clearing the song a set number of times, playing the song with a certain outfit or obtaining a cumulative high score.  This is why you have to play each song many many times, otherwise you wouldn't be able to unlock all the items you need.  Overall, Hatsune Miku:  Project DIVA F 2nd is a fantastic rhythm game that looks and feels great.  It presents a noticeable step up in challenge but it is really fun and loaded with content.

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Book Review: Son of Slappy

Review:  #489
Title:  Son of Slappy
Series:  Goosebumps Most Wanted - 2nd book
Author:  R.L. Stine
Read Before:  no
Comments:  A new Goosebumps book featuring the infamous Slappy, a dummy who can come to life.  Apparently this one is about the son of Slappy but the son is not really who you think it is (the cover illustration is a red herring).  It starts off okay, it’s not very scary but it ends up going down a very cliché route in which a do-gooder is forced to do bad things and have people start to doubt him.  The worst part is the ending where it doesn’t truly resolve the story and feels like it was cut off abruptly.  It also doesn’t really live up to the name of “Most Wanted”, a bit disappointing but not a horrible book to read.

Rating:  6/10

White House Down

White House Down follows the story of John Cale who happened to be in the White House as it was overtaken by a hostile group.  The plot ends up spiraling outwards with the group compromising security and by launching nuclear weapons, starting a new war.  Of course, it's up to one lone man to stop this all.  Unfortunately, Cale's daughter was in the White House at the same time and so throughout the movie, the daughter becomes a liability.  While it has the characteristics of a thriller in the first half, it slowly transforms into gunfight mayhem and the events evoke a suspension of belief.  If you can ignore all the improbability then White House Down is enjoyable with the many action scenes.  It tries to throw a clever twist at the end but it falls into cliche territory and becomes predictable in who the ultimate mastermind was.

Toy Review: Transformers Generations Arcee

Review:  #238
Name:  Arcee
Brand:  Transformers
Allegiance:  Autobot
Line:  Generations
Year of Release:  2014
Size Class:  Deluxe (Wave 11)
Variations:  none as of this date

COMIC:

Arcee comes with the final issue of the Dark Cybertron arc, Dark Cybertron Chapter 12.  After all that happens, we see how Optimus and Megatron stop Shockwave from ending the world.  While you still need some sort of idea of what happened before, it’s not as bad as some other issues.  It provides a really quick summary of where things are act and the premise is basic, Autobots must stop Shockwave.  So this issue ends up being one of the better issues and provides some interesting turn of events such as what Megatron did in the end.

VEHICLE MODE:

For the first time since the 1986 Transformers movie, we get an official G1 Arcee figure that's accurate to the cartoon model.

Arcee transforms into a pink, black and white futuristic car.  The addition of black works well here.

She has small plastic wheels which allows her to roll (but tends to slide on smooth surfaces like glass).

Unfortunately, Arcee suffers from being really small and light, which was unavoidable due to her slim robot mode.

She is a convertible and you can see the detailing of the seats.

In addition, her dashboard is quite detailed too, including a steering wheel and speedometer.

There are various slots over Arcee's car mode where you can slot her weapons.  The main ones being at the rear, perfect for the guns.

You can place the swords there if you wish and the guns at the side.

Something to note is that Arcee is able to store both her guns on the underside, which also has the benefit to locking her arms since her hands can grasp the gun handles.

A good looking car mode that's show accurate.  The only negative thing about this mode is the fact that it is small and light, even moreso than you would expect.

TRANSFORMATION:

Arcee's transformation is what you would expect, she ends up being a massive shellformer with only the grill and parts of the side of the car forming the core robot.  Most of the car ends up being folded away into three panels.  An interesting element of the transformation is how her thighs are formed, since there are joints which extend it out in car mode but collapses back in robot mode.  This does have some negative side effects which we will cover in the robot mode section below.

ROBOT MODE:

Arcee's robot mode is as G1 show accurate as her car mode.  This is a figure that was 28 years in the waiting, but finally, Arcee is here and available.  There was a tiny bit of doubt that being at the tail end of the Generations Thrilling 30 line, that she would either be cancelled or be a very limited release, thankfully this was not the case.

As mentioned, she wears most of the car on her back, the backpack is comprised of three panels which are folded against each other.

On the whole, the back kibble is not that bad, this is only because she doesn't have any bulk in her backpack and the smallness of the figure works to her favor here.

The head sculpt is one of the best things about this figure.  It features an effective lightpipe for the eyes.

Just like in vehicle mode, her robot stature is small and slim.  This suits her being a female Transformer and all but she is still very much smaller than a lot of other Deluxe figures.

Poseability is excellent and Arcee has a better range of articulation for her feets than you would expect.  Thanks to hinged ankles, she is stable in heaps of poses.

She has some proportion issues though, mainly surrounding her thick thighs.  She can look really weird when being viewed from head on.

As you already know, Arcee comes with two guns, one of them was even accidentally featured in Chromia's stock photo.

She can hold either gun in either hand.  Her hands are molded open and there are molded slots within the palms to slide the weapons in.

They work well for the most part but the weapons can be easily dislodged.

As if to compensate for her smallness, Arcee comes with two more swords.  These are cast in transparent blue plastic.

The swords are even easier to dislodge from her hands which is unfortunate.

She doesn't have any wrist articulation but Arcee still manages to pull off some good sword fighting poses.

If you didn't know already, the swords are a homage to Animated Arcee.

You can use the numerous slots on her body for weapon storage, including the outside of her thighs (looks great with the guns there as if they're in holsters, you can plug them in using the pegs on the sides of the guns instead of using the handles which allows them to sit more flush against Arcee), behind her head and on the outside of her forearms.

The black helps to break the monotone of the white and pink.

A good robot mode but the thick thighs might annoy some people.

OVERALL:

This is the Arcee toy that fans have been waiting for many years.  While it is not perfect, it is a pretty good toy.  Arcee is worth having as she compensates for her smallness with a cache of weapons.  She is also much more poseable than you would expect, which adds to her play value.  Arcee succeeds at being a solid Transformer that's fun to transform and fun to play with.

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