The Mummy (2017)

The Mummy is a reboot of the film series and has some significant star power including Tom Cruise and Russell Crowe.  It distances itself from previous films but having a darker and more serious tone.  It actually starts off pretty strong, as Sergeant Nick discovers an Egyptian tomb in Iraq.  Finding the sarcophagus inside, it turns out that it was cursed and was containing Princess Ahmanet, who was mummified alive trying to resurrect Set.  The plot then goes steadily downhill as it becomes a slow slog and a generic monster film.  It really shouldn't have included the character of Dr Jekyll as a lot of time was spent trying to set up the overall universe at the detriment of the film's standalone story itself.  By the time you're towards the end, you probably won't for what happens anymore and it's just as well since the ending was ridiculous.  While the character Nick may not have acted as you would have predicted, the actions that he took to resolve the current issue was still pretty idiotic.  The film finishes off with a supposed nugget of wisdom and philosophy which comes off as just trying too hard and failing.

Fate/kaleid liner Prisma Illya (2013)

Fate/kaleid line Prisma Illya is a spin-off from the Fate franchise. It’s based on a manga series starring Illyasviel von Einzbern. The first season is ten episodes long with an OVA. It is set in an alternate world and it doesn’t cover the events of a Holy Grail War. It is a typical magical girl anime and from the get go, you know that it goes for the overly cute angle based on the aesthetics, tone and how the characters act. It’s set in a peaceful world and Illya is living a normal happy life. She’s on good terms with Shirou and lives with others given that her parents are working abroad. We learn that she loves anime and wishes that magical powers are real. This life is “shattered” when her wish is granted and a magical sentient stick comes to her. Named Ruby, the magical wand tricks Illya into becoming its new master and granting her magical girl status.

It turns out that Rin Tohsaka was the original master of Ruby before it left her to find a new master. Illya now gains the ability to transform into a magical girl, complete with powers such as firing colorful magical beams and flying. The anime seems to embrace all the typical tropes of the genre. Rin, while bitter and annoyed at first, ends up sticking with Illya and showing her the ropes.

The goal of Illya is to fight other beings which will turn them into cards for her to collect. These begins are placed in the familiar classes of Rider, Archer etc. They’re basically the same characters as the heroic spirits from other Fate series. Naturally, there are seven cards, representing the seven classes. However their redesign of those heroic spirits, while still remaining familiar, is one of the highlights. The anime has a fairly unique spin on the heroic spirits and how they provide power and abilities to Illya and Miyu via their card forms.

Illya wasn’t the only one to become a magical girl that night. Rin and Ruby actually came with another pair, Luvia and Sapphire. Sapphire also ditches Luvia and ends up granting Miyu its power. Miyu, the other magical girls, ends up becoming Illya’s rival of sorts. She seems much more well-versed in what she has to do and her abilities are on a superhuman level. Illya has a very idealistic view of being a magical girl but some of the opponents that she has to fight are extremely powerful and does not hesitate in hurting her. Thus she has to learn a valuable lesson on the harsh reality of the situation she’s in. Furthermore, she has to improve upon her teamwork skills with Miyu. Since Miyu is a prodigy, it did look like Illya was obsolete at first but it soon becomes clear that each has their own strengths and weaknesses.

Illya goes through the normal stuff that would happen when reality hits you after gaining such power. The very real reality of dying traumatizes her and it doesn’t help that she goes through a phase where she is not confident at all. Compounding her issues is her relationship with Miyu as they skirt between friends and not friends, which is a lot of drama and not that much fun to watch.

There is a focus on humor although naturally some attempts work and others don’t. There are a lot of cliched attempts but also a few instances where it is really funny. You can’t fault the voice actors on their delivery at all since they are great. The pacing of the season can be jarring. You’ll have episodes where it is battle after battle and then others where there are long stretches of talking about friendships, school and other everyday experiences.

