Book Review: Death Note Vol. 3

Review:  #613
Title:  Death Note Vol. 3
Series:  Death Note - 3rd volume
Author:  Tsugumi Ohba
Read Before:  no
Comments:  As addictive as the previous two volumes, Death Note continues to push the story arc forward at a brisk pace.  The plot takes on various surprising turns, including having L reveal himself to Light and the battle of wits that ensues is intense.  It throws another spanner into the works soon after with the reveal of another Kira.  The deduction and reasoning displayed by the characters is impressive and while at times, the volume does resort to exposition, it’s well done and carries an urgent atmosphere in the hunt for Kira.

Rating:  7/10

Pokemon Platinum (DS)

Pokemon Platinum is the third game in the Generation IV Pokemon games, after Diamond and Pearl.  It is in effect an enhanced update of those two games, with additional Pokemon, improved graphics, changed story elements and new environments to explore.  Since it is a Pokemon game, Platinum has the predictable gameplay and plot, which is to say that they're both solid and easy to understand.  You take the place of a beginner trainer, obtaining your first Pokemon (out of a choice of three) before journeying across Sinnoh.  There are two main story arcs in the plot, the first one is as the player, you are travelling to each city to challenge all eight Gym Leaders in order to be eligible to compete in the Pokemon League.  You aim to defeat the Elite Four and finally the Pokemon Champion to be crowned the Champion yourself.  The other story arc is your frequent encounters with Team Galactic; they predictably are causing trouble and want to take over the world.  A neat element is that you have a rival who starts out with you and will periodically challenge you, growing stronger along with you.  You get to pick their name and this gives it a more personal touch.  The biggest draw here is you get to carry six Pokemon with you at one time to participate in battles.

You encounter Pokemon in the wild, such as walking around in grass or in caves, and by weakening them, you are able to catch them.  You can catch as many Pokemon as you like since you can store them away and retrieve when necessary.  It is a turn-based system, with a paper, scissors, rock weakness system, such as fire is strong against grass, which is in turn strong against water.  The many different types of attacks and Pokemon make the battles dynamic and encourage the player to pay attention.  Pokemon earn experience and can level up, getting stronger in the process.  For certain Pokemon, they will eventually evolve into a stronger form once they reach certain conditions.  If you've played the previous Pokemon games then Platinum will feel right at home.  It has better music than the GBA games and feels nostalgic.  It has 2D graphics through which does not seem much of an improvement to the series and is probably the most disappointing aspect since the DS is capable of more.  One of the really annoying things with Platinum is the high random encounter rates.  You will take one or two steps and then a random encounter occurs.  It's frustrating when you have to travel through a big patch of grass.  You will end up gritting your teeth and deciding to just use an item to eliminate all random encounters towards the end of the game.

Even if you have the willpower to keep random encounters on, you'll come to realize that they do not provide good experience points at all and is a big waste of time.  Platinum has a good balance of difficulty when you don't actively grind to level up your Pokemon as other Trainers you encounter and battle will have Pokemon whose level is about on par or higher than yours.  This is true especially in the beginning of the game when you catch a full party of six Pokemon and need to alternate between them to level them up.  Levelling up Pokemon eventually becomes easier with the introduction of Exp Share, but this only allows one other Pokemon to share the experience gain and is not recommended to use extensively and exclusively for a Pokemon to level up since they won't get the additional stat boosts that normal battles provide.  Soon you'll come to realize that you are playing catch up against other Trainers as the experiences gained are low and enemy Trainers are four to five levels above you.  Gym Leaders start to have a level gap of up to ten levels and this becomes ridiculous at the Elite Four and Pokemon Champion battles where they can be up to 17 levels above you.  This forces you to grind to get your Pokemon to within the Level 55 to 60 range and have a chance of defeating the opponent without being killed in one shot.

It's unfortunate that the game ends up forcing you to spend hours of grinding at the end of the game since it has a slow pace already with waiting times for the animations to play, loading times and slow menus, it's ends up being the last straw and becoming annoying and waste of time.  The fake difficulty with high levels, constant HP restore of opponents and an overabundant usage of confuse ray and paralyze attacks serves more to highlight the unfairness of the enemy AI more than anything since whenever an enemy uses an attack, it will work for them but when you try the same tactic, it will not work half the time.  As touched upon, Platinum is bogged down by inefficient menus, especially item storage and item usage during battle.  You have to trawl through various menus and slowly select the items you want, a more streamlined approach would have been appreciated.  Platinum has all the staples of a Pokemon game including fishing and obtaining a bike for faster travel.  It uses the second screen of the DS in an interesting way as you obtain a Poketech.  This takes up the bottom screen and you can obtain apps during your travels, so you can have a hidden item radar detector, a screen showing the current health of your Pokemon, show the time, and more.