The OVA takes place during a sports festival and is more akin to a slice-of-life episode. It’s not bad in that we get to see more of Illya’s school friends who are generally the funnier parts of the anime with their interactions. Overall, Fate/kaleid liner Prisma Illya is a fairly average and generic magical girl anime. Illya’s insecurities take up a huge portion of the season, for better or for worse. It’s take on the Fate universe, having the heroic spirits for Illya to tackle and convert into cards to become her power is a unique twist, but it doesn’t quite hold up the anime enough.

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Mario & Luigi: Dream Team Bros. (3DS)

Mario & Luigi:  Dream Team Bros. is the fourth entry in the Mario & Luigi RPG series, developed for the 3DS.  Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach and the Toads all fly to Pi’illo Island for a holiday.  However, they encounter an enemy along the way although they still arrive at the island without too many issues.  They find an ancient artefact, which when Luigi sleeps on it, allows Mario to enter his dreams.  The enemy from before then appears, kidnaps Princess Peach and escapes into the dreams.  Thus begins he journey of Mario and Luigi once again trying to rescue Princess Peach. The dungeons, and the game in general, are split into several smaller screens separated by short loading screens.  They’re actually pretty interesting, with enemies roaming around that you can get the jump on.  Where it sucks, or at least it is noticeable, are when you transition into battle or when you exit the menu, because the delay / loading to get back is a tad bit longer than you would expect. The game uses a turn based battle system with the twists that the Mario RPG series are known for.  It’s a lot more involved than your typical turn based battle system.  For one thing, when you attack, you can time it right so Mario or Luigi will jump and do more damage to the enemy.  All enemy attacks can be dodged or countered by timing it correctly.

The unique feature in this game is the dream levels.  When Mario enters Luigi’s dreams, a dream Luigi pops in.  During battle, he merges and powers up Mario, leading to some visually interesting attacks that pack quite a punch.  Luigi can also merge with the environment at certain points and via the touch screen, touch Luigi’s sleeping head to affect the dream world.  Dream levels are usually the more imaginative and clever levels but can be confusing with their multiple paths, levels and puzzles.  These dream levels are also in 2D side-scrolling format in contrast to the 3D overhead view of the “real” world. The game adds in platforming elements from the Mario series such as blocks and platforms in lieu of treasure chests.  All of this combines into a unique and fun formula.  Although the amount of abilities you can use on the field, such as the hammer, spin jump and dig, will start to become unwieldy by the end of the game.  The graphics are colorful and looks pretty good.  The environments are in 3D but the characters are in some sort of 2D sprite, so it is a weird combination at first. There are typical RPG elements such as gaining experience points and earning money in order to buy better gear to increase your stats.  During every level up, in addition to the normal and automatic stat increases, you can choose one to increase even further, which allows your own unique build, to a degree.

The abundance of tutorials was the biggest complaint for the game when it was released and this is true.  There are way too many tutorials that come frequently throughout the game.  Since the game’s cutscenes are already slow enough waiting for the characters to move and talk, when a tutorial happens and you have to go through quite a bit of text, then practice going through the feature, it can severely break the flow of the game.  It doesn’t help that it pops up a tutorial from time to time on something that it had already shown a tutorial for. The game is mostly easy as long as you don’t skip on the enemies.  If you lose a battle, you can immediately try again or try again in easy mode.  Easy mode massively increase Mario and Luigi’s attack power, making it absurdly easy to win the battle.  It’s a bit disappointing if you wanted to fight an easier battle while still feeling a sense of achievement because this mode just allows you to steamroll the battle, whereas normal mode may have been just a tad bit too tough.  Several boss battles can be big difficulty spikes though.  You can easily dispatch the normal enemies in an area but then the boss of that area will hit like a truck with a massive HP pool.  It’s kind of annoying and makes the game uneven.