Another returning feature are Pokemon Contests where you compete in the beauty of your Pokemon and if it can impress judges.  Perhaps the biggest and most touted new feature of Platinum is the Distortion World.  This ends up being a massive disappointment since it's a boring maze puzzle in order to reach Giratina.  Unfortunately, the Distortion World is short and as with some other Legendary Pokemon, Giratina has an absurdly low catch rate which makes it annoying as you chuck Pokeball after Pokeball in the hopes that the random number generation falls in your favor.  Even after you become the Pokemon Champion, there is a wealth of post-game content including the return of the Battle Frontier, a place to battle to your heart's content.  Furthermore, there's another smaller island to explore which will take up at least two to four hours with new Pokemon to catch plus new story content.  All in all, the game has so many things to do that it will keep you busy for hours if you decide to complete it all.  Overall, Pokemon Platinum serves more of the great Pokemon gameplay, with 210 Pokemon to encounter in the beginning plus more are introduced after the main story arc.  While the plot is predictable and there are some annoying design choices, this is a fun game.

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Shark Tale

Shark Tale follows Oscar, a nobody fish who cleans whales for a living.  He dreams of becoming famous and rich.  He gets his opportunity when he falls into debt and is about to get killed.  Through a stroke of luck, he claims to be the shark slayer, and becoming the protector of the reef, keeping away the sharks that come to feed upon the residents.  Also involved in the story is Lenny, a shark, who is vegetarian.  Together, they combine their forces to keep up the farce of the shark slayer.  Shark Tale ends up being better than expected, with humor that spreads out over the course of the film, making it enjoyable and never boring at any time.  There's a lot of pop culture influence though, which can be a turn off.  While the plot is predictable and Shark Tale doesn't strive for anything new, it is worthwhile to watch.

Toy Review: Transformers Generations Titans Return Blurr & Hyperfire

Review:  #340
Name:  Blurr
Brand:  Transformers
Allegiance:  Autobot
Line:  Generations - Titans Return
Year of Release:  2016
Size Class:  Deluxe (Wave 1)
Mold Status:  new

HYPERFIRE:

Blurr's Titan Master if Hyperfire and surprisingly, he has paint!  There is silver, black and a light blue.  This really helps bring out the sculpted detailing.

The back has the larger's robot head, note that the antenna is folded in for this mode.

There is limited articulation, being only the head and shoulders.

VEHICLE MODE:

Blurr himself transforms into a sleek hover car.  It looks fantastic in person.

This is a well formed vehicle mode that looks good even from the back.  Note that there are some plastic wheels underneath to allow it roll.

Blurr is a Deluxe and he feels solid in your hands.  Above is a comparison against Reveal the Shield Jazz.

You can attach the robot mode's gun underneath in this mode.

The color scheme in this mode isn't too bad thanks to the light blue at the front of the vehicle mode.  What's annoying though is that for transformation, the windshield doesn't extend all the way, there is a gap between the windshield and the back of the vehicle.

The windshield can open to allow you to place a Titan Master into the seat.

Furthermore, you can detach the front of the vehicle, flip it around and place a Titan Master to arm it.  It's a type of hovering sled I guess.

Blurr comes with a character card showcasing a nice piece of artwork, also focusing upon the detaching head gimmick.

A fantastic vehicle mode, apart from the weird gap of the windshield, no other flaws here.

TRANSFORMATION:

Converting Blurr to robot mode is easy and intuitive.  This is a solid transformation scheme.  If you don't want to, you don't have to detach the front of the vehicle.  As you'd expect, the sides become the arms and the back become the legs.  The windshield folds nicely to form his torso.

ROBOT MODE:

Blurr's robot mode is suitably sleek and its the character well.  Unfortunately, because of his slim body, his head is a bit large and gives a slight bobble-headed effect of the figure.

There are some minor pieces of kibble underneath the forearms but otherwise, he is very clean.

The headsculpt is good and you might notice that the antenna is pulled upwards, a neat touch.

Size-wise, he is slimmer than most Deluxes and a bit shorter but you don't feel gimped because it suits the character and also because the figure is really well made.

The biggest negative would be the color scheme.  Using one primarily shade of blue for the whole figure is terrible, and the shade isn't that nice to begin with.  It does eventually grow on you but if you can, the Japanese version is miles better.

Articulation is as you'd expect, with a waist joint and even wrist swivels!

His weapons are a gun and a shield formed by the front of the vehicle.

The gun is painted a nice silver.  It's a slim gun so looks really good.

The shield can be attached to the side of his arm.  The angle of which is up to you.  It looks better like a proper knight's shield though with the bottom facing towards the ground, rather than facing front.

The shield can store on his back, you can leave this during transformation which is a nice touch.

A good robot mode in terms of sculpting let down by the poor color scheme.

OVERALL:

Blurr is a good mold hampered by the color scheme.  It's not too bad in vehicle mode but the blandness of the robot is so terrible.  At its core though, the transformation is simple but effective and both modes have great sculpting.  Get the Japanese version if you can but if this Hasbro version goes on sale for a cheap price, he is worthwhile too.