Since every battle is very involved with what are pretty much micro-games, the enemies become too gimmicky towards the end and too annoying to beat.  When run-of-the-mill enemies start to take more than a minute to defeat as you wait out their attacks, it can become tedious.  This coincides with the game outstaying its welcome.  You’re constantly sent to this place and then that place to collect this and then that.  There’s too much filler and even though you don’t have to backtrack a lot of the areas, the game becomes wearisome in the second half and you just want it to end. In addition to normal boss battles, there are giant battles, where Luigi becomes huge, which is impressive and fun... for the first time.  Every single time afterwards it is extremely tedious since it takes forever to knock down health and is laden with gimmicks like tilting the 3DS and excessively using the touchscreen.  Enemy attacks does way too much damage, so while most of them are easy, when you get to the one that relies on the stupid gyroscope and with the 3DS being terrible at it, you’ll die for no good reason.  This game is a prime example why you shouldn’t shoehorn non-traditional control methods into the game, because when they are broken, it makes the game unwinnable and causes far too much frustration.

The bad game design shows its ugly face in the final dungeon.  Most of the platforming in the game was simple and fun, but the final dungeon requires timing and pinpoint precision which makes it a massive annoyance in an already bloated section.  Yes, it is supposed to be the final dungeon but it is so overladen with gimmicks, which by this time in the game you’ve been playing 30-40 hours, it is tiresome and dragged out.  It severely overstays its welcome and normal battles somehow manage to last even longer than normal, dragging it out like a slow painful death. All of the bad culminates into a horrendous final boss battle which takes place in giant form.  It has one of the most uneven and unbalanced final chain of boss battles in a game.  It manages to combine everything wrong with those into one fight and it is disgustingly cheap with the enemy doing five to six attacks in succession before you get your own turn, which does tiny amounts of damage.  After grinding through all that in 15-20 minutes, you lose due to the gyro controls failing.  Every time you are forced to retry, you have to listen to ALL the talking and watch the stupid drawn out animations again and again.  That battle was seriously unfair and unbalanced, without checkpoints or even the option of an easy mode.  It is unbelievable that for a game that was somewhat well balanced for everything else, the developers thought that this was a good idea.

Since the core of the story is pretty bare bones with it basically being Mario and Luigi chasing after Princess Peach and collecting stuff along the way to open up paths, they get sidetracked a lot to lengthen the play time.  It’s not a bad thing since the rest of the game is pretty good but dragging this on for 40 hours will even up making it feel tedious when it does the typical things of needing Mario and Luigi to get five of this, or beat four of that. Overall, Mario & Luigi:  Dream Team Bros. is a fun game at the beginning but ultimately starts to wear you down with excessive gimmicks, excessive tutorials, and poorly designed giant battles that are horrendous with broken controls, cheap unfair difficulty and lacking any fun whatsoever.  It is hard to recommend the game when it is so unbalanced like this, the developers screwed up massively in bloating up the game so much and making it such a tedious chore to play.

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Toy Review: Transformers Generations War for Cybertron Kingdom Rhinox (Voyager)

Review:  #693

Name:  Rhinox

Brand:  Transformers

Allegiance:  Maximal

Line:  Generations - War for Cybertron:  Kingdom

Year of Release:  2021

Size Class:  Voyager (Wave 3)

Mold Status:  new

BEAST MODE:

Based upon the Beast Wars version of the character, Rhinox transforms into an organic rhino.

This is a pretty good beast mode, with the only robot parts being the green that peeks out of the front legs.  The only negative here are the obvious hollow rear legs.

Rhinox is a Voyager and he is actually a fairly decent size, above is a comparison with Siege Optimus.

While the beast mode is very static as a whole (it's basically a brick), the mouth can open and close.

This is a great rhino mode, although he does not have any articulation as it leads to the issue of his head perpetually facing the ground.

TRANSFORMATION:

Surprisingly, the designer completely revamped the transformation scheme in comparison to the Thrilling 30 version.  The forelegs form the robot arms, which is to be expected, but each arm is attached to half of the torso which shifts back and forward to snap together in robot mode.  The rear legs form the robot legs but it is terribly designed.  The various panels will keep getting caught with each other, and it is a frustrating experience in getting the clearance and moving the pieces just right (you'll end up forcing it) to get it done.  It's horrible and something that should have been picked up and improved or simplified.