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Book Review: Sword Art Online: Progressive 1

Review:  #612
Title:  Sword Art Online:  Progressive 1
Series:  Sword Art Online:  Progressive - 1st volume
Author:  Reki Kawahara
Read Before:  no
Comments:  Sword Art Online:  Progressive is like a reboot of the series, but this time, it complements the main novels of the series by fleshing out the original Aincrad arc.  Kirito and thousands of other players are trapped within the virtual reality MMORPG where if they die in the game, they die in real life.  To beat the game, they have to travel up 100 floors and beat all the bosses and monsters; it is a terrible predicament to be in.  This time around, Progressive takes the story on a floor by floor basis, with this first volume focusing on the first two floors.  We get to learn a lot more technical aspects of the game which makes it very interesting at how the game’s mechanics work, especially with all the structure of the game, boss battles and other more “normal” actions such as eating and sleeping.  In a slight contradiction to the main series, Asuna features heavily alongside Kirito as the two work together.  Due to the lack of a length limit which severely crippled the plot of the original, the plot is allowed time to build momentum and it encompasses various subplots.  In particular, the weapon scandal subplot that takes place on the Second Floor of the game is interesting and keeps you guessing at how it was pulled off.  The game has two significant Floor Boss battles which are great to read with all the action, strategy and quick thinking.  You can help but cheer on Kirito even if he is hated by other characters, a bit overpowered and even at times, not deserving of being the only one that’s scoring all the bonuses and good things.  Progressive is a good approach to the Aincrad arc that takes things slowly, being able to flesh out the world to make it more immersive than ever.

Rating:  7/10

Penguins of Madagascar

Penguins of Madagascar is a spin-off from the Madagascar series of animated films.  Focusing on the four quirky penguins, it stars them doing their thing and saving the world.  They are portrayed as undercover agents of sorts, but with creative and outrageous plans that somehow seem to work.  The film doesn't take itself seriously, with a lot of plot holes, exaggerated scenes and odd choices.  The penguins have enough character and interest to carry the film themselves, and they are supported by a set of new characters, animals who are true agents with elite hi-tech equipment.  The plot is predictable in that one of the team members of the penguins doesn't feel like they belong and contribute to the team.  Then over the course of the story they discover themselves and prove that they are an integral part.  Penguins of Madagascar carries enough charm to stand on its own.

Toy Review: Transformers Generations Titans Return Rewind

Review:  #339
Name:  Rewind
Brand:  Transformers
Allegiance:  Autobot
Line:  Generations - Titans Return
Year of Release:  2016
Size Class:  Legends (Wave 1)
Mold Status:  new

TABLET MODE:

Rewind transforms into a black and grey tablet, with a picture of a red cassette on the screen, as a homage to the G1 incarnation.

The choice of alt mode is a good update, however, this is at the end of the day a square, and it is not immediately recognizable for what it is.

Rewind is a Legends sized figure and he can fit into your hand pretty easily.  Above is a comparison with Generations CW Shockwave.

A neat little feature is that Rewind has a non-functioning 3.5mm headphone jack.  Another bit of interactivity is that this tablet mode can fit into the chest of Leader Blaster.

Note that the figure also comes with a character card showcasing a nice piece of artwork featuring the robot mode.

A bit non-description but is otherwise a solid mode.

TRANSFORMATION (TO TANK MODE):

Transforming Rewind into tank mode is very easy.  Detach the gun from the side of the tablet, fold the sides up to the top and then fold it in half to form the turret.  Add in the gun and you're done.

TANK MODE:

Since having only a tablet mode is kind of boring, the designers fit in a third tank mode and surprisingly, it works quite well.

The treads are a bit off since they span only half the sides.  There are small plastic wheels underneath to allow it to roll.

He is still the same length but thinner and taller since the sides of the tablet become the turret.  This is still a very boxy alt mode.

The gun can tilt up since it fits into two small grooves.

For some reason, the tank is recognizable for what it is and adds a ton of play value to the figure.  Sure, it is somewhat weak but given what the designers had to work with, it is still impressive.

TRANSFORMATION (TO ROBOT MODE):

Going to robot mode is easy, since you unfold the turret to the sides to form arms, flip up the head and also flip out the legs.

ROBOT MODE:

Rewind's robot mode's distinguishing feature is the huge arms.  Not only are they wide but they are thick and bulky.

He features no kibble though which is fantastic.  He lacks heelspurs but manages to still stand quite easily.

The headsculpt is really nice and it is on a swivel joint so it cannot look up.

He's normal height which means he is a fairly small figure but he looks really bulky.

Articulation is decent although the way his elbows are jointed makes it somewhat awkward to bend forward sometimes (the elbow joints are right at the front, instead of in the middle of the plastic).

The feet is annoying in that the little pieces that fold forward to form his foot are only on friction joints and not pinned, they can detach quite easily.

Finally, there is a weapon for this size class.  Rewind has his own small gun.

Interestingly, his left forearm is hollow while his right is not.  It's an odd quirk of the figure.

The color scheme works together nicely, with the primarily colors of grey and black complementing each other well.

A fantastic robot mode overall with no real flaws.

OVERALL:

Rewind is a great figure.  He might not seem like it but Rewind ends up being versatile with three modes.  Sure, there are compromises made for the tank mode but it doesn't actually compromise the tablet or the robot mode.  The real star is the robot mode since it looks great, has plenty of articulation and fun to fiddle around with to boot.  Rewind is highly recommended, especially if you intend to get Blaster thanks to the interactivity.

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