ROBOT MODE:

Unlike the rest of the Kingdom line, Rhinox isn't based upon his Beast Wars version, but rather the Forged to Fight mobile game so he is noticeably less accurate.

Given that the beast mode was such a panel-former, it's not surprised that he has quite a bit of kibble.  It's actually impressive how well it manages to hide most of it away though with only the rhino head and back as a backpack.

The head sculpt is okay, it looks a bit too simple and too plasticky though.  Unlike the Thrilling 30 version, the green and gold on this figure is noticeably duller, so it makes it even further away from the Beast Wars show model.

In terms of size, he is not too bad, he looks wider and bulkier than most Voyagers.

However, the cost-cutting and hollowing is in full swing here as it is very visible from the back.

The other disappointing aspect is how it uses a faux part for the chest.  Considering that Dinobot manages to use the real beast's head and then bulked it up with extra faux parts (so it was half half) makes Rhinox's version feel lazy as a result.

Otherwise, for poseability, Rhinox is pretty good, he has joints for the head, shoulders, elbows, waist, hips, knees and ankles.  Due to transformation, he has amazing shoulder articulation which can flex forward.

He comes with both his Gatling guns.

Rhinox holds the guns in both hands and unfortunately, they look tiny in proportion to the rest of the robot.  This is because they had to be small enough to store in rhino mode.

As well as that, the guns lose the spinning gimmick found in both the original and the Thrilling 30 figure.

When not in use, the guns can be stored on his back.

The robot looks good, but there are a few questionable design choices that aren't exactly flaws, but when compared to older versions of the character, does feel like a small step back.

OVERALL:

For those who don't have a Rhinox figure, then this is perfectly fine.  However, this does feel like a step back from the Thrilling 30 version.  While the robot legs on this one looks better, and the kibble is not as bad, the smaller guns, the terrible leg transformation, the off color scheme and excessive hollowed sections does make him feel like an inferior "update".  It's not to say that this is a bad figure, but it's tough when we've had quite a decent update before that it is very hard for new figures these days to top given the even lower budget that designers have to work with.

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Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (2019)

Maleficent:  Mistress of Evil is the sequel to the first Maleficent, which was a live-action spin-off from the classic Disney film Sleeping Beauty.  The premise of this film can feel forced in order to create a sequel and this permeates throughout the whole plot.  Aurora is deeply in love with Prince Philip, and when the two decide to marry, it causes friction between Aurora and Maleficent.  Complicating matters is Prince Philip's mother who seems steadfast in portraying Maleficent as evil.  It goes as well as you'd expect, with the Queen framing Maleficent, and Maleficent turning bitter due to the betrayal of Aurora.  A war ends up ensuing between Maleficent's Kingdom of Moors and the Queen's Kingdom of Ulstead.  A lot of the plot developments feel like cheap shots and a lazy way to push things forward.  It tries very hard to portray Maleficent as evil but is actually good, and it sends a conflicting and contrived message as a result.  The film is too reliant on special effects, particularly problematic when the special effects aren't that great in the first place.  In the end, the film is a bit dry and bland, making it hard to recommend.

Lord El-Melloi II’s Case Files {Rail Zeppelin} Grace Note (2019)

Lord El-Melloi II’s Case Files {Rail Zeppelin} Grace Note is yet another spin-off of the Fate franchise, but it doesn’t tell the events of a Holy Grail War. Instead, it is set after the events of Fate/Zero, but before Fate/stay night. Ten years on from Fate/Zero, we see Waver who is now an instructor at the mage school in London. The prequel episode just throws you into this scenario with much explanation; it’s only the proper first episode that bridges the gap between the series. The anime is based on the light novel series and only adapts the Rail Zeppelin storyline.

Waver was one of the characters that you could sympathize with in Fate/Zero and whose fate that you actually cared about given that he wasn’t totally evil and selfish. Naturally, the events that he experienced in that fourth Holy Grail War, in which he was a participant, continues to strongly affect him. He is scarred but he is also inspired by the actions of Iskander, his Servant from the war.

Waver is not a great mage and we see him stumble a bit at first as he travels the world. However, he decides to take over his mentor, Kayneth’s, class. Through some twist of fate, he also inherits the title of Lord El-Melloi II but it comes with numerous strings attached. Waver feels guilty about Kayneth’s death and while he wasn’t the one that actually killed him, he was indirectly responsible. It’s a tad bit too forced since Kayneth only had contempt for Waver and they were never on good terms. Yet now we have to accept that Waver had a lot of respect for that typical selfish mage who wasn’t above any means to win the Holy Grail War.

The plot is a detective story in which Waver goes to mystery cases, usually murder, and then attempts to solve it. He’s usually the best suited due to his knowledge of modern magecraft. However, he loves to throw around the words “whydunit” and “howdunit”, specifically emphasizing those words, which can feel cheesy at times. Waver also has an apprentice, Gray, that accompanies him at all times. To the surprise of no one, Gray has unique powers of her own and their relationship isn’t fully explained.

The anime helps give a broader view of the whole mage society rather than focusing only on the Holy Grail War, which as we learn, is actually not that big a deal to a lot of mages. Some mages even scoff at the idea and look down in contempt to Waver, who is currently fixated on it. He wants to find a way to become a participant again and it has become a noticeable obsession. 

The structure of the anime is episodic at first, with each episode having a mystery and then Waver solving it. Although this is deliberate in order to set up the tone of the anime as well as get the viewers accustomed to the various characters. Just before the midway point, the story loses the episodic structure and it is one continuous arc focusing on the titular Rail Zeppelin.

If you’ve watched Fate/Apocrypha, you’ll recognise a fair few characters. Not that the two series are in any way related given that they are on alternate timelines but it is still a surprise when they pop up unexpectedly.  Having that knowledge will allow you to know that character’s background especially since the anime doesn’t show off their backstory too much. If you are not familiar with the lore then you’ll get terribly confused at many points. When Waver does the big reveal and explanation of the Rail Zeppelin mystery, it is supposed to be a momentous occasion. He gives an in-depth explanation of the mechanics but it will very likely go all over your head. You’ll struggle to follow the logic if you don’t instantly understand the significance of several mage terms.

Overall, Lord El-Melloi II’s Case Files {Rail Zeppelin} Grace Note has a different tone and atmosphere to most of the other Fate universe anime. Both Waver and Gray are appealing characters, they are key in making the anime engrossing. You can’t help but feel eagerness in anticipating what will happen to them next and in that aspect, the anime can feel too short at only thirteen episodes plus the prequel episode. Granted, there are a lot of questions that hasn’t been answered, especially since the antagonist had just introduced themselves in the finale. There are also several scenes where the logic can be tough to follow but this is a solid anime, although you have to make sure you are at least familiar with Fate/Zero first, otherwise you’ll miss out on a lot of nuance to Waver’s character and motivations.

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Onrush (PS4)

Onrush is an arcade racer that does not even try to be realistic. The controls and gameplay are both really easy to pick up. The right trigger is used to accelerate, the X button to boost, circle for handbrake and triangle for “rush”. As you use boost, you will charge up the rush gauge, which when full you can use rush that boosts your vehicle’s speed even more for a limited time as well as activating a special power.

There are eight different classes of vehicles. While each vehicle’s top speed are the same, there are characters that set them apart. The most obvious thing is the different size and heft to the vehicles. A bigger truck-like vehicle is able to more easily take down a small vehicle, while a motorcycle is nimbler and able to make tighter corners at high speeds. Each vehicle has unique passive abilities as well as different rush abilities. These range from giving boost to your team mates to throwing barricades behind you to block your opponents.

In each stage, you’re basically going to b constantly using boost, particularly since it’s really easy to restore your boost gauge. Landing a jump will recover boost, taking down opponents will recover boost, even being near your allies will recover boost. While taking down the opponent’s team is harder, there are “fodder” vehicles which are slower and much easier to be taken down. The whole point of fodder vehicles is to provide an easy source of boost for the player.

This is not a racing game in the most traditional sense as there are no races. Instead, there are four game modes and they are all team based activities. Each mode has two teams of six. Overdrive has the team using boost to rack up points and the first team to reach the target wins. Countdown involves a countdown timer which only increases as players go through gates. Lockdown has the player keep within the zone as it moves around the track to capture it. While Switch has the players start off with the lightest vehicles, as they destroy their opponents they will move up until the heaviest vehicle. The victory condition of Switch is the one that manages to take all the lives of every member of the opposing team.

Each mode has several rounds which transition seamlessly into each other so it never takes you out of the game once you’re in an event. You can have a bad round and still be able to catch up in the next. If you fall behind the pack too much, the game will respawn you right back into the thick of things to keep you in the action, although this can be disorientating you can use it to your advantage. Each time you get taken down, there is a short replay which is fun the first few times but then becomes yet another annoyance in the game. This replay delays too much of your time to get back into the level.

The tracks themselves are wide although even then, there will be corners where it’ll be tight given the wider turning circles of several vehicles. Scattered around the track are plenty of cliffs and ramps so there’ll be a lot of air time. The tracks naturally loop but there is a lot of variety. There are different weather effects and time of the day, although when it is night coupled with rain, it can be frustratingly annoying as you can’t see properly as the speeds you’re going. This doesn’t affect the AI of course, so you’ll be the only on disadvantaged and when you have levels that are constantly like this one after another, it is tedious.

There is a single player campaign which is little more than events back to back. There are some cutscenes to explain how this type of sport got really popular around the world. Each stage has various additional challenges that you can complete to earn more stars, which unlocks more levels. There is a player leveling system where the experience points are based on the achievements of that level such as number of takedowns or using surviving a particular amount of time. When you level up, you get a lootbox which unlocks cosmetics. You can use the in-game credits to purchase more of these cosmetics.

The game is easy at the start since your teammates are really good. Get about halfway and the rubberbanding starts to occur. Your opponents are much stronger and since this is a team based game, you can do amazing yourself but still lose because he opponent AI is so much stronger than your team’s AI. Normally this isn’t too much of a problem except when you get to the “tournament” stages where you need to do several levels in succession that you have to win. This is painful when you lose in the third round and need to do the preceding two yet again. Although you can cheat and restart the level just before you’re about to lose, it’s still annoying when you keep repeating the same events.

There are inconsistent takedown physics. The AI can take you down from a tiny tap at the back but you can’t even when you’re using a larger vehicle to smash into another. The Switch and Lockdown modes are the worst since they rely on AI luck so much. It gets quite frustrating in the later events when the AI is consistently overpowered and no matter how many you take down, they somehow manage to spawn all in a tight bunch up front to overwhelm you. It frankly sucks a lot of the fun out of the game which this happens.

The campaign ends up being around ten hours long, but a lot more if you wanted to complete all the challenges. Of course, there are online multiplayer modes as well. While a lengthy campaign can be fun, this one goes on for just a bit too much. You’ll soon realize the limited content since there are only eight classes of vehicles, four modes and sixteen tracks. The track variety is okay but it’s the four modes that is the killer. You’ll be playing the same modes again and again during the single player portion, let alone the multiplayer.

The game has strong graphics and the handling feels great. When you’re travelling at high speed with crazy stuff happening all around you, it is hard not to smile. However the one negative with the presentation of the game is the atmosphere, style and tone of the cutscenes that it is going for. The choice of words and how it is said, tries too hard to be hip and cool, which ends up being cringe.

Overall, Onrush, while it is a solid game, has a lot of small issues that hold it back. The poor design of the single player mode by having too many events that are back to back, overly aggressive AI, and lack of modes can suck. Unfortunately, it cannot hold your attention for too long, although it is heaps of fun for the first few hours and in small bursts afterwards.

